Can research in design revision and rationales be applied to business process re-engineering(BPR) ?
Some design rationale work focuses on discovering or generating the purpose for the design to facilitate revision (e.g., Gruber). BPR has focused on rationalizing existing processes to make them perform better. I wonder if a design rationale would facilitate this kind of redesign? It's not entirely obvious, since BPR tends to focus on performance optimization rather than function. Is anyone looking into this?
I've been working in distributed design revision. It occurs to me that once a process has been re-engineered, it is a design subject to later revision. Again, the applicability of the design techniques may be only abstractly applicable to BPR. But I'm interested in discussing the possibility with any of you who are doing BPR work. Any takers?
Charles