Chapter 5. Column Four: People and Organizations

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	Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture By David C. Hay
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According to the overall scheme for this book, this chapter should be about Column Three, Locations. It turns out, however, that the models for Column Four, People and Organizations are extremely useful for analyzing the issues raised in Column Three. So, we'll describe Column Four first and then come back to Column Three when we're done.

Figure 5.1 shows the Architecture Framework, with Column Four highlighted. The fourth column of the Architecture Framework is about people and groups of people. It is not possible to view an enterprise without looking at the people who comprise it. Without people there is no enterprise. This column is the one absolute prerequisitebefore data, before processes, and before any of the other columns .

Figure 5.1. The Architecture FrameworkPeople

This, however, is the one column that, to date, has the fewest available models to describe it. We can draw an organization chart, but this is becoming progressively less satisfactory as a way to represent the true relationships among the people in an enterprise. Technology has completely changed the kinds of communications channels we use, and all companies are now in the throes of trying to understand the full implications of this.

In fact, not only are there few models, but the entire nature of the workplace is changing before our very eyes.

For these reasons, this chapter will be a little less coherent than the others. Instead of a systematic comparison of different approaches, it will present the issues involved in trying to come to grips with how to organize a company. It will draw from two completely different fields: knowledge management and cybernetics.

Like the other chapters, this one will first discuss people and organizations from the Row Two perspectivethe business owner's view. In recent years this view has been radically altered by changes, both in society and in technology. The business ownersclerks, engineers , accountants , and managersare viewing their world quite differently than they might have fifty years ago. These changes are being acknowledged in the new field of knowledge management. The architect's view (Row Three), on the other hand, is supposed to be of fundamental structures that are immune to such changes. To provide such a robust view is surely a challenge. As it happens, there is a modeling approach that can help. It comes from the science of cybernetics. Also in the architect's view is an analysis of the interactions between actors and the business functions. A technique for doing this is use cases.

Knowledge management is the management of an enterprise's capabilities with an emphasis on the knowledge content of the work being done. If data are letters and numbers , and information is the meaning given to those letters and numbers, knowledge is the application of that meaning to achieve objectives. Knowledge management is about effectively employing the information held in an organization.

Cybernetics is the science of communication and control. Developed during World War Two, this is concerned with the mechanisms of control, especially variations on feedback loops .

A use case is a technique for representing the interactions between a system and those who affect and are affected by it.

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