Articles

The Pragmatic Business Architect: Lessons from the Field

Author(s):

Dean Heltemes

Senior Director, Ameriprise Financial

Something I have noticed that seems to be lacking in the field of business architecture is pragmatism. Many BA’s I speak with are frustrated at the difficulty they are having in expanding their business architecture practices and in building relationships with business leadership. I believe this is often rooted in unrealistic expectations built from reading BA literature, listening to exaggerated success stories at conferences, and the assumption that what worked somewhere else will work for their company. To all aspiring business architects out there, let me give you a tip: be realistic. Business architecture is definitely more art than science. The following are five examples of how to pragmatically approach working with the business.

Case Study: Living Processes Drive Continuous Improvement at Ricoh

Author(s):

Ivan Seselj

CEO, Promapp

Ricoh is a global technology company, best known for its familiar range of office equipment and services including printers, projectors, document management systems and IT services. Headquartered in Sydney, Ricoh Australia maintains branches in all mainland capital cities.

New services herald a time of change
In the last five years, Ricoh’s Australian operations have been through enormous change. Acquisitions and expansion into new markets, including the development of highly successful professional services and IT services arms, have resulted in the company doubling in size since 2010. Headcount has risen to over 1,100 employees. Major new customers have signed on with the company. To accommodate their needs, many new processes have been developed and old ones changed.

Declan O’Reilly, Business Excellence Manager, describes it as an exceptionally busy period and one that has been dramatic in terms of change.

White Space Forever

Author(s):

Alan Ramias

Partner, Performance Design Lab

The title of the book that made Geary Rummler and Alan Brache authorities in the emerging field of process improvement and management back in 1990 was Improving Performance, but it was the subtitle (How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart) that caught attention. Decades later, people still refer to it as the “white space” book; that was why Geary’s 2009 follow-up to Improving Performance was entitled White Space Revisited.

Today the term “white space” has entered common parlance. There are even a couple of consulting firms using the term in their names. It’s come to mean any general lack of connection between things that should be connected. But its original meaning still has value for BPM and Operational Excellence.

Cornerstones of a Business Architecture Practice

Author(s):

Whynde Kuehn

Principal, S2E Consulting Inc.

Whether driven by top-down mandate or won through demonstrated bottom-up success, there is a point when business architecture achieves “enough” acceptance within an organization to formalize an internal practice. While there are many steps to take throughout the journey of establishing and maturing a business architecture practice, there are four cornerstones that when put into place, can accelerate the process and create significant clarity.

The Need for Formalization
As business architecture’s footprint expands within an organization and as the team grows, there is an increasing need for:

Lean Six Sigma and Business Process Management – Better Together

Author(s):

Marvin Wurtzel

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

Operational Excellence stresses the application of a variety of principles, systems, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of performance through process improvement.

This management philosophy is based on applying methodologies, such as BPM and Lean Six Sigma. The focus of Operational Excellence goes beyond the traditional event-based model of improvement toward a long-term change in organizational culture.

One of the most powerful ways to improve business performance is combining business process management (BPM) methods with Lean Six Sigma methods. BPM emphasizes process improvements and automation to drive performance improvement, while Lean Six Sigma uses statistical analysis to drive quality improvements. The two methodologies have been considered by times to be mutually exclusive, however, some savvy companies have discovered that combining BPM and Lean Six Sigma can create dramatic results.

BPM Basics

Building a Process Based Organization

Author(s):

David Hamme

Managing Director, Ephesus Consulting

Nowadays it seems every mid to large size company is getting clipped at the knees. For example, take the tech industry. Not ten years ago, the industry was dominated by household names including Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Oracle. With the passing of years their core businesses have eroded as upstarts nabbed market share. Today, those maintaining their market position often do so only through the acquisition of their smaller rivals. Their internal growth engines are sputtering if not dead. Why? The issue is not that these tech giants don’t have the resources to compete. Nor is it that they don’t have experienced leaders and talented workforces. They simply are unable to adjust their product portfolios to seize market opportunities. Burdened by traditional corporate structures and business practices, when sparks of innovation flare up they are quickly dowsed by the corporate bureaucracy.

Building Smart Processes with Analytics (via Decisions)

Author(s):

Gagan Saxena

VP Consulting & Principal Consultant, Decisions Management Solutions

Decisions inject Analytics smartness into Processes, making the processes smarter.

Now that we have automated most routine processing using some programming logic and some basic rules, the next competitive frontier is making these processes adapt dynamically to changing conditions and unforeseen situations – and learning from each such situation. Processes with such sophisticated dynamic behavior are smart processes.

Smart behavior cannot be programmed into the processes without causing unmanageable complexity and catastrophic brittleness. In any case, such ‘programmed’ processes cannot ‘learn’ by themselves. Additional knowledge has to be physically programmed into the process.

So instead of trying to make the process smarter, the focus should be on making the embedded decision smarter – through automation using decision management technologies available today.

Smart Processes are really Smart Decisions

Vision: A Crucial Ingredient of BPM

Author(s):

Amir Ghannad

Author, Speaker, Leadership Enthusiast, The Ghannad Group

BPM Institute defines BPM as “The definition, improvement, and management of end-to-end business processes in order to achieve clarity on strategic direction, alignment of resources, and increased discipline in daily operations.” A crucial ingredient in effective implementation of BPM is a common vision that guides the formation of the strategic direction and keeps the resources aligned beyond the initial planning phase and informs the operational decisions that are made every day.

A (Compressed) Day in the Life of a Business Analyst – Part 2

Author(s):

Karen Tricomi

Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the second of a two-part look at a “Day in the Life” of a Business Analyst (BA). During the first half of our “day”, the BA met with principal stakeholders multiple times to understand the problem, document the As Is and To Be, and perform a gap analysis between the two that will form the basis for the solution. The BA speculates that this will involve a combination of changes to people, process, and tools but the next step is to list and prioritize what the solution must include.

Why Big Data Needs BPM

Author(s):

Viveka Sinha

Consultant, Independent Consultant

Big data and related topics like the IOT (Internet of Things) are always big topics of interest in large forums. So it was the case in CeBIT 2016, Hannover which I was fortunate enough to attend. There were several talks on Big Data – Digital Disruption was the theme, and there was general consensus that Big data was here to stay and grow phenomenally. People were moving from basic reporting and visualization of data (Data discovery and understanding) to a phase where predictive analytics would rule. This was because of the huge strides made in the fields of Machine Learning and artificial Intelligence. One of the keynote speakers in CeBIT was Professor Nick Bostrom founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. An extremely impressive speaker and futurist, I was blown away with the vision he had for the future. He spoke passionately that the time for Artificial Intelligence has finally arrived and what it means for society at large.

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