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.
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:
With this capability in mind, let’s remind ourselves of the stated goals of DMN:
The other day my daughter said, “Dad, I really don’t understand what your job is.” Many days I am not so sure either. I thought about saying, “I help to align strategic objectives and tactical demands,” but knew that wouldn’t lead us anywhere. Usually I answer this question by saying I go to meetings and read e-mails for a living, but that joke is getting old. This time I told her that I will explain it to her when she grows up. Part of the reason this has always been a hard question to answer is that my role seems to shift month to month and initiative to initiative. This is also part of the reason I love what I do. I believe that adaptability is a key trait exhibited by good architects, but saying you are adaptable and actually being adaptable are two different things. So what are some of the key ways to demonstrate your adaptability? Don’t get into turf wars, bring the right temperament, and think big, or rather act big.
Avoid Turf Wars
The term ‘Digital Transformation’ has taken its place in today’s business vocabulary. It’s on the lips of virtually every IT vendor, most management consultants and an increasing number of executives.
Ask process improvement experts (which I have done over the years in teaching and consulting with such people) what is the hardest part of doing a process improvement project and they tend to say analysis. And in fact, it’s not just among process practitioners that you will hear people say that analysis is their most challenging activity: training program developers, organizational effectiveness types, change management coaches, etc., also tend to cite analysis as the toughest aspect of their work.
Do you experience these challenges in trying to create a current state process model?
Here are two techniques that will really help you out and make life much easier.
Start with a Single Process Instance
Begin by selecting a single process instance that the team will follow. Capturing one instance of a real completed process makes it easy to complete the model in 90 minutes or less, and it won’t have the spaghetti look of a process model showing all the exceptions.
For optimum results, pick an instance to start with…
Innovate or die. That is the mantra of successful organizations that compete in a fast-transforming digital world. Those who harness social media, mobile, analytics, cloud computing, and Internet of things (SMACT) to digitize the business win in the marketplace. Those who don’t, lose. It is a wild, wild digital world out there.
Business architects embedded in successful organizations need to innovate as well or lose relevance. The world where business architecture matters has changed. Old paradigms give way to the new. One area that needs rethinking is how business architects define a business capability.
When doing process work, attention is rightly drawn to the detail: the 43 steps in the process, the tests for waste, the flow bottlenecks, the measures of variation and so on. How, therefore, does a process expert keep connected to the strategy? How does he or she avoid optimising a process only to find that there are unforeseen negative consequences for the larger organisation?
The traditional answer to this question is “by focusing on the customer”. But, in my experience this is insufficient. First, it is the strategy that decides which customers to focus on and what value propositions to provide. So a good understanding of the strategy is necessary even to know whether the process work is focused on the right customer or the right service proposition.
The “Big Picture Thinker” and the “Aspiring Developer”
Every Agile team has experienced the frustration of working with a Product Owner who is very well intentioned but unable to provide the clear requirements that the team needs to build the most valuable business solution.
This is the first of two articles that address the specific challenges that you may be facing (or will most likely face) in your work with Product Owners. In this article, the focus is on two of the most common types of challenging Product Owners: The “Big Picture Thinker” and the “Aspiring Developer.”
The “Big Picture Thinker” Product Owner is an epic thinker, able to give the Agile team a high level description of their requirements but unable to describe (or to decide on) specific system behavior. Their inability to provide the team with adequate detail could be due to several factors, including their limited depth of knowledge and their fear of being responsible for decisions.
Decisioning systems need to fit in with existing processing systems.
There are five easy steps for deploying decisions using a combination of three core patterns – patterns suited for Legacy Systems, for Commercial Software Packages and for Modern Decision-Centric Systems respectively. This recipe allows for incremental changes that can be directed systematically for a powerful digital transformation.
Step 1- Pull Decisions out of Processes
Explicitly defined and managed decisions (a) simplify processes by abstracting the embedded business logic, and (b) allow knowledge to be injected into processes in the form of advanced analytical models and business rules.
Everyone starts here.
You're looking for a way to improve your process improvement skills, but you're not sure where to start.
Earning your Business Process Management Specialist (BPMS) Certificate will give you the competitive advantage you need in today's world. Our courses help you deliver faster and makes projects easier.
Your skills will include building hierarchical process models, using tools to analyze and assess process performance, defining critical process metrics, using best practice principles to redesign processes, developing process improvement project plans, building a center of excellence, and establishing process governance.
The BPMS Certificate is the perfect way to show employers that you are serious about business process management. With in-depth knowledge of process improvement and management, you'll be able to take your business career to the next level.
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses |
|
|
Business Architecture
|
|
|
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses |
Certificate
|
|
Courses |
Certificate
|
