Articles

Using Interviews to Document Business Processes

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

There are many approaches to documenting business processes. These include group and individual interviews, white boarding, reviewing existing documentation, and job shadowing.

Interviewing the people doing the job is an effective method to understanding how a business process is currently done. Whether you are documenting the current state or future state, successful interviews require planning, communication and a high-degree of people skills and intuition. Following are some ways to ensure that your interviews achieve the desired results.

Planning for Improved Performance

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Most any organization will surely concede that it desires improved performance. More precisely, most organizations expect their performance to improve. However, very few organizations actually plan to enhance their performance. They simply expect it to happen as a normal course of business.

Business Process Management – What Are Your Standards?

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

After speaking at a Six Sigma conference I was asked what my definition of BPM is and what differentiates it from Six Sigma. The topic of my presentation was how to identify important change programs. I am not sure what exact wording I used but I must have first stated that I am not a Six Sigma expert, only a Six Sigma customer, but Six Sigma did not seem to use standards. The BPM definition must have included process measurement, modeling and change planning. Later in my hotel room I realized I never put to paper what my definition is of BPM.

Who, What and How of a Business Analyst?

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Who?

Business Analysts identify the business needs of their clients and stakeholders to help determine solutions to business problems. They typically perform a liaison function to software developers by serving as business problem solvers. They play a vital role throughout the project life cycle by understanding and representing stakeholder needs, documenting and organizing the requirements for a system, and communicating requirements to an entire team.

The Principles of Service-Orientation: Service Contracts and Loose Coupling

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

In the previous article we established the service-orientation design paradigm as currently providing us with the following eight common principles:

•services share a formal contract

•services are loosely coupled

•services abstract underlying logic

•services are reusable

Incorporating Existing Systems into SOA

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

You have dedicated significant resources to creating a services oriented architecture (SOA), investing heavily in hardware, software and personnel. You have trained people, hired experts, engaged vendors and deployed small scale services under an SOA framework. You have moved beyond the crawling stage and are ready to advance to the next stage of SOA deployment. But there is an elephant in the room no one wants to mention – your existing systems.

The Principles of Service-Orientation: Introduction to Service-Orientation

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

This is the first article in an eight-part series dedicated to exploring the common principles of service-orientation. Acclaimed author Thomas Erl shares his insights into the service-orientation design paradigm by providing excerpts from his second SOA book “Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design”, supplemented with additional commentary.

The adoption of SOA often comes with an expectation that many of the benefits commonly associated with service-oriented technology platforms will be realized simply through their successful implementation.

Mining Rules from Code: Reasonable or Lunacy?

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Is your organization challenged with the need to take an existing legacy system and re-architect it into new technology? But, what happens if that legacy application has no current system documentation, no available application SMEs or business SMEs who you can interview to identify how the existing system works?

The solution is the vision of Business Rules, with emphasis on business rule mining. Business rules are the most essential, non procedural statements behind business policy and requirements.

Facilitating Process Design

Author(s):

Tammy Adams

Managing Partner, Chaosity, LLC

Tammy Adams is a certified process facilitator specializing in Team Facilitation and Business Process Analysis. She guides teams in transforming their process knowledge and business requirements into viable project and system deliverables that incorporate quality principles consistent with quality methodologies such as TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean. She is co-author of, “Facilitating the Project Lifecycle: Skills and Tools to Accelerate Progress for Project Managers, Facilitators, and Six Sigma Project Teams.”

Non-Technical Issues Matter Too

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Too many organizations think they can implement business process management (BPM) efforts with nothing more than a comprehensive set of tools and a good ROI story.