Jane and Marc from Bradham Consulting discussed a process that they successfully implemented using the Handysoft BPM suite and more specifically utilising the BizFlow Office Engine. The business process dealt with very sensitive material that needed to be handled differently depending on the nature of the content; dynamically determined tasks allowed for each instance of the process to be automated while still being controlled and audit-able.

One of the lessons learnt from this exercise was the need to also educate the participants in IT to ensure they have the required level of maturity. I have often through that a big part of the facilitation activities for improving processes is to educate the participants on process management thinking; IT is now an additional important step.

Marc gave us another tip – to help the participants understand the process; get them to draw it.

The team mentioned that there was a large amount of effort put into developing the forms, including incorporating the “reality” processes that were not part of the original analysis. This mirrors my own experience, where I have seen traditional BPMS solutions full short because they do not handle the interface between the user and the automated process – and that is where the majority of the business rules and logic can reside.

My final thought was that the project demonstrated a good use of technology to solve the business problem; which was not necessarily improving the business process. BY doing this well, the organisation is now better equipped to embrace real process management. I’m shifting my approach, how does this compare to yours?

There are two types of debris left behind by projects, specifically by Process Projects;

1. Process models, descriptions, requirements, design, strategy and good intention that have never been utilised, and
2. Previous versions of the above artefacts that have been replaced or updated; however the original versions are still being used or are accessible within the organisation.

I have seen too many examples of enthusiastic projects that have created a new process, procedure or strategy that has not been adopted or sustained in the business after the project has been completed. I had one experience where I was shown a department’s “Process Library”. It was sitting in a series of well presented folders in a small cupboard in the Directors office – that’s as far as the project had got to real change.

The best case scenario is that a lot of money is wasted as the project has clearly not achieved it’s outcomes; however the more common worst case is that the opportunity lost is followed up by disappointment and scepticism that a process project can never be successful.

The end users are often victims of corporate debris as they find various versions of “the truth” in knowledge libraries and they struggle with which processes or work instructions they are meant to be following. If there is a renewed attempt to improve the process, they will often start from step one because no-one is sure which of the previous versions of analysis to use and just how correct were they?

At the 2009 Process Days conference I sat on a panel that discussed the value of Process Modelling. My contribution was to state that process modelling was only valuable if creating the models generated share understanding and the result was actually going to be used. I asked for our process models to be living.

I wish I had found this George Box quote last year, “All models are wrong, some are useful”.

How to build “living process models”

There are a number of simple Information Management principles that should be applied to organisational information like;

• Recognise corporate information and manage it’s lifecycle – Creation to Removal
• Be ruthless – Just because it is stored electronically, it doesn’t mean you can ignore it!
• If it is important corporate information - hold someone accountable for managing it!

There is much more that goes into an Information Management strategy; however that’s another Business Process for another article!

A living process model is a representation of your Business Process that is constantly referred to and updated by the people who are living and breathing the process. If I ask anyone who is involved in the process what documentation are they using to guide their work; I should always be pointed to an artefact that is linked to the current Business Process model.

Keeping Process Models up-to-date is often an issue. The workers are not going to maintain the process information if an update involves a 12-week review cycle. Imagine a world where the living process can be updated within 1 day, with 1 reviewer!

There are 2 keys things that are needed to achieve living processes;

1. A process modelling platform that allows you to publish the current process diagrams to everyone, with all of the relevant information relating to actually doing the process activities, and a process to keep it up to date.
2. Adopting enterprise processes to design, share, improve, measure and be responsible for all living business processes.

It sounds easy? What would you need to do to bring your business processes to life?

I will turn off Subscribe2 soon, so please visit the main page and use the new form on the right side of the screen to re-subscribe through FeedBurner.

Thanks
Craig

Whether you call it a project or not, the only way to make a significant change in an organisation is through a project, as defined “A temporary endeavour … undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives”; however I believe a project is not where a Business Process is made!

How are Business Processes conceived and enacted?

