Customer focus is a critical element in lean thinking. Do you set the pace of production to the customer demand rate (the Takt time)? Is the Voice of the Customer (VOC) used in product and service design? The answer is always an emphatic “Yes”. The customer is always critical to improvement activities.
Many companies are considering a Business Architecture (BA) initiative as part of their corporate strategy. While researching and analyzing the BA, they are rediscovering Michael Porter’s value chain. Many find this reawakening quite logical, while some may get confused between the terms; value chains and value streams. This article will provide an explanation and synthesis of these remarkable and enlightening concepts. First, I will clarify and define the basic terms so that I can explain their architectural relationships.
The Guidance and Outreach Office of the Business Rules and Requirements Management Division of the Internal Revenue Service contributed to and reviewed this article.
This is the second in a series of eight articles that should see the light of day on both BPMInstitute.org and SOAInstitute.org during 2009. It looks to the author like the perfect opportunity to build a profound methodological case for two fundamental parts of the modern Enterprise Development Methodology (EDM): Enterprise Architecture & Processes. The first such article, making the basic case for EDM, was just recently published on SOAInstitute.org1 .
You would think that for many SOA evangelists and practitioners the current challenging business climate would be the perfect opportunity to walk the walk on the main promise of SOA – business agility. Agility is defined as: “Nimbleness in the face of unexpected obstacles”. Well, we certainly have a whole bunch of those at the moment.
Although the vendors are pushing this value proposition heavily at the moment, the take-up is still hampered by a lack of real business success stories. And, of course, lack of budget.
You’ve just been asked by your boss to develop and implement a productivity program to reduce waste and improve quality. Several of the executives are retrenching into a defensive posture: preserve cash, freeze discretionary spending, cut operating budgets X% across the board, accelerate early retirements, layoffs, and sell off non-core assets. Others are advocating more investment in R&D, rolling out new products / services, and even rethinking the business model. Your company’s livelihood is at stake. The expectations for you personally are even higher.
After 3 decades of Total Quality Management, Process Reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma and now Business Process Management, it is mind boggling to observe that only a few companies have an excellent process Governance in place and consistently manage their processes.
It is certainly valid to ask ourselves why we are not doing better and what can we do to remediate to the situation. The literature from the ABPMP BPM CBOKTM to the different Gartner reports and our understanding of process ownership and governance has certainly improved tremendously over the last 5 years and yet we still count only a few companies that manage by process year after year.
After pondering the question for a while here are a few thoughts on the question and some suggestions on how to approach Governance and Ownership in a way that can lead to better results and a sustainable process culture.
There are few business professionals today who do not know what Business Process Management is or do not have, at least a general idea of what it’s about. The number of articles and papers being written about BPM has increased at a rapid pace over the past five years to the point one cannot open a business magazine or newsletter without some reference to the tools and technologies that are available to make your organization truly process-centric.
Much of the discussion about collaborative methodologies like Lean, Agile and Design Build has, in the past been about creating continuous flow of value, team dynamics, technical practices and even the project management techniques required to get effective and acceptable products delivered and/or deployed. What teams in all environments quickly find out, however, is they are dependent on other organizational dynamics outside their purview, like securing customer involvement, issue escalation, resource allocation, even facility management becomes important.
BPMN 2.0 is almost here. If all goes as planned, it will be voted on by OMG members in June. Assuming it passes, that doesn’t mean BPMN 2.0 is officially adopted and available in commercial tools, just that it has entered the “finalization” phase when tool vendors can start building it in. Even though the diagram notation of BPMN 2.0 appears little changed from previous versions, it represents a big step forward.
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.
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