Customer Reviews

The Practical Guide to Business Process Reengineering Using Idefo

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An excellent book that goes beyond the FIPS manual in terms of increasing the readers understanding of IDEFO concepts. More importantly, however, are the sections on the do's and dont's. These sections are very useful in improving ones authoring techniques and are very useful for a project manager. Great book.

The old saying about not being able to understand something until you can quantify it is generally true, but can be superseded by a more accurate statement. "If you can diagram it, then you can understand it, more particularly you can make someone else understand it as well." While most humans can think numerically, a large percentage have some difficulty with quantitative data. However, nearly all can follow directed diagrams, so they are generally a superior way to describe complex structures. IDEF0 is a set of rules for diagrams that are simple, yet allow for enough complexity so that the most complex of processes can be represented.
This book is an explanation of the IDEF0 syntax and structure and how to apply it to business operations. No previous experience is necessary, the diagrams are largely self-explanatory and what little extra explanation that is needed is provided. As a long-time user and instructor of the Unified Modeling Language, I am familiar with complex diagrams. Yet, I was surprised with how simple and effective the IDEF0 "language" is to use and understand. Using little more than boxes, arrows and labels, very complex structures can be described in a compressed format. The last two chapters describe how to use it and how to avoid making some common mistakes.
Business Process Reengineering is where previous business processes are modified to conform to changes in the environment. In order to be able to do that, you must be able to define what your previous business process was. The IDEF0 will allow you to do that, and I recommend that you read this book if you are currently in the process of altering your business practices.

This is a book that is more about IDEF0 modeling than Business Process Reengineering (BPR). It is well organized with numerous diagrams and illustrations. IDEF0 conventions, benefits, and history are all well presented, but anyone seeking a "how-to" on BPR will not find much here.

The book provides chapters on the utility of IDEF0, its use by the Department of Defense (DoD) in process improvement, as well as IDEF0 syntax and semantics, their application (called pragmatics), and tips.

The appendices may well be the most useful part of the book. Appendix A describes the types of models and decomposition strategies. The next section provides many interesting sample models. A rather academic and dry treatment of SADT and IDEF0 is in Appendix C. In Appendix D, where SADT data modeling, IDEF0 and IDEF1X are positioned, the author asserts that "some amount of process modeling should be done before data modeling." The final section provides an insightful case study.

The primary concern about the book is its light treatment of BPR concepts. Also, the points made in the "Do's and Don'ts" section might have been better presented in the related sections of the text; the separate chapter seems redundant or confusing at times, making a single topic difficult to review. A detailed treatment of how to use activity based costing in process analysis and redesign would have been most welcome. Finally, the book seems incomplete without a listing of tools that support IDEF0 modeling.

All things considered, this book is recommended with reservations. It is the best-written summary of IDEF0 presently in print.

This book is more than the title said. I bought it to refresh my IDEF0 but I found many great stories behind IDEF development as well as the "growing" example while you learn. Compared to its size, you can finish this book in a day -but pack with lots of information. I found it's quite useful for brush-up my IDEF. For the new user of IDEF, it might be a little bit (just a little) to grasp the whole idea of BPR. Additional book of workflow management, BPR and system analysis are required.

My name is Louma I am from Jordan, my background is computer science, my comment on this book is:- Reading this book was my only guidence to do my job in process reengineering, it helped me a lot understanding the IDEF0 methodology. And I wish that this book had with it a booklet with more in depth explannation and examples for another cases may be a health service delivery, book production, security gaurding etc of general cases. I want to add that the book is writen in a very user friendly way and it is easy to be understood.

Thank you author. Keep the good work.