Business Processes have existed in organisations forever, and they will exist regardless of any specific Process Management activities. A Process Management initiative is about improving the way a Business Process is defined, resourced and operated. Therefore, a process project is really about creating capabilities to support the Business Process, not the process itself!

A common theme across my favourite BPM methodologies (Process Renewal Group and BPTrends) is that;

First the organisation understands it’s processes at the enterprise level;
Then, governance at the enterprise level decides to improve a particular process;
A process project is born.

Contrast this to a more traditional approach, where a project is created to improve an area of the business and one of the many outputs of the project is to model the related processes!

So what’s the difference? Firstly, improving the Business Process is why a project exists – so doing process analysis and design is fundamental – not just another output, then once the to-be future process is well understood, then the project is about building capability. This is why a project is necessary – we are changing the organisation to be able to enact the new process!

Roger Burlton defined six areas of capability that projects build to support processes, they are;

1. Human Competency
2. Business Rules
3. Organisation
4. Facilities
5. Technology
6. Motivation

The outputs of the project are to build the required capabilities to support the business process, e.g. The required people skills, decision model, organisational structure, capital equipment, computer systems and reward structures that match the requirements of the business process.

This leads me to a key point; A project does not implement a Business Process; instead the organisation uses the outputs of the project to execute the process the way it has been designed!

• Projects are created to improve a Business Process (or part of one).
  
• Project OUTPUTS are the capabilities that support Business Processes.
  
• Improved Business Processes are OUTCOMES of Projects.

Why is selling BPM so difficult?

Over the past few years, nearly every BPM conference, user group or meeting of the Australian BPM Roundtable has had a session about executive buy-in, selling BPM or simply, Why don’t they get it?

At the February Australian BPM Roundtable, Andrew Spanyi gave an interesting presentation on Leading Process Change (registration is required to access the BPM Collaboration.com site). One of Andrew’s rare practices for leaders is to have A Compelling Case for Change. Too often BPM is interesting but not compelling.

What is often compelling to leaders is single-points of process improvement; I cannot change the organisation – but I can fix the process in front of me. Andrew covers this in his summary, “No one single successful process improvement, innovation or transformation effort is likely to convey lasting competitive advantage; Process Management across the enterprise does!”

Therefore, there needs to be a compelling reason to do Process Management at the enterprise level – which may be much easier to find in a struggling organisation than in one that is already successful. So what are some of the common problems the may be compelling?

1. A desire to create “one” organisation – when it is recognised that silos of operations are dysfunctional and there is a desire to create consistent processes across the organisation.
2. Reducing costs – when there is a need for far cheaper processes.
3. Improving customer value – often after a poor customer satisfaction survey identifies the need to vastly improve the service and value being delivered to customers.
4. Poor financial or sales performance – a need to adopt a different approach to save the company!
5. Increasing visibility – executives want increased visibility of the performance of the organisation, usually coming from a renewed strategic approach.
6. Fad – a desire to implement process management or a process management system to be adopting an architectural or business approach that is thought to be desirable.

This was just a short list off of the top of my head. I want to explore this further at the Australian Process Days conference “birds of a feather” sessions; please add a comment; sharing problems that we an discuss at the conference session.

Finding the Business Problem

One approach to finding the business problem is to use an analysis tool to understand where your organisation is and where do they want to be, in relation to Business Process Management. The measured desire for change can represent the problem to be solved.

One way to determine the desire for change is to conduct an audit (survey) of key stakeholders and use the information to develop a process model, where is process management in the organisation today (as-is) and where do we want to be (to-be), what are the requirements (KPI’s) and what change is needed to get us there (the process project).

This can be done using an existing BPM Maturity Model, which is not an area I have had much experience in; however my initial experience has been that finding and adopting a suitable tool is not easy; either to find or to use. What’s your experience?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is important to celebrate the achievements of the organisation; however the issue is that the lessons are not learnt and the failings of the project are destined to be repeated.

The most disappointing project failures I have seen have been where the initial benefits sought included a strategic vision that the new process would be delivered to increase customer value and maximise enterprise value – by the end of the project both of these ideals have been de-scoped and the organisation is often left with another process implemented in isolation, committing the organisation to a maintenance and integration burden and not adding any real value to the customer. Innovation has most likely been lost to “just making it work”.

