Do you know how each process is performing right now in your organization? And if you’ve improved a particular process do you know if you achieved the level of improvement you wanted?  It’s necessary to quantify data to be able to answer these two questions and provide objective ways to measure process and level of change.

So if you’re working on a single business process improvement project or many processes across the enterprise, you need a measurement system.  But how do you build one that is comprehensive, efficient and effective?

Where do you start?  You have to start from where you are, so the Process Maturity Framework can help identify where on the continuum your organization is.  The first graphic below shows the five levels of the CMMI Process Maturity Framework, with descriptors at each level.

Project Manager is a common term in business these days.  On the simplest level, a Project Manager can be an individual in charge of a plan that was developed on a ‘cocktail napkin’ or simple spreadsheet.  For a more complex project, the Project Manager can be an employee in the Project (or Program) Management Office, be certified in Project Management by passing the rigorous PMI test, create sophisticated work breakdown schedules using software and manage enterprise projects from beginning to end for the organization.  The kind of Project Manager I am talking about has responsibilities like the second type above, but may not always work on enterprise projects; instead he might work on medium or large projects as well.  

This is such a simple but such a critical question.  And it has several critical elements:

Build – meaning this is going to take some time and it will start at one level and grow to another level.

Improvement – in other words we want to have an organization that wants to keep improving itself, which is necessary for any organization to succeed.  If it doesn’t grow, it dies.  But here the word is improvement – keep getting better, probably in several arenas.

Culture – the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization–a corporate culture could be  focused on the bottom line

Let’s define success first.  How would you know that you had an improvement culture?  What would you measure and what would your score be?

Here are four determinants you could use:

BPM and Lean Six Sigma are not the same, but should they be enemies or partners?

BPM is defined by BPMInstitute.org as:

Business Process Management is the definition, improvement and management of a firm’s end-to-end enterprise business processes in order to achieve three outcomes crucial to a performance-based, customer-driven firm:

Difficult people can disrupt any meeting, and we all know their frequent styles and behaviors from face-to-face meetings.  These are people such as the Heavy Talker, the Technical Expert, and the Know It All.  Below are some more difficult people that apply in the virtual meeting.  (Of course many of these roles apply in the face-to-face meeting as well.) 

The Late Comer.  You need to have the virtual tool set up at least 15 minutes ahead for a long meeting (over 2 hours) and 10 minutes before for a shorter meeting.  Welcome people as they come on.  Then at the start time, tell everyone you will start now or wait for 2 more minutes, and then start.  When new people come in, welcome them and move along.

 Difficult people can disrupt any meeting, and we all know their frequent styles and behaviors from face-to-face meetings.  These are people such as the Heavy Talker, the Technical Expert, and the Know It All.  Below are some more difficult people that apply in the virtual meeting.  (Of course many of these roles apply in the face-to-face meeting as well.) 

The Late Comer.  You need to have the virtual tool set up at least 15 minutes ahead for a long meeting (over 2 hours) and 10 minutes before for a shorter meeting.  Welcome people as they come on.  Then at the start time, tell everyone you will start now or wait for 2 more minutes, and then start.  When new people come in, welcome them and move along.

A Facilitator helps participants in a group work together toward the meeting objective by providing a meeting structure, engaging the participants, keeping them focused on the content, and remaining neutral himself.  A BPM Facilitator is a person who guides a business process improvement (BPI) project, using the same group process skills and behaviors of a generic facilitator but in the context of BPM.  So the BPM facilitator needs to know the BPM Methodology, have a structured method of working with BPI teams, be able to coach a Process Owner, and be able to work with the BPI Project Leader toward the improvement targets of the Process Owner. And the Virtual BPM Facilitator needs to do it virtually – not face to face but using telecommunications by phone, by video conference, by Web Ex, or similar tools.  That makes the medium a bit more challenging but it’s the reality of today’s global world. 

Gartner’s definition of BPM is “a management practice that provides for governance of a business’s process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance.“

The definition implies that BPM has both management and leadership and I agree.  I would clarify further:  leadership of the environment and management of the practices.  Let’s see how they both play out by looking at the What, Who, When, and Where of Process Governance.

WHAT are the elements of Process Governance? 

There are two important streams to governance:

Leadership includes:

• Accountability and Decision Making
• Vision and strategy
• Process Prioritization
• Regular Monitoring

Management includes: