The Leonardo Blog

Have you ever tried to build a house without blueprints, or even hoped to get the costs right without any plans? There is a single master blueprint for the general contractor, and different views for the electrician, the plumber, the foundation specialist, etc. The architect works with you trying to capture your needs, dreams, big projects, intents – in short, to really understand your overall context. They suggest that you look at different ‘dream house/cottage’ reviews and bring them some examples of what best captures your vision. The idea is simple – to help you make your vision concrete and actionable with reduced construction risks, while also helping you to make optimal choices and accelerating your decision process. Process-based process architectures are essentially the same: critical business blueprints.

It's quite a challenge to keep a whole stack of process models consistent across a different set of stakeholders. You do this through conventions, and today I'll be talking to you about six steps that you can undertake to design good conventions.

Process models are used by process professionals across organisations of all sizes to document, improve or automate business processes, and to communicate in an easily understandable way with SMEs. Due to their broad appeal, process models come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colours and flow-directions. Unfortunately, this diversity becomes problematic when existing within a single organisation. The value delivered is significantly reduced by these inconsistent models. Invariably, this causes unnecessary disruption and confusion in the business as users have to interpret and discuss the meaning of process models. Modelling conventions aim to reduce the production of inconsistent models and increase speed of understanding. This article provides an introduction to what process modelling conventions are, and how they are used to create standardised process models that can be used by everyone within the organisation.

Have you thought about how process models will be used in your organization? If you have, that's great. Have you thought about the second time they'll be used, the third, or the fourth time? Here are some tips on how to ensure continuous use of your process models. There is no point in creating process models without a purpose. The point is now how do you ensure that the second and the third time that you use your process models, it's just as effective as the first time. I go back to my mantra which says, create a process model once, it's useful. Use it again, it's valuable. The secret sauce in making sure that any organization uses process models over and over again is not scientific except it's just about making sure that these process modeling activities are well embedded in existing organizational methodologies. Some of the methodologies that I'll be talking about today include change management methodology, process improvement methodology, and project management methodology.

Models created by different people in different parts of the organization with a different set of skills often create very, very different models. Now, this can be a problem because you are trying to keep models consistent. Why would you want to keep process models consistent across different areas of your organization? Well, one simple reason. You want to keep widespread use of your process models. That's what makes them valuable. And in order to get that widespread use, people in different parts of the organization need to be able to understand these process models. Take for example our language. You're able to understand me because we agreed that the English language is spoken in a certain way with certain structure, certain grammatical tense, and because of that, I'm able to communicate. Same way with process models.