I often start a project with big picture thinking; “What is the best way this process can be done for the organisation, the customer and our part of the business”, how do you think I go? Generally I don’t get very far, it’s a great idea to be strategic; however the project owner has already scoped and budgeted the project – there is rarely enough money or brain power to do it right. “That’s OK, we’ll pick the rest up the next time around”; but we never do.

The worst part is that the people who are really passionate about Business Processes end up delving down into the analysis or the system and are never heard from again, paradise lost.

There are a number of solutions to this problem, including integrating portfolios, projects and process management. The solution I will be looking at involves adopting Process Thinking across the organisation… If a project is hard, how can we achieve such a deep change in thinking?

The answer to that question is probably: “No, of course everyone has interpreted it differently!”

This is an on-going challenge for anyone involved in organisational change, and a key source of resistance and conflict. I think BPM is the toughest type of organisational change as it crosses all areas of the business, introduces a new way to manage what we do and a new way of thinking.

Even on this website, I will use terminology in a different way to my peers, and it will cause comment and conflict! To help you out I have added a new page to the Executive Guide to BPM that provides a Glossary of BPM Terms in the way that I use them. The glossary will never be finished, I will continually add to it. I hope it helps.

What process terms are causing conflict?

One term that I have problems with is SERVICE, or BUSINESS SERVICES. What is a service? How does it relate to processes, work practices and IT systems?

A related question was asked on the BPM-Collaboration website, “What is the difference between a process and a service?”. This generated an interesting discussion (registration to the website is required to access).

I see a business service as a discrete function that is provided to abstract over a sub-process or software solution, e.g. Create a New User. Multiple business processes can utilise the business service without any knowledge of how it is implemented, only that it will achieve the desired result. The functional manager of the service can then change the implementation without needing to change any of the referring processes.

If all of the functional requirements of a business process are met in this way then they become very easy to sustain; however there is a requirement for strong governance and change management to ensure each business services continues to deliver the agreed results.

One solution to the terminology problem is to adopt an organisational Process Taxonomy, describing the meaning of all of the terminology used. When this is linked into a Process Methodology that is trained and adopted across the business, then you will have a much better chance of achieving real common understanding. My glossary may be a good place to start!

Do you have any word based war stories to share? How would you achieve common understanding?

Leonardo Consulting Process Days is on in Sydney from July 26 to July 29. It is at the Masonic Centre; which was a great venue last year.

You will find an overview of the program on the Process Days website. I am really looking forward to seeing Alec Sharp in person and to hear presentations from our peers across industries. The Global Discussion Panel will definitely be worth while.

Process Idol is going to be interesting. Anyone want to warm up your signing voices and join me for some fun?

The website is now open for registrations, please let me know if you are attending as the real value is the catch up and discussion between sessions!

p.s. Have a close look on the website and see if you can find me?

Why do we need to include the Customer?

Think of a typical Business Process where a customer is making a request of your organisation, maybe they are filling in an application for credit.

The current (as-is) process is considered inefficient as customer contacts the Accounts department and an Accounting Clerk collects all of the relevant information from the customer and then faxes the customer a nearly completed form to finalise and return. It is decided that implementing a self-service web-site will improve efficiency and save the company several staff years in the Accounting department.

The new (to-be) process is implemented, at the start everything looks good, the customers are able to fill in the form on-line and easily print, sign and send the form in. The form is also easy for the Accounting department to process as the information is already available in the accounting system.

However, the Accounting department is busier than ever, the phone seems to be ringing more and staff morale is down. What happened?

The customer is not part of the process. A key part of this process, getting and completing the customer application form, has been pushed out and is no longer considered part of the process; however customers are taking longer to complete the information required, they often don’t understand what is require and they are ringing up for help to complete the form. Once submitted a high percentage of forms are rejected back to the customer because they are incorrectly completed, causing re-work and unhappy customers.

If the customer part of the process was measured, then it would show that the end-to-end process is now less efficient at achieving its customer driven goals than it was previously. The process design may be more efficient from the Accounting department’s perspective; however that is the wrong way to look at it – unhappy customers and staff is a guaranteed recipe for failure.

Another example of this concept is in Gary Comerford’s e-book, The Perfect Process Project; In Chapter 6 there is a great customer perspective story relating to a call centre. Call centres (ironically they are often called customer service centres) are always a good source for processes examples that do not include the customer!

Finally, Michael zur Muehlen has written a great article on the BPTrends site, Service Processes: The Customer at the Centre.

Can you think of one of your Business Processes that does not include the customer? What difference could you make if it did?

I was not surprised by the result, however it is interesting that out of 20 organisations there was not 1 recognised BPM Framework that had been adopted; and comments were even made that they are not necessary. I think this last comment related to the terminology being used.

I have recently added a new page to the Executive Guide to BPM explaining what a BPM Framework is and why they are needed. See the Process of Process Management. For me, implementing BPM is implementing a Business Process and therefore you need a guide on how you are doing it!

What BPM Frameworks are there?

The challenge is finding and evaluating a Framework. There are three main sources;

1. Books
2. Training
3. Vendors

I was introduced to my first Framework by Roger Burlton of the Process Renewal Group. The Process Renewal Group Framework is based on Roger’s book, Business Process Management: Profiting From Process; however the best understanding of the Framework and the techniques to implement it came from attending Roger’s training course and being mentored by the Group.

There are other Frameworks that come from similar sources, and consequently I have not had the opportunity to review any of them, I just know that they exist from web research. Frameworks from BPMInstitute.org and Management By Process are examples of training / consultant led offerings.

Another option is to adopt the processes recommended by your BPMS vendor. The advantage of this option is that the framework is tailored to the tools you have available. This can also be a disadvantage if you do not already use the tool as the training seems to be inherently linked, even if the framework is generically good. An example of this may be the framework promoted by Appian.

There may be some more generic options, such as the Association of Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP) Common Body of Knowledge. As I am not a member I have not reviewed this framework; however there is a good summary presentation available, see Guide to BPM CBOK.

The Round Table also attempted to develop a common methodology which was called The Process of Process Improvement (TPPI). The output of the exercise can be found on the BPM-Collaboration TPPI Wiki (registration is required).

At the moment I am evaluating the BPTrends methodology that is based on the book Business Process Change by Paul Harmon. This methodology is supported in Australian by Leonardo Consulting who have written an excellent summary of the methodology and the certification program that they offer; see Achieving Process-Based Management.

I am sure there are many BPM Framework offerings that I have not covered here. If you know of one or you have a framework or methodology to offer – please leave a comment to let me know. I am also keen to collect or create reviews of the Frameworks that are available.

What Framework are you using or considering?

I usually start by describing the attributes that change an ordinary process into an effective Business Process. I have added a page to the Executive Guide to BPM on this very topic, see Business Processes Explained.

A key aspect of Business Processes is to have a perspective that stretches across all of the steps that need to be completed to achieve the right successful outcome. All too often functional managers only focus on their part of the process, missing the end-to-end perspective of what really needs to be done.

The perspective chosen can have a dramatic affect on the design of the process, for example:

Scoping the Recruitment Process

A typical recruitment process will concentrate on, and be measured by how efficiently the Human Resources department responds to requests to advertise positions, find and collate candidate responses and finish off the paperwork. I think you would have to visit many organisations before you would find a recruitment Business Process that actually measured how successfully the right candidate was selected.

As a candidate and as a recruiting team lead, I have had far more experiences where the process has been very inefficient (taking much more time that it should), has caused serious concern to candidates and frankly has not selected the most suitable person for the actual role, when they were required. Why do you think this is the case?

Generally this is because the process is not designed and measured, end-to-end. It is the difference between the Human Resources department being responsible for just their bits of the process, compared to being responsible for the end-to-end result; which in my example may be the performance of the successful candidate once they are in the position they were recruited for.

If one executive was held responsible for the performance of all new recruits, then the design of the process, especially in the steps of initial job design and the conduct of the selection panel would be done very differently. No longer would Human Resources blame the business for a defunct process or the other way around!

I could go on with many similar stories, in fact I would bet that you have a story of your own that you could share?  Please do…

A second look at the Customer Perspective will follow in a future post – Does the Customer have a place in our Process?

The Executive Guide to BPM provides some basic information about Business Process Management and what I see as being key to implementing BPM. This page will also be a springboard to a number of artefacts that I will be creating about Process Management and how to implement it!

While writing the guide, I realised that many of the concepts will require further explaining, along with a few good stories to support them. This is a story about Process Thinking and understanding Customer Value.

Eating out in Canberra

A few years ago I was in Canberra for a training session ran by Roger Burlton, a large group from the class went to dinner at a local restaurant. At the end of the evening we all pooled our money and went to the counter to pay.

One of our group was visiting from overseas and needed to separately pay for and get a receipt for their meal to be able to claim a refund from their organisation.

The restaurant had a “We do not split bills” policy, we asked nicely if we could pay for this one meal separately and explained why. The proprietor was serving us and he was sticking to his policy. After some back and forth conversation he was heard to say “It is my restaurant – I set the rules”. By the end of the conversation, he had finally agreed to separately charge for this meal – if we agreed to pay a very small processing fee (we are talking $1 added to a $500 bill).

This is a great example of a policy that is focussed on efficiency, however it clearly destroys customer value – which do you think is better for the business long-term?

The first sessions are entitled “Creating Business Process Success”. They are scheduled for March and involve the trio of Andrew Spanyi, Michael Roseman and Roger Tregear himself. The sessions sound very interesting and very practical – an opportunity to learn the real BPM and how to Engage, Improve and Sustain. For more information go to the Leonardo Education website.

Following on from the upcoming ProcessDays conference in July, Alec Sharp will be visiting Australia. I am looking forward to seeing Alec in person after our short exchanges during the “live” session at last years event.

Thanks to Roger and Leonardo Education for organising these great sounding sessions!  Let me know if there are any other events coming up in Australia – we don’t get that many good BPM seminar opportunities in Australia. The more we can support them, the more international experts we can talk into visiting (I know they really enjoying coming down under

1. Gather requirements from the business
2. Design and validate a process model
3. Implement the new process with the business
4. Move on ..

What will this look like in the world of Process 2.0?

I recently asked the BPM Collaboration community about Process and Google Wave (check out the forum thread to follow the discussion). Bernie Clark provided me with a link to a great YouTube video prepared by the SAP Research centre, it is titled “Gravity, the best example of Google Wave”. This is well worth 7 minutes. Well done to the research team for a quality presentation.

Using this kind of collaborative process development, the Business Analyst becomes more of a facilitator and educator about the way to build processes, without needing to get too involved in the business. With this kind of approach, an organisation would be capable of developing and deploying Business Processes in record time!

Add to this, adhoc process modelling. This concept, introduced to me as a new feature in the webMethods 8 product suite, provides the ability for knowledge workers to model processes as they are being executed. Generally there is marginal value in mapping a complex process that is not executed regularly, especially where human judgment is involved!

However, if you can capture the process as it is completed, then you can measure what has been done and learn from the experience in the future.

My first reaction to adhoc processes was, “It is hard enough to get people to map processes and execute them, what incentives would be needed to encourage adhoc mapping?”.

What if we mixed both collaborative and adhoc process modelling?

Firstly I thought it would be good to have a simple list of all of the available tools, so I have compiled a list, see the Process Tools (Free) category on my Process on the Web page.

Secondly, it would also be good to compile reviews of these tools, as I have found it difficult to assess the value that I am going to receive using one of these tools. Therefore, I will be looking for existing reviews, or to review some of the tools myself, in upcoming posts.

Do you know of any free tools that I should add to the list?  Or do you have any good reviews (maybe one you wrote yourself) of a free Process Tool?

However I have recently said goodbye to BHPBilliton to take up a BPM Consultant role at APA Group. This means that I will be back to thinking process. The better for you!

