Predecessors/Before You Begin

COBIT, ITIL, and other IT Service Management frameworks assume the readers have a good understanding of "process." In practice, writing procedures and evaluating procedures are an important part of process improvement.

Process

Processes have common characteristics, be they the "freshmen orientation" process or the "change management" process:

• Inputs: what is needed for the process to begin
• Outputs: what happens when the process is complete
• Triggers: what actually starts the process
• Activities: what are the components of a process

The book Business Process Change, by Paul Harmon, also explains how processes can be at various levels of granularity. For example, one component of the "freshmen orientation" process might be "tour the campus" which in itself could be another process. Harmon suggests a set of terms for this hierarchy of processes:

• Value Chain
• Business Process (components of the value chain)
• Process (components of a business process)
• Sub-process (components of a process)
• Sub-sub-process, ...
• Task (set of activities)
• Activity (an atomic unit of work that does not need to be deconstructed)

For example, a "Service Level Agreement process" might itself be a component of an overall "Service Design process."