| Date: | 3rd February 2007 |
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I was thinking about where my money goes today, and I came very quickly to the conclusion that it's my car which gobbles it all. It's a depreciating asset, and fuel, servicing and insurance all add up to a tidy sum. At the same time, we're hearing how drastic steps are necessary to halt the changes now evident in the global environment. So much for the car.
Now, one of my software projects, which I've been working on for years in one form or another, provides a framework for defining a Business Workflow. If you work in a modern office you probably know what that is; in case you don't I suppose the best way of thinking of Workflow is as a flowchart of operations you need to follow to get a job done. Everything from making a cup of coffee, to booking a holiday, or preparing the company accounts, can be thought of as a Workflow.
Most non-trivial Workflows have parallel streams which involve contributions from more than one person. There are sometimes long delays in getting jobs done, which means people have to wait for each other. And sometimes there are mistakes, which means that we have to go back and perform some operations again.
What's the connection with Workflows and the environment? Well, travelling to and from work is part of our own personal daily Workflow. In the flowchart marked earn enough money to pay the mortgage is the operation of getting to work, most often in a car, and it ends with the return journey back.
This is the step which surely needs eliminating wherever possible. It wastes time and money, and impacts our environment. If you could provide a trusted and effective way of automating and distributing peoples' office work so that they could do it at home, you could do away with all that travel, and maybe reduce car ownership too.
So, Business Workflow is not some boring topic for suits and geeks. There are gains to be made which could have fundamental global impact, to say nothing of the social and cultural effects.
Worth pressing on with it then, I suppose.