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The Role of Operations in Strategy
I recently enjoyed an article by Kevin Laczkowski and colleagues at McKinsey titled: Seeing your way to better strategy. It argued for four lenses to help you “see your way” forward – Financial, Market, Competitor and Operating Model. The thought behind these lenses is that, by doing some focused thinking around each lens, you will develop better strategy.
Robotic Process Automation within your Organization
Whether you are into BPM on a full-time basis or a general technologist, it is hard to not be seriously considering RPA or RDA (Robotic Desktop Automation) in the mix of any business solution you are working on lately. For Pegasystems specialist, you may have been introduced to RPA by their fairly recent acquisition of OpenSpan (now Pega Robotics). Pegasystems is rapidly assimilating the RPA into their BPM platform (PRPC 7.4). Although, integration with BPM is a good feature, in the industry RPA is platform agnostic and considered a platform in and of itself.
I have seen some organizations establish entire reporting units dedicated to RPA, even with a well-established BPM practice already in place. In discussions with technology leads, some seem to have a hard time enunciating how RPA fits into the overall architecture, this will be mitigated once there are enough RPA implementations and associated case studies disseminated.
Stop Trying to Be Agile: Agile is a process, not a goal
Agile has become an industry buzzword, a marketing term that organizations use to try to show that they are responsive to their clients and adaptive to industry changes. In fact, the perception of being an Agile organization has such strong market value that claiming to be Agile often becomes the objective unto itself. If the goal of your organization is to say that you are Agile, then you may be missing the point.
Trying to be an Agile organization is like trying to be a happy person. You do not achieve Agility (or happiness) by making it your primary objective; you achieve it by making constructive changes and taking positive actions that get you there.
The Experience-Driven Business Architect: Lessons from the Field
Some design is just bad. Doors that you can’t tell if they push or pull to open, microwave oven buttons, the Ford Pinto, the list goes on and on. Bad design is easy to spot and often easy to fix, but some design is really good and still fails…why??? Many companies have learned that that having the best products isn’t enough; today it is all about the end-to-end experience. Delivering exceptional experiences should become the mantra of business architects everywhere and the best way to do this is to partner with a group already skilled at doing this: User Experience (UX) designers. In this installment of Lessons from the Field, I would like to demonstrate how business architects, working closely with UX designers, can help deliver exceptional experiences.
Exceptional Experiences
So, what makes an experience exceptional? This of course varies from person to person, but here are some common examples:
Accelerate Digital Transformation with Process Management
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Approaching Microservices with Decisions and Standards
The mortgage industry – like most others looking to FinTech – have been exploring a variety of emerging technologies. All the usual suspects are included: artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation, blockchain, etc. Surprisingly, the exploration of APIs and microservices has been at the top of the list for many. Coming from a technical background I was somewhat surprised to hear these brought up. However, it became increasingly clear how important this concept truly is to the industry.
Comparing Agile with Cross-Functional Project Teams
For some time now, since a conference I ran in July on Agile and New Forms of Organization, I have been trying to get clear in my mind what the difference is between an “agile team” and a “cross-functional team”. Also, I recently participated in a cross-functional team looking at ways to improve the performance of corporate functions.
Cross-functional teams have been a feature of organisation since the 1960s, when Boeing first developed a new aeroplane using a multi-functional approach. This successful experience was documented by Jay Galbraith, who called it a “matrix structure”. It was the first documented use of matrix organisation ideas: in Boeing’s case a function/project matrix. At various points in time since then, cross-functional teams have been much written about and much used.
So what is new/different about Agile compared to cross-functional teams? Here is my list
Agile Processes and How They Work in Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about producing quality content and making it reach your target audience. It’s a sort of strategically planned content development which is supposed to lead to profitable actions by the customers. The traditional “heads-down” content production is how things were done before Agile. Now, Agile is bringing in some serious changes.
When we’re talking about Agile marketing, we’re talking about innovation. It represents a non-traditional approach to work organization and structure, which makes room for positive changes and better workflow. In order for you to understand how going Agile works in content marketing, we’ve prepared useful facts and explanations. Let’s take a look.
The Development of Agile
Using Business Architecture to Design Future Industries
Have you heard the news? Space has become Big Business. Currently evaluated at around $350 billion, studies done by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch predict that the global space economy could grow to $1 trillion or more in the 2040s.
The signs that space has gone mainstream are in plain sight. Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson are riding around New York City in a Mars rover… Iridium Communications is planning to launch its final Iridium NEXT satellite using a flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster… Elon Musk’s rocket company is sending a Japanese billionaire and eight artists around the moon… The news making headlines in the social media are only the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline, the space industry (appropriately called “New Space” – to distinguish it from the 20thcentury “old space”, which was mostly the domain of governments) is a place teeming with exuberance and ideas.
Changing the Organizational Leadership DNA to Support a Digital Business
“You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business” – Zig Ziglar
Every day, I get up inspired and passionate about the opportunities in front of our company, to “Improve the health and well-being of our customers and communities”. This is our rallying call, our lifeblood, and our purpose that fuels our passion. This is the WHAT we are here to do, as we serve our State, as a Health Insurer with a mission and vision of service.
Being clear in the WHAT, with a strong mission, vision and strategy, is an important foundation. Equally important is the HOW we are going to get there. I have the privilege of leading the teams that serve as the Enterprise Business Strategy Activation arm and several change initiatives that are shifting how we think about the business.
Are Your Processes Hi-DEF?
Leading an organization requires managers to periodically take a step back and assess the organization’s operations to truly see the cards they have in their hand. An awareness of the current situation gives managers that critical understanding of their strengths and their deficiencies – necessities when plotting a future course of action. Without such knowledge, any strategy or plan floats without connection to reality and this is a surefire way to ensure confusion and chaos reign in the employee ranks.
Gemba Walks – A Foundational Methodology in Enterprise Excellence Deployment
As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the methodologies & tools of Operational Excellence be integrated into Business Strategy?
Automating Daily Tasks With Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Join Gregg Rock, Clay Richardson and Cornelius Pone as they provide you an overview of where and when you can implement Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as well as demonstrate an actual bot automating an arduous task.
RPA is something you should consider if you are wanting to reduce risk, redundancy and errors and increase productivity and compliance by automating daily tasks such as the following:
- Extract and enter form data
- Log into multiple systems
- Download reports
- Change passwords
What is RPA
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the application of technology that automates workflows of administrative tasks and processes, leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to complete and manage more complex work and tasks.
Find out how to build your own bots at the end of the webcast.
Business Architecture – A New Depiction
This paper discusses a new depiction of Business Architecture within Enterprise Architecture to bring clarity on how Business Architecture relates to other Architecture domains & to Business Planning.
The Future-Proofing Business Architect: Lessons from the Field
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” – Winston Churchill
The Value Creation System
“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”(Peter Drucker)
This article proposes a conceptual framework for describing business organizations as complex systems, much like live organisms, whose parts function in an orchestrated manner for the sole purpose of creating customer value.
The impetus behind it was the growing realization that while most business publications focus on the tactical aspects of running a business (the “how” of the business), few tackle head-on are the foundational principles of strong business models (the “why” of a business).
Choosing the Right Methodologies, Tools and Techniques (as appropriate) in Enterprise Excellence Deployment
As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the tools of Operational Excellence be integrated into Business Strategy?
Maximizing the Value of Your Product Backlog (Part Two)
The Product Backlog is the heart of defining any Agile solution. The requirements that are identified in the Product Backlog drive the priorities that the Agile development team works on, they establish the scope of the delivered solution, and they ultimately determine the business value that the organization will receive from their Agile investment.
Deploying Metrics in an Operational Excellence Initiative
Implementing operational excellence so that the organization benefits is an important question that needs close examination. An operational excellence initiative requires many elements. The model requires the implementation of:
1. Program—What are you deploying and how will you manage it?
2. Leadership—How will leadership lead the program?
3. Processes—What will you be improving?
4. Measurements—How will you know when you are successful?
5. Projects—How will improvement work be parsed into actionable and manageable units?
6. People—After these steps have been thoroughly planned and evaluated, what you have learned will be the foundation for:
7. Strategy—How will you deploy the initiative?
Going digital or going bananas
What is clear that every company, no matter what industry needs to “go digital” to reduce costs and improve customer experience. For some industries, it is revolution rather than evolution. “Digital” is more than just driving efficiencies, it is reevaluating business models. As whilst digital can improve efficiencies it is eroding margins at a faster rate.
Nature is a great teacher. Think about the structure of plants and shells and the Fibonacci sequence. Or the strength of the honeycomb structure. These are math and engineering. But a bunch of bananas can teach us about going digital and business change. Seriously?
A bunch of bananas
