Principles of a Process Oriented Customer Order Tracking System. I found this document during the latest department move, a half-yearly event where a bunch of guys just starts moving our desk, thus rendering us incapable of productive activity. This particular document caught my attention because of its author: my boss-boss-boss, the same one after which this blog is titled. Although written in 1996, I’m sure much of it is still valid on the present day. I’ll start this PPOCOTS series with a random quote from the document, just to illustrate the clear and vulgar style (relating to the common people) in which it is written:
The PROPER prestudy typically reflects the current systems and the current way of working, even if there has been an attempt to redirect and simplify the current tower of Babel. Therefor the prestudy is a good starting point to find out what the problem is.
Clearly, the author tries to tell us (the reader) that this is not the document we are looking for if we don’t know what the problem is. Instead we should read the PROPER prestudy which is an entirely other document after all, in a far more formal style:
The Principles document refers to a general approach of the matter, more or less regardless of the kind of product being tracked, hence the more general name Customer Orders.
For example: washing machines, which in principle have a lot of common characteristics with trucks. They are being built.
I can see you “being incapable of doing productive activity” is not a problem, you have found something to keep yourself busy…
[...] the first article we were looking for the real purpose of the document, whereas here, the author takes us on a quest [...]