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Business Analysis is a critical, underrated and scarce skill on app implementations
Increasingly any business change is tied to new systems implementation or an upgrade. So it naturally was left to the IT department; “it’s software, right” But to exploit technology, an organization needs strong business analysis skills. As companies implement multiple cloud based apps enable faster and more significant change, the new breed of business analyst must have a broader combination of skills: business, analysis and problem solving, technology implementation & project management. Those with the right blend of skills are in short supply. Those with these skills can command higher salaries or consulting day rates.
Leveraging your business analysis skills
How to Link Process and Organization Structure?
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.
Innovating your Operational Excellence Program
Inside the four walls of most companies today, you will find Operational Excellence (OE) or Process Excellence (PE) programs aimed to accelerate the improvement activities of a business. The titles of the programs may or may accurately depict the actual work, as there are no universal definitions for OE or PE. In general, OE programs improve the scalability, reduce cost, increase flexibility, improve quality or adjust the strategic focus of the value creation engine. PE programs historically focus on similar goals, but using processes as the foundational improvement construct. Many consultants and process practitioners speak of the convergence of the realms of OE and PE. This is an important change in business improvement planning. Many of us have learned that processes are very effective tools to use as the basis for planning and executing strategic and operational improvements.
Building a SIPOC Diagram
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?
4 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Automating Your Business Processes
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?
How to Work With Challenging Product Owners – Part 2
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.
How to Build BPM Improvements That Work and Stick
The 3E model below provides an approach for any company to think about how their organization can start, grow, and make process improvement durable. With this approach the company improves customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and execution excellence.
The 3E Model
EXPERIMENT – Keep It Small and Simple
What has Innovation to do with Business Process Management
Why asking this question?
Organizations face daily new opportunities and threats in our fast changing digital world. Companies have to establish a management discipline to integrate agile innovation into their business. The Discipline of Business Process Management (BPM) addresses this need. Correctly set up, it establishes an agile and focused innovation capability in an organization. The BPM-Discipline produces innovation in form of new impactful processes and organizes the way other innovations are developed and rolled out.
The Leadership Engine for the Journey to Operational Excellence
In order to initiate Operational Excellence we focus on establishing the structures, tools, methodologies and systems required. The manage program phase sustains that work by providing ongoing oversight and leadership for this initiative. In this phase the executive leadership attends to the following ongoing responsibilities: • Sets and deploys enterprise goals and strategies via core business processes. • Manages program-level plans and accountabilities. • Monitors priority process performance and related interventions. • Maintains alignment between enterprise structures, systems, and core business processes. •Leverages best practices across the enterprise. The ultimate objective is that these responsibilities gradually become integrated into the fabric of enterprise management practices. That is, they become “the way we do things around here.” We will discuss these responsibilities in greater detail in the following.
Busting Organizational Silos with Business Process Management
Today’s business is global, spanning across supply chains, project delivery chains and changing fundamental business models. It is harder and harder to get clear line of sight into and accountability for how a business is operating. In addition to the shift to a global model, businesses require a matrix to link together the conventional organizational structures of functional and divisional models. Traditional business management models are not keeping up with the need to be more adaptable to the customers and markets they serve, thus the introduction of matrix management models.
A matrix model can be extremely effective if you can resolve the inherent conflict it creates. This takes hard work and active engagement to manage. Alexis Writing’s article “Different Types of Organizational Structure”, gives a good description of the matrix challenge.
Matrix
Boundary Information Structures
1.0 Introduction
Let’s take a few minutes to explore a subject that’s at the heart of the challenge of running a business, and by extension, also at the heart of providing expert architectural services on behalf of business leadership. This discussion will focus on approach to analyzing and designing effective communications among disciplines and specialists.
OpEx – PART OF or SEPARATE FROM Business Transformation?
By its very name, Operational Excellence (OpEx) has held a traditional operations approach in most corporate visions and as a result been strongest in manufacturing operations/production sites or within department/functional operational lines of organizations.
Does the traditional operational approach create a “Separate From” business strategic linkage in corporate visions?
Historical Deployment and Engagement of OpEx
From OpEx early days as Six Sigma and Lean – the methodologies, tools and techniques were leveraged as a continuous improvement mindset with Cost Savings as King although it has evolved over the years at mature organizations to include waste elimination, improved process flow & efficiencies, enhanced capacity, and a quality/compliance driver.
The Business Architect’s Journey: Top-Three Qualities for Success
Picture this scenario: You are brimming with excitement as you start your engagement with a brand-new client – a client who had persuasively spoken to you their company’s capability-driven approach to architecture and its commitment to building a Business Architecture competency. A client who, in preliminary discussions, had emphasized their urgent need for seasoned experts (such as yourself) to guide the more junior Business Architects. The importance of personal leadership and of having the requisite fortitude to stand by your recommendations had been emphasized. (Your certainly don’t lack either of these traits). The existence of some challenges might have been mentioned. (But what reality is that where there are no challenges…?)
The Leadership Principle: Executive Impact on Agile
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.
DMN – To FEEL or Not to FEEL
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:
- Built-in types, functions and operators
- Enables a formal expression that can define every decision in a model
- Formal expressions that may be encapsulated as functions • Supports abstraction, composition, and scalability
With this capability in mind, let’s remind ourselves of the stated goals of DMN:
Lessons from the Field: The Adaptable Business Architect
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
4 Critical Factors in Digital Transformation Success
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.
Disguising Analysis: Making the Medicine Go Down
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.
Staying Out of the Weeds with BPM Process Modeling
Do you experience these challenges in trying to create a current state process model?
- The team gets mired in process problem details
- People have ideas for improvements but you are not really ready for solutions yet
- Some groups do the process one way and others do it a different way.
- Some people think it’s a big problem but you don’t know for sure.
Here are two techniques that will really help you out and make life much easier.
- Start with a single process instance
- Keep the I-4 Lists as you document
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…
Business Capability Redefined According to SMACT
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.
