Requirements gathering should be done mindfully. Then there is this world we are living in, which requires agility, right? Well, can mindfulness and agile be imagined together? Once you can imagine this your requirements will be solid and done right, and you will obtain agility. Your sign-offs will be also achieved smoothly. It won’t stop there. Development, unit testing, functional testing and UAT will be smooth as well, including your org readiness efforts, along with your usage uptake and learning experience. Does this sound like it is out of this world, or in Utopia as most of us know this is not a very easy thing to achieve?

In the last twenty years we have become very good at mapping and improving processes; but we still have poorly structured organizations. Can we use our understanding of processes to improve organization design? A process exists to deliver a positive outcome to a customer or beneficiary. Sometimes the beneficiary is the person who does the work, as when you make a cup of coffee for yourself. But most processes in organizations exist to do something of value for an external or internal customer, who is not the person doing the work. This principle, deliver value to the customer, lies behind one of the great developments in process work – Lean. By analysing a process with a focus on what is needed to deliver value to the customer and eliminating everything that is not needed, a process becomes Lean. But Lean tells us little about how the work and people involved in delivering the process should be structured into an organization. So let me try to make a connection.

A SIPOC diagram represents a high-level view of a process. It shows the Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers. The SIPOC Diagram plays an important role in Process Definition/Improvement and should ideally be done first before embarking on extensive process mapping. An analyst – in collaboration with other stakeholders – may use it to arrive at a consensus on the process before moving to a greater level of detail. To emphasize putting the needs of the customer foremost, the tool is sometimes called COPIS and the process information is filled in starting with the customer and working upstream to the supplier. It is very helpful to give people who are unfamiliar with a process a high-level overview.

Under what scenarios might you use a SIPOC diagram?

There has never been a better time to jump onto the automation bandwagon. The process automation bug is hitting companies left, right & center and these are times when companies that are helping other companies automate their processes are prospering like never before. Hence, it is quite natural that you could do a google search and a flurry of “N reasons to automate your business processes appear on the results. But, what nobody would ever tell you is to ask yourselves why you need to automate in the first place. Because, that would make you think and maybe process automation isn’t for everybody. Let me explain to you some scenarios where you need to ask yourself why it is necessary & here are those.

Does my cost outweigh my benefits?

 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.