Page 491 - Using MIS

Q1 How Are Business Processes, IS, and Applications Developed? 459

Figure 12-2
Relationship of Business Business Information
Processes and Information Process System
Systems

salespeople walk down the hallway to ask their manager if terms are acceptable. In some cases
(not in this example, however), it is possible for none of the activities to use an IS, in which case
the entire business process is manual.
Now, consider any of the information systems in Figure 12-1, say the Inventory IS. In addi-
tion to providing features and functions to verify item availability, that IS has other features that
support additional business processes. For example, the Inventory IS supports the item order-
ing process, the item stocking process, the item backorder process, and more. So, even though
we cannot see it from Figure 12-1, we can correctly infer that IS supports many business pro-
cesses. Further, every IS supports at least one business process; if it did not, it would have little
utility to the organization that pays for it.
We can use the terminology of Chapter 5 to summarize these statements and state that the
relationship of business processes and information systems is many-to-many. One business
process can potentially use many IS, and a single IS can support potentially many business
processes. Furthermore, a business process is not required to use an IS, but every IS supports at
least one business process. Figure 12-2 shows the process/information system relationship us-
ing an entity-relationship diagram.
Every information system has at least one application because every IS includes a software
component. We could further investigate the relationship between IS and applications, but that
relationship is beyond the scope of this text.
So, to summarize:

1. Business processes, information systems, and applications have different characteristics
and components.
2. The relationship of business processes to information systems is many-to-many, or N:M.
A business process need not relate to any information system, but an information system
relates to at least one business process.
3. Every IS has at least one application because every IS has a software component.
When you participate in development meetings, you’ll sometimes hear people confuse
these terms. They’ll quickly switch back and forth among processes, systems, and applications
without knowing that they’ve changed terms and contexts. With these understandings, you can
add value to your team simply by clarifying these differences.

Which Development Processes Are Used for Which?
A fourth way to develop
applications is to steal them. Over the years, many different processes have been tried for the development of processes, IS,
Read the Security Guide on pages and applications. In this chapter, we’ll investigate three: business process management (BPM),
492–493 to learn more. systems development life cycle (SDLC), and scrum.

Development Processes

BPM SDLC Scrum
Business Processes

Scope Information Systems
Figure 12-3 Applications
Scope of Development Processes