Chapter 9: Let a Thousand Gardeners Prune — Cultivating Distributed Design in Complex Organizations - Organizing Business Knowledge The Mit Process Handbook [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 9: Let a Thousand Gardeners Prune — Cultivating Distributed Design in Complex Organizations

George M. Wyner

This chapter is adapted from chapter 3 of G. M. Wyner (2000), Let a thousand gardeners prune: Cultivating distributed design in complex organizations, Ph.D. dissertation, Sloan School of Management, MIT.

9.1 Process Models

In this chapter, I illustrate my approach to modeling design methods by providing a detailed account of three such modeling exercises: process innovation as treated by Davenport (1993), business process reengineering as described by Hammer and Champy (1993), and the design of high risk systems according to Perrow (1984). These three examples illustrate how the method can be applied both to texts in which the design method is an explicit focus, and those in which the design method is implicit and must be uncovered by the reader. The examples form a progression along this continuum:

Davenport provides a decomposition of the activities that comprise his process innovation method.

Hammer and Champy do not map the reengineering process but do discuss its characteristics.

Perrow has as his primary concern the understanding and classification of complex engineered systems. He does ultimately give an account of such systems that can be construed as a design method, but this involves more detective work on the part of the reader.

By setting forth these examples in some detail, we have the opportunity to explore the strengths and limitations of my modeling method and its potential applicability to the analysis of distributed process design.