'''Process''' (lat. processus - movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of
operations or
events, possibly taking up
time,
space,
expertise or other
resource, which produces some outcome. A process may be identified by the changes it creates in the
properties of one or more
objects under its influence. Compare:
project. See also:
process management,
process theory, and :Category:Nature.
Examples
A process may be categorized as
singular, recurrent, or periodic. A singular process would be one which occurs only once. Few processes in nature can be considered singular. Most processes found in nature are recurrent, or repeat more than once. Recurring processes which repeat at a constant rate are considered periodic. The more periodic a process is the more useful it is as the basis of a
clock. Below are a few specific examples of processes.
Art
See
process music and
Sol Lewitt.
Computing
Computing has many concepts of process.
Program execution
In
computing, a
computer process is a running instance of a
program, including all variables and other
states. A
multitasking operating system switches between processes to give the appearance of simultaneous execution, though in fact, in general, only one process can be executing per
CPU core. Some new processors, such as
Intel's
Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading capability, can actually execute two proceses at a time, because some parts of the core are doubled. More companies announced development of multicore processors.
Software development
A
software development process is a sequence of steps that practitioners and managers take to create software. The steps usually include
requirements analysis, programming,
testing, and other steps.
Different processes mix the steps together in different ways, and assign responsibility to people in different ways.
The CMM is a meta-process that defines rigid goals up front, and emphasizes
scientific management. Some dislike its emphasis on paperwork.
Agile processes take the opposite approach, making things flexible.
In SSADM a process is a part of a
data flow diagram, and represents an action performed on the data.
In the context of Information System Development a process is performed to produce a product. Such processes are also called
techniques.
Products represent
what shall be constructed, e.g. class diagrams, state charts, and so on.
Processes (techniques) are the
procedures which describe in what order the construction of the products shall be performed, e.g. “at first, identify classes and objects” to construct a class diagram, “identify states”, and so on. In [Rolland1993] the term process is defined as “a related set of activities conducted to the specific purpose of product definition”.
Both together, the set of products and their corresponding processes/techniques form a
Method [Saeki] [Rolland1998]. Processes of the same nature are classified together into a Process Model.
References
| [Rolland1993] |
C. Rolland. Modeling the Requirements Engineering Process, 3rd European-Japanese Seminar on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases, Budapest, Hungary, June 1993. |
| [Rolland1998] |
C. Rolland. A Comprehensive View of Process Engineering. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference CAiSE'98, B. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1413, Pernici, C. Thanos (Eds), Springer. Pisa, Italy, June 1998 |
| [Saeki] |
M. Saeki. CAME: The First Step to Automated Method Engineering |
Engineering
Chemical Engineering
In the chemical industry, chemical engineers will use the following:
- Process Flow Diagram (PFD)
- Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID)
Philosophy
In
philosophy and
systems theory, basic processes, or logical homologies as they were termed by
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, are unifying principles which operate in many different systemic contexts. For example,
feedback is a principle that figures prominently in the science of
cybernetics. Natural and industrial processes utilize basic processes such as feedback.
There is a philosophical system known as
process philosophy, created by
Alfred North Whitehead; related to this is
process theology.
References
External link
Science
An outgrowth of tissue is called a process in
biology and
anthropology, e.g.
mastoid process.
See also
stochastic process.
Category:Computer science
Category:Nature
Category:Technology
Category:Management
category:Engineering
Category:Science
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