Mapping Workflows and Managing Knowledge

Chapter 2

Systems, Processes, Organizations, and Workflows

Introduction

There are two primary objectives of this chapter. One is to establish as much clarity as possible in our thinking and use of terms as preparation for workflow mapping and analysis—we all want to be on the proverbial “same page.” This takes a bit of work, since all of the words in the title of this chapter are used very widely but often with many different interpretations. The second objective is to understand why and how organizations and their processes vary as much as they do, and why we need a robust method like the one in this book to capture all that variety. The good news is that when we understand why organizations and their processes can be very complex, the simple ...