Articles

Business Rules: Going Old School with Expert Systems

Author(s):

Brian Stucky

Managing Director, Business Decision Management, Allegiance Advisory Group

During a recent client meeting, we were reviewing the proposed business architecture for a new system. Decision Management will play a crucial role in the application and the rule processing had been nicely delineated in the architecture. While the rules themselves had been fairly well articulated, their “insertion” in the requirements suggested quite a bit of work remained. However, I was generally pleased with the state of the work to date.

Enterprise Capital Planning and Business Architecture

Author(s):

Ganesh Balasubramaniam

Director - Business Architecture, OptumHealth

David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford University, said “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” It applies to enterprises as much as it does to individuals. Modern enterprises rely on the capital planning process to determine “what to do next” and “how to do it”, which results in change programs for the enterprise. These change programs are then implemented via standard portfolio management processes of the enterprise. Capital planning depends on a clearly defined business strategy and a good understanding of the current state of the enterprise.

For Most Government Agencies, an IT Strategy Can Be One Too Many

Author(s):

Ken Mullins

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

For years, I’ve been telling my federal customers that an IT Strategy is often not very helpful, and that all of an agency’s resources (whether people, processes, technologies, services, or facilities) should be collectively aligned and applied to enable a single enterprise strategy that is driven by mission and business needs – in short, an Enterprise Business Strategy. “Instead of an IT Strategy,”¹

I would go on to say, “What an agency needs is an IT Roadmap.” Despite that advice, which did go against the grain of prevailing government practices, nearly every CIO would persist in his or her efforts to promulgate an IT Strategy – as an emblem or accoutrement of the office they held, it often seemed.

Error Tracking in Processes

Author(s):

Viveka Sinha

Consultant, Independent Consultant

Lean six sigma methodologies focus on removing wasteful activities from processes. However, at times we need process activities that come in handy when the expected process is not followed or are essential for fraud prevention and/or regulation. During my recent trip to India I came across two such examples, which made me think about the importance of compliance, fraud detection and customer centric activities that correct process deviation. While these activities may not further process KPI’s, they are certainly necessary. As in everything, it is all about striking a balance. Add too many such activities and your process may not be “lean”, not having any may lead to issues in other related processes. Let me describe both these examples.

Airport Security:

Building a Process Catalog: The Ongoing Journey

Author(s):

Karen Tricomi

Consultant, The Process Geek

Recap

In the last article, I described a project to capture and catalog the major cross-functional processes within a 7-department business unit. The article provided an example of a modified Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer (SIPOC) diagram, discussed the problem statement, and described the steps we took to get buy-in from the Sr. Management of the business unit.

This time, we’ll explore the modified SIPOC in greater detail to illustrate how it is created, and how it can be used. We’ll discuss the catalog that is the inventory list of the SIPOC processes that have been diagrammed.

Organisation Structures: Do They Impact Project Success?

Author(s):

Imtiaz Abdul Kader

Head Core Banking PMO, Standard Bank Group

In my previous article “Business Politics before Projects Success: The Games Executives Play,” I propounded a view which stated that a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project’s success or failure is highly influenced by a project having multiple accountable executives driving decisions on a project. In this article I will expand on this view by focussing on the concept of Organisation Structures and their influential impact on the BPR project domain.

Many definitions of Organisation Structures exist from various sources, however for the purposes of this article I will summarise and reconstruct the definition as follows:

“Organisation Structure refers to the lines of authority that articulate the controlling of decisions taken and the distribution of type of work performed based on the core purpose and strategic intent of the organisation.”

Strategy Mapping and Business Architecture

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

At the Business Architecture Innovation Summit in Reston, VA this past March, a major challenge voiced by attendees was the difficulty they were experiencing in tying business strategy to business architecture. Because business strategy drives change, and business architecture enables change to become actionable, it follows that these two concepts should be closely aligned. But how does such alignment occur? The answer lies in ensuring that strategy mapping is adopted as an essential business architecture discipline that serves as the basis for integrating business goals, objectives and related action items into a comprehensive, business-driven perspective.

Constraining the Theory of Constraints

Author(s):

Larry Cooke

Principal, LH Cooke & Associates

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947-2011), an Israeli physicist turned business guru, established a highly esteemed reputation in business planning, through a series of three novels.

The use of novels to explain business and scientific matters was quite original for the time. The novels were “The Goal” (1984), “Theory of Constraints” (1990), and “Critical Chain” (1997).

Each explored aspects of his theories. His books were among the most controversial and thought-provoking of the closing decades of the 20^th Century. They also affected Project Management strongly, through his “Critical Chain” thinking.

Deploying Business Strategy through Business Architecture

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

At the recent Business Architecture Innovation Summit in Reston, VA, one of the main challenges cited by attendees was the difficulty of aligning their business architecture with business strategy. While strategy mapping has historically been viewed as a standalone discipline, business architecture views strategy mapping as an integral component. Making your strategy actionable requires formalizing that strategy and aligning it to business architecture components that include capability, organization, value, information and initiatives. This article discusses strategy mapping frameworks and how to align those frameworks with related business architecture components to further prioritization, budgeting, portfolio planning and deployment.

Before we discuss how strategy mapping is incorporated into business architecture, let’s review a sampling of commonly used strategy mapping frameworks.

Five Ways for the Business Analyst to Score in BPM

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

Business Analysts provide a critical role in organizations. In fact, without this role, Business Owners and Developers must work together on a software project, which can be frustrating to both sides. Indeed, Business Owners may not get what they want and Developers may spend time building functionality that was not needed. OUCH! Why is that? Because the Business Owners and Developers have not learned to communicate to their mutual benefit. Enter the Business Analyst whose role is to define the needs and recommend solutions that deliver value to the stakeholders (e.g., Business Owners, users, customers, etc.)

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) BA’s do the following