IDEFØ (1) Go to IDEFØ (2)

For the management of processes and the modeled one of integrated functions, as much in management as in reingeniería of processes of services, the Standard of Family IDEFØ is of most interesting by its utility and versatility. In the market different applications from software exist that facilitate the work with the standard: BPWin, iGRAFx, Applications of KBSI, BIZFlow, etc.

In our experience, the combination of methodology IDEFØ with the REDER or Cycle PDCA is like an important instrumental advance for the management of processes, from its design to the unfolding. Power Point PresentationIDEFØ

IDEFØ is a designed method to model the decisions, the actions, and the activities of an organization or a system. IDEFØ was derived from an established graphical language, the structured analysis and the technique of design (SADT). The Air Force of the United States commission to specialists of SADT to develop a function that modeled the method to analyze and that communicated the functional perspective of a system. The effective models of IDEFØ help to organize the analysis of a system and to promote the good communication between the analyst and the client. IDEFØ is useful to establish the reach of an analysis, specially for a functional analysis. Like communication tool, IDEFØ heightens the implication of the dominion and the expert decision making of the consensus through the simplified graphical devices. Like tool of the analysis, IDEFØ attends the modelador to identify what functions are made, how it is necessary to make those functions, what there is to change of the present system, and what there is to maintain of the present system. Thus, the IDEFØ models are often created like one of the first tasks of the effort for the development of the system.

 

In December of 1993, the laboratory of the computer science systems of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) sent IDEFØ like standard for the modeled function of in publication 183 of the PAA .

IDEFØ Concepts

The IDEFØ method has basic concepts that deal with each one the necessities discussed previously. The basic concepts of IDEFØ include the following ones.

The Graphical Representation

The graphs of "boxes and arrows" of a IDEFØ diagram demonstrate to the function like a box and the interfaces from the function like arrows that enter or which they leave the box. In order to express functions, the boxes work simultaneously with other boxes, the arrows of the interface "forcing" when and how they are driven and the operations are controlled. The basic syntax for a IDEFØ model is demonstrated down in the figure.

 

Between the concepts of IDEFØ ensure communications they are included:

	The gradual exhibition of the detail that offers a hierarchic structure, with the main functions in the beginning and with the successive levels of the subfunctions that reveal the limited affluent removal of the detail.
	A "letter of the node" that provides a fast index to locate details within the hierarchic structure of diagrams.
	The limitation of the detail to not more than six subfunctiones in each successive function.