Class-Based Engineering (CBE) is a multi-dimensional strategy that emphasizes an Object-Oriented approach to enterprise engineering. CBE instructs organizations on ways to achieve major improvements in information management and business performance. CBE defines new management techniques that are based upon innovative concepts originating from the Object-Oriented paradigm. CBE utilizes classes as a means to model the business of the firm, define it's organizational structure and construct a fully integrated enterprise-wide information architecture. A prime objective of the Class-Based organization is to structurally enforce reusability of software components. CBE is an essential prerequisite for maximizing the benefits of Distributed Object Technology and Business Process Reengineering.
CBE articulates a vision of an open-model collaborative organization that can rapdily transform itself to exploit emerging business opportunities and deter competitive attacks. The Class-Based organization is structurally positioned to reduce overall product development time, optimize inter-unit communication, stimulate process innovation, and proliferate the use of enterprise-wide reusable software components. The Class-Based organization is composed of highly specialized class-teams that are interdependently networked together to facilitate the business of the firm. By integrating business and information processing responsibilities into a common group, the class-team is able to sustain fast-cycle product delivery and enhanced quality. By delegating to a class-team enterprise-wide responsibility for a class, the class-team is able to significantly reduce expenses by eliminating many costly redundancies that otherwise would have been incurred by a closed-model functional application. Class-teams also specialize in reducing business process fragmentation by redefining business processes as classes.
From a Class-Based perspective, the prevailing functional model governing most organizations today is approaching obsolescence. Continued reliance on the functional model may ultimately lead to competitive disadvantage, organizational dysfunction and information fragmentation. Function-based organizations are therefore encouraged to undergo a structural and philosophical transformation to a Class-Based organization so that they can be better positioned to confront the competitive challenges of the future. CBE formulates a strategic doctrine that councils firms on ways to break through the confining boundaries of the functional model in order to unleash the organization's own unrealized computing power and optimize the creative potential of its employees. CBE constructs a bridge that transitions the organization from the functional paradigm to the object-oriented paradigm, allowing the firm to enjoy the sustainable benefits of enterprise-wide object reuse.
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