Articles

How to Work With Challenging Product Owners – Part 2

Author(s):

Jamie Cooke

Managing Director, Both Hemispheres, LLC

The “Kid in a Candy Store” Product Owner and the “See Saw” Product Owner

This is the second of two articles that address the specific challenges you may be facing in your work with Product Owners. The first article focused on two very different types of Product Owners: The “Big Picture Thinker” and the “Aspiring Developer”. In this article, the focus is on two types of Product Owners that appear to be different on the surface but who create surprisingly similar challenges for the Agile team: The “Kid in a Candy Store” Product Owner and the “See Saw” Product Owner.

How to Build BPM Improvements That Work and Stick

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

The 3E model below provides an approach for any company to think about how their organization can start, grow, and make process improvement durable. With this approach the company improves customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and execution excellence.

The 3E Model

EXPERIMENT – Keep It Small and Simple

What has Innovation to do with Business Process Management

Author(s):

Dr. Mathias Kirchmer

Managing Director | Co-CEO, BPM-D

Why asking this question?

Organizations face daily new opportunities and threats in our fast changing digital world. Companies have to establish a management discipline to integrate agile innovation into their business. The Discipline of Business Process Management (BPM) addresses this need. Correctly set up, it establishes an agile and focused innovation capability in an organization. The BPM-Discipline produces innovation in form of new impactful processes and organizes the way other innovations are developed and rolled out.

The Leadership Engine for the Journey to Operational Excellence

Author(s):

Marvin Wurtzel

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

In order to initiate Operational Excellence we focus on establishing the structures, tools, methodologies and systems required. The manage program phase sustains that work by providing ongoing oversight and leadership for this initiative. In this phase the executive leadership attends to the following ongoing responsibilities: • Sets and deploys enterprise goals and strategies via core business processes. • Manages program-level plans and accountabilities. • Monitors priority process performance and related interventions. • Maintains alignment between enterprise structures, systems, and core business processes. •Leverages best practices across the enterprise. The ultimate objective is that these responsibilities gradually become integrated into the fabric of enterprise management practices. That is, they become “the way we do things around here.” We will discuss these responsibilities in greater detail in the following.

Busting Organizational Silos with Business Process Management

Author(s):

Samantha BureauJohnson

VP, PMO and BPE, BCBSNC

Today’s business is global, spanning across supply chains, project delivery chains and changing fundamental business models. It is harder and harder to get clear line of sight into and accountability for how a business is operating. In addition to the shift to a global model, businesses require a matrix to link together the conventional organizational structures of functional and divisional models. Traditional business management models are not keeping up with the need to be more adaptable to the customers and markets they serve, thus the introduction of matrix management models.

A matrix model can be extremely effective if you can resolve the inherent conflict it creates. This takes hard work and active engagement to manage. Alexis Writing’s article “Different Types of Organizational Structure”, gives a good description of the matrix challenge.

Matrix

Boundary Information Structures

Author(s):

Doug McDavid

Mr., DougMcDavid Enterprises

1.0 Introduction

Let’s take a few minutes to explore a subject that’s at the heart of the challenge of running a business, and by extension, also at the heart of providing expert architectural services on behalf of business leadership. This discussion will focus on approach to analyzing and designing effective communications among disciplines and specialists.

OpEx – PART OF or SEPARATE FROM Business Transformation?

Author(s):

Rick Hepp

Trainer, Coach & Mentoir for Enterprise Excellence, Consultant and Trainer

By its very name, Operational Excellence (OpEx) has held a traditional operations approach in most corporate visions and as a result been strongest in manufacturing operations/production sites or within department/functional operational lines of organizations.

Does the traditional operational approach create a “Separate From” business strategic linkage in corporate visions?

Historical Deployment and Engagement of OpEx

From OpEx early days as Six Sigma and Lean – the methodologies, tools and techniques were leveraged as a continuous improvement mindset with Cost Savings as King although it has evolved over the years at mature organizations to include waste elimination, improved process flow & efficiencies, enhanced capacity, and a quality/compliance driver.

The Business Architect’s Journey: Top-Three Qualities for Success

Author(s):

Simona Lovin

Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Leidos

Picture this scenario: You are brimming with excitement as you start your engagement with a brand-new client – a client who had persuasively spoken to you their company’s capability-driven approach to architecture and its commitment to building a Business Architecture competency. A client who, in preliminary discussions, had emphasized their urgent need for seasoned experts (such as yourself) to guide the more junior Business Architects. The importance of personal leadership and of having the requisite fortitude to stand by your recommendations had been emphasized. (Your certainly don’t lack either of these traits). The existence of some challenges might have been mentioned. (But what reality is that where there are no challenges…?)

The Leadership Principle: Executive Impact on Agile

Author(s):

Robert Woods

Director, National Agile Practice, MATRIX Resources

It’s not a secret anymore. I’m not sure it ever was a secret.

There are many differentiators that can ultimately impact whether or not an organization succeeds or fails in their adoptiontransformation with Agile. But, none are as impactful as that of leadership influence. We’re not just talking about the “I don’t care what you call yourself as long as I get what I want faster” apathetic leadership. We’re talking about something much more meaningful and impactful.

DMN – To FEEL or Not to FEEL

Author(s):

Brian Stucky

Managing Director, Business Decision Management, Allegiance Advisory Group

As the number and maturity of platforms supporting the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard continues to grow, it is time to take a look at the third Conformance Level defined in DMN. The Friendly Enough Expression Language (FEEL) is the language used by DMN to formalize decision logic in applicable points of a decision model. Conformance Level 3 supplements the notation and modeling in Conformance Level 1 and the decision table support defined in S-FEEL (simple Friendly Enough Expression Language) of Level 2 with the full FEEL expression language. FEEL provides powerful capabilities to satisfy the needs of DMN:

Built-in types, functions and operators
Enables a formal expression that can define every decision in a model
Formal expressions that may be encapsulated as functions • Supports abstraction, composition, and scalability

With this capability in mind, let’s remind ourselves of the stated goals of DMN: