The overall challenge for BPM is, how does a company manage these efforts into an action plan that supports company strategy and contributes to the bottom line? People in different parts of the organization see BPM projects from different perspectives, which can mean different goals and procedures and divergent outcomes. Coordinating the efforts requires management to see each project from an overall perspective, including the individual efforts on each process that is being improved.
The overall challenge for BPM is, how does a company manage these efforts into an action plan that supports company strategy and contributes to the bottom line? People in different parts of the organization see BPM projects from different perspectives, which can mean different goals and procedures and divergent outcomes. Coordinating the efforts requires management to see each project from an overall perspective, including the individual efforts on each process that is being improved.
Symmonds said that the important questions to ask about any BPM project in order to get the most value are:
- What’s the context?
- What are the parts?
- How should they go together?
- How do you manage it all?
There are two main process views. The first is temporal/lifecycle, and the second is hierarchical. Process views also change depending on what level they are viewed from within the organization. The enterprise view, which is at the top, is different from the procedural view, which is an isolated view of a single workflow process. Modeling and automating processes is complicated and there is a natural tendency for the work to become separate islands and stovepipes, even when the effort is to integrate.
Symmonds said that there is always the tendency to “sub-optimize”, which means that an inordinate amount of time and effort is spent on a single part of the process, making almost perfect something that only needs to be adequate in order for the process to work better.
The process parts that are important are:
- Technical definitions
- Policies, procedures and instructions
- Workflow applications
- Governance
The people involved are:
- Process documenters
- Process modelers
- Process analyzers and simulators
- Process automators
- Process managers
The process documentation is done to establish policy and comply with standards while implementing quality management and providing guidance and instruction. The process modelers try to graphically present the processes as object models to make them understandable at the user level and eventually to automate them.
Process analysis and simulation are popular activities now because the tools are so captivating; but ultimately the execution of the process is the important thing, not just the description of the process. You always have to keep in mind the question, “Why am I trying to automate this process in the first place?” If you don’t know why you are doing it, you probably shouldn’t do it, said Symmonds.
Boeing uses a five step design plan. The first step includes the mission objectives, customer needs, and the master plan. This is followed with the Requirements Allocation, the Functional Allocation, the logical Definition, and finally, the Physical Design. Boeing calls it Closed-Loop Planning because it starts with planning, then process definition, then analysis simulation, work planning, workflow, metrics, and then re-planning to close the loop. Boeing has a Process Council to oversee all the process work and review the ongoing work regularly and come up with process improvement strategies.
In summary, Symmonds said that business process management means different things to different people. The tools and modelers/simulators are good, but can produce a large number of BPM artifacts which can be difficult to manage. Connecting the process improvement efforts to the business strategy is always a challenge.