During the last few months I found it very difficult to keep track of all the different BPM postings across the internet. Jamie at BPM Collaboration had a great idea to create a page that displayed a summary of BPM blog sites; however you have to open his page directly to read it. I was looking for an aggregated source that could be accessed easily during my day, on the train, on my phone!

So I created BPMBlogs. BPMBlogs is a Twitter account that provides a summary of BPM blogs postings. You can follow this account on Twitter and see what is being posted to the BPM Blog space as part your regular reading.

You can also access the combined BPM Blogs as a Yahoo Pipes Feed, if you want to read the entries directly or import the feed into your own RSS reader.

Check it out!  It is still a work in progress, so let me know what you think – What sites should I add to the list?

note: I did have to remove some sites that I originally wanted to add as their RSS feeds were not compatible with Yahoo Pipes!

I am really looking forward to this conference and I would love to share a drink and a story with you. You can register now on the Leonardo website. Let me know if you are going; as I would like to share our thoughts and expectations leading up to, and after the event.

Are you going?  Add a comment to let me know what you would like to get out of the conference or why you may not be attending this year?

Last week I had my first “And they call that a process!” moment since I started this blog, it has only taken a few weeks for this to happen.

There I was, minding my own business, doing my daily check of my Post Office Box. One of the contents was a non-descript – window faced envelope. Thinking it was a bill, or boring government mail I did not open it and left it for later processing. (Coincidentally I also dropped into the bank that day to deposit a cheque, something that I don’t do very often – why is this relevant? You will see)

Later that night I opened the letter to find a Remittance Advice and attached cheque for $3.70. It was from the South Australian Government, Motor Registration Office (note that the last time we paid car registration was over 6 months ago).

There was no letter explaining the remittance, the description did not tell me anything, it just said “Other”.

My question for you (especially if you work in a process area at Motor Registration) is, Where is the customer in this process? Why did you send me a cheque for such a small amount, putting me through the effort to bank it and the associated intrigue, definitely reducing the value that I get from your processes?

The unfortunate part is that no-one will probably be very surprised by this example. Do you have a similar story to share?

As-is modelling can also be quite hit-and-miss as the analysts try to decipher what the current process actually looks like, this can often be because there is not a single as-is process, there are many.

The main purpose of an as-is model is to give a Process Project the information it needs to work out where improvements are needed and what is the starting point for change?

On the other hand, to-be modelling is a description of future desired processes. To-be modelling requires analysts to be creative in solving problems and designing processes to achieve business outcomes, often with not so perfect information about what the organisation wants to achieve.

I find it fascinating to sit in a room and watch a selection of staff have a to-be model presented to them, you can see the defences rise – and everyone thinks it is not going to work – for different reasons.

So it doesn’t sound like either will work? not true.

My approach is to start with high-level to-be modelling. This often involves developing a future state, Process Architecture – aligning the organisations strategic goals with it’s process management goals. Further detail can be added about key processes in the form of IGOE Process Scope models  (more on these in future posts).

When agreement has been reached on the future state, then we can go back and look at the as-is. This is limited to the processes that will transition into the new architecture and only to the level of detail required to find the areas of process improvement and develop the change plan to implement the new to-be models.

With this approach there are plenty of stops along the way to make sure that everyone is in agreement.

When you do Process Modelling, which type of analysis do you do first? How effective is it?

I will have a handy collection of information that I used to store in link sites, browser bookmark bars and on little scraps of paper, and I don’t mind if you use it too. Even better, if you have a link you would like to share – let me know and I will add it to the collection.

I want to make a special mention of the link I added today. ARIS BPM Blog, although a vendor sponsored site, contains really good general information about BPM, however my favourite thing is ARIS TV – a (so far) short video series on BPM which incorporates ARIS’s great slogan “We ♥ BPM”.

Episode 6 of the ARIS TV series includes an interview with Professor Michael Roseman from QUT. I am a fan of the work that Michael and his team have done on BPM Maturity and developing BPM strategy. (more on this later..)