The agents of a management system

Taking the Enterprise View of a management system we see that it consists of three components: people, procedures and tools. In this view, the people perform the required functions by following the appropriate procedures. In so doing, they may use any tools that are made available to them. This approach is also consistent with the information view, which can categorize the processes into three phases: awareness creation, decision making and implementation. A fully manual system would involve all decisions are taken by a human, who is also responsible for identifying a situation and taking corrective action. This corresponds to a situation in which no tools are provided. In the ideal, subject to careful control, all the procedures needed have been automated and no human intervention is needed. Most systems involve a mix of human intervention and automation. The balance of the mix will vary in different system. As technology improves, systems will be more automated. An open architecture should support this flexibility.