5.4.5 Web‐based Process Documentation – Getting Over the “Paper Mentality” Hurdle

Abstract

We are in an era of extensive emphasis on process, process maturity, and process improvement. Up until only a few years also, most process documentation was paper based. Large volumes of detailed process descriptions occupied our bookshelves -and normally remained unused for long periods of time. Many companies are now using their intranets to host, manage, and distribute process documentation. Web-based approaches can make process documentation both more accessible and more easily maintained.However, too often these process descriptions still exhibit a "paper mentality" in that they leave much of the real power of the internet largely untapped.This paper discusses a number of process documentation concepts that are beyond this paper mentality hurdle. The basic premise is that more advanced web-based approaches allow integration of and easy navigation among sets of highly useful systems engineering process-related informationwhich in turn facilitates more effective and efficient systems engineering.

Building models of product development processes: An integrative approach to managing organizational knowledge

“…As should be apparent from the previous sections, appropriate software tools are imperative for successful IPM. The vast number of interlinked PEs and deliverables, with their many attributes, simply cannot be handled with paper or electronic documents, spreadsheets, slides, or drawing tools. Although each of these can be helpful at times—even to a point where they may be a deceptively compelling starter tool for modelers—their insufficient capabilities have caused many process modeling efforts to stall or fail to deliver long‐term value.…”