The Leonardo Blog

Have you ever wondered why process models in your organisations are not that useful? Are your process models not being used by that many people? You’re not alone. Today I am going to be talking about 10 steps you can undertake so you can get your modeling practice into shape. There are a total of 10 things you can do in your modeling practice that will shape it all up and put you back on the path for success. We call this Process Modeling Excellence and in Leonardo Consulting, we have meticulously developed this foundation on so much of experience that we’ve had and proven methodologies we’ve established.

The business of benefits We can all agree that benefits are important for a successful Business Process Management (BPM) journey – this is a very obvious statement – so why, then, do we often fall into the trap of neglecting benefits definition at the conceptual stage of a project? This article will discuss why we should measure and manage benefits.

We need Balanced Process Management. The formal development of my own process view was greatly shaped by the first four books that I read on the topic: Reengineering the Corporation (Michael Hammer & James Champy), Business Process Management is a Team Sport (Andrew Spanyi), Workflow Modelling (Alec Sharp & Patrick McDermott), and The Principles of Scientific Management (Frederick Taylor). An eclectic set that was the result of fairly random circumstