Author Description

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is the key management trend of the day. Ivar Jacobson's book The Object Advantage presents a blueprint for re-designing a business according to BPR principles. It uses one method to integrate his work of reengineering a business, its processes and its vital infrastructure the information system. It describes all of the details about a business and its processes by viewing customers as users and business processes as cases of how they use the business "use cases". And it manages the risks involved in BPR by using a how-to method based on object technology, offering concrete guidance in the shape of a formal reengineering process. Whilst most books tackle the "soft factors" (motivation, management commitment, leadership), The Object Advantage goes beyond this type of hand-waving and offers practical steps to success that include: * A description that specifies every activity and deliverable involved in the business process * Deliverables, in the form of business models, that focus on the company's architecture and dynamics * A process for the development of an information system that is truly integral to the reengineered company A seamless relationship is created between business model and information system, vastly increasing a company's chances of successfully reenginneering itself - the heart of this relationship is the application of the BPR model and object technology. Ivar Jacobson's book will be essential reading for any manager contemplating reengineering their business or wishing to understand more about BPR and its practical implementation. It will also be invaluable for reenginnering teams re-designing their companies, employees within a reengineered company needing to understand how their new environment will work and what their role will be, and systems analysts and designers wanting to expand their current applications of object technology into business modelling and business reengineering.