How do you like this site? We would love to hear from you! Take a short survey or

Buffer information

Buffer external information and subscribe to updates

Instead of requesting information from an external source, buffer it and subscribe to updates

Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)

Description

Obtaining information from other parties is a major, time consuming part in many workflows. By having information directly available when it is required, throughput times may be substantially reduced. Note that this buffering is a weak form of the integration pattern. Instead of direct access to the original source of information in the integration alternative a copy is maintained.

Performance considerations

This pattern can be compared to the caching principle microprocessors apply. Of course, the subscription fee for information updates may be rather costly. This is especially so when we consider the situation that an information source may contain far more information than is ever used. Substantial cost may also be involved with storing all the information.

Share this pattern

Enjoy these

Foundational free Patterns

Assign cases

Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases

Distinguish case types

Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes

Isolate exceptions

Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow

Minimize numerical involvement

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Specialist-generalist

Consider to deepen or broaden the skills of resources

Offer location flexibility

Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to

Role-based task assignment

Assign tasks based on resources' roles in the organisation

Teamwork-based assignment

Allocate task based on collaborative experience: handover time, interactions, diversity

Back

Share this

Connected to

Consolidate Work

Collect similar work items and work in batches

What's Happening?