“Don’t Automate, Obliterate” by Michael Hammer Reengineering: “Don’t Automate, Obliterate” by Michael Hammer

What does the man say? DO NOT just use technology to automate existing work processes Redesign the whole process, it’s an ALL IN! Reengineering - “the notion of discontinuous thinking - of recognizing and breaking away from the outdated rules and fundamental assumptions that underlie operations” Reengineering - 7 principles

Principle 1 & 2 “Organize around outcomes, not tasks” Example: Say we have an application which needs approval. Instead of having A -> B -> C -> D -> E we simply have one person who performs all the steps himself. Remove the assembly-line approach. “Have those who use the output of the process perform the process” Example: Don’t create specialized departments. Don’t just let 1 department have 1 job. Say 1 department need pencils, there is no need to involve the purchasing department.

Principle 3 & 4 “Subsume information-processing work into the real work that produces the information” Example: Customer -> phone employee -> delegate work Converted to: Customer -> online order form -> business logic “Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized” Example: Multiple local departments One shared database

Principles 5 & 6 “Link parallel activities instead of integrating their result” Example: A bank may have multiple units selling different kinds of credits. Each unit may not know if any of the other units have extended credit to a customer. Can be fixed by sharing a customer database, communication network or teleconferencing. “Put the decision point where the work is performed and build control into the process” Example: Say we have a large business chain, with multiple branches. Instead of letting the board of administration of the business chain take the decisions, each respectable branch will be in charge of the decision making with only a few guidelines from the chain itself.

Principle 7 “Capture information once and at the source” Example: Say we have a company which has to do some market research. Instead of letting each department doing this research by themselves, we could do it once and for all and store that information somewhere in a database shared by the departments, so each department easily can find the relevant information once needed.