Select a Business System

Flow · 7 controlled steps

1. 01

   Frame the system decision

   Establish the decision, alternatives, authority, consequences, and evidence threshold before shopping.

   • — State the business outcome, workflow need, present constraint, and consequence of no action.
   • — Name decision authority, participants, budget boundary, timing, and risk context.
   • — Include maintain, improve, build, buy, integrate, or retire alternatives where realistic.
   • — Set decision criteria and the level of evidence proportionate to cost, risk, reversibility, and uncertainty.

   Responsible

   Client business owner

   Output

   System Decision Brief

   Decision

   Is there a consequential, uncertain choice with realistic alternatives and named authority?

2. 02

   Control requirements and scenarios

   Translate the operating mechanism into testable needs without prescribing a favored product.

   • — Trace requirements to workflow steps, decisions, roles, data, integrations, controls, measures, exceptions, and service needs.
   • — Classify requirements as essential, differentiating, contextual, or deferrable.
   • — Write representative normal, exception, failure, recovery, reporting, and administration scenarios.
   • — Define data ownership, access, portability, retention, privacy, security, audit, support, and exit requirements.
   • — Approve evaluation weights and disqualifying conditions before vendor scoring.

   Responsible

   Selection lead or process architect

   Output

   Requirements and Scenario Set · Evaluation Model

   Decision

   Are requirements testable, prioritized, and sufficient to protect the operating outcome?

3. 03

   Form the viable option set

   Create genuine competition among options that can plausibly fit the decision.

   • — Research current-state improvement, build, buy, partner, and integration paths proportionate to the decision.
   • — Apply transparent entry and disqualification criteria.
   • — Screen vendor viability, product direction, customer fit, ecosystem, support model, and known implementation dependencies.
   • — Record conflicts, commercial relationships, information sources, and reasons for inclusion or exclusion.
   • — Shortlist only options worthy of deeper evidence collection.

   Responsible

   Selection lead or process architect

   Output

   Option Longlist · Controlled Shortlist

   Decision

   Which options are sufficiently viable to justify detailed evaluation?

4. 04

   Test fit and collect evidence

   Replace feature claims and polished demonstrations with comparable evidence against real work.

   • — Provide the same controlled requirements, scenarios, questions, and response format to each option.
   • — Run scripted demonstrations using representative workflows, data, exceptions, administration, reporting, and recovery.
   • — Inspect integration approach, data access and export, configuration, controls, auditability, support, roadmap, and implementation model.
   • — Use references, sandbox tests, proof of concept, or pilot where uncertainty and consequences justify the effort.
   • — Record evidence strength, assumptions, gaps, workarounds, dependencies, and vendor commitments.

   Responsible

   Selection lead or process architect

   Output

   Comparable Option Evidence · Requirement Fit Matrix

   Decision

   Is the evidence sufficient to distinguish material fit and risk?

5. 05

   Evaluate whole-life fit, economics, and risk

   Compare the complete operating choice rather than license price or feature count.

   • — Score essential and differentiating fit using the approved model.
   • — Estimate implementation, integration, migration, configuration, internal labor, training, support, change, renewal, growth, and exit costs.
   • — Assess time to value, reversibility, vendor dependency, data portability, roadmap, service, security, privacy, resilience, and context-specific risk.
   • — Model benefits, uncertainty, assumptions, intangible value, and the cost of delay or wrong choice.
   • — Run sensitivity and scenario tests on decision-driving assumptions.

   Responsible

   Selection lead or process architect

   Output

   Whole-Life Options Evaluation

6. 06

   Decide and condition the choice

   Make an unambiguous client decision while preserving disagreement, conditions, and residual risk.

   • — Conduct open review with business, process, technical, data, financial, procurement, user, and relevant risk perspectives.
   • — Resolve factual gaps and distinguish evidence from preference.
   • — Select, reject, defer, or return for targeted evidence.
   • — Record rationale, dissent, residual risks, required contractual terms, implementation conditions, and approval authorities.
   • — Keep commercial negotiation conditional on the approved decision boundaries.

   Responsible

   Client business owner

   Output

   Provisional System Decision · Commercial and Risk Conditions

   Decision

   Which option, if any, best meets the approved operating need within acceptable economics and risk?

7. 07

   Authorize and hand off the system decision

   Turn the selection into a controlled implementation input and future review baseline.

   • — Confirm negotiated terms remain within approved data, service, commercial, risk, implementation, and exit boundaries.
   • — Record final approval, funding, contract owner, system owner, process owner, data owner, and implementation authority.
   • — Package requirements, scenarios, evidence, commitments, assumptions, risks, economics, and rejected alternatives.
   • — Define outcome, adoption, service, exception, guardrail, renewal, and exit review points.
   • — Transfer the package to implementation and preserve the decision record.

   Responsible

   Client business owner

   Output

   Authorized System Decision · Implementation Decision Package

   Decision

   Do final terms and ownership satisfy the authorized decision conditions?

Connections

Seams · 11 hops within 2 steps

Upstream and downstream neighbourhood over public reference processes only. Each hop shows the trigger, carried objects, and what the receiving process loses if the producing step is skipped.

Roles

Systems + Data

Measures

Evidence + judgment

Draft reference standard. Requires practitioner and context-specific procurement, legal, finance, accounting, tax, architecture, security, privacy, risk, quality, validation, accessibility, and worker-impact review before client deployment.