Sunday, February 15, 2009

The first law of Predictable Business

Before I start to build the model of predictable business, I have to clearly define the term of predictability. What does it mean, that I can predict a certain event? Taken from real life, I would say, I know it will occur in the future. So to predict is to know.

As stated in Wikipedia predictability is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system’s state can be made either qualitatively or quantitatively.

The second term that requires explanation is “business”. In my context I define business from the process point of view. So to do business means to follow a certain process definition, to be a part of certain process instance. Every process contains activities and transitions between them. In a well defined process I know from the beginning conditions which are responsible for a certain flow of the process (transition from a-activity to b-activity). Such process have no uncertainty e.g. are predictable.

The first law of predictable business:
If there is no uncertainty in a process the business predictability achieves its maximum
(simply saying: business is predictable in 100%).

This law is based on entropy in information technology (also known as the Shannon entropy) which states: if probability p of a discrete random variable x (in my case, the flow of a process) is p(x) = 1 than its entropy N equals to null:


But in the real life the transitions between activities are not defined as simple rules. We have to talk about probability of a transition between activities that is less than 1.

Monday, February 02, 2009

So let’s start

So, I have finally managed to start the most advanced project I’ve ever designed. In this blog I’ll be talking and trying truly to develop a framework to support predictable business… hum, what’s this? Yes, you’re right, it’s some of a kind new buzzword… but very exciting.

To build this project I’ll do my best to avoid “reinventing the wheel”, so the main task I’ve defined for me, is to evaluate existing frameworks to fulfill requirements based on identified needs.

So let’s start.