It shifts the purpose of the project from business objectives to system requirements and from business needs to system functions. The danger is you end up ring fencing the wrong problem. And then no amount of studious analysis will get you back on the right track. That's what we do with IT sometimes. We get the requirement wrong and then demonstrate how useful the new system is going to be.
Early ring fencing of an IT project can work in traditional automation projects.
Problem definition' consists of drawing a boundary around the parts of the system to be automated. Where IT is being used to re-engineer a process, it is essential to avoid prejudging the scope of the IT project. The starting point in a process re-engineering project is to look at the whole process. An example is shown in figure 3. The example is illustrative of the situation facing many suppliers in the utilities sector.