ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several general process design principles and guidelines. Before starting detailed process design, the analyst or designer must define both static and dynamic information for each process. Once the process contents are defined, the analyst or designer must check the process’s data flows. Stepwise refinement is a top-down strategy for dealing with complex or abstract processes. The structured analysis and design methodology utilizes stepwise refinement. The information hiding principle suggests that all information not directly relevant to a given process should be hidden from that process. A complex process might be converted into several smaller and more feasible subprocesses using decomposition techniques. A complex process is normally implemented as a set of linked, single-task modules, with a high-level control module calling subordinate modules in the proper order. The control modules and their subordinates must be designed in such a way that they can be easily linked and can share common information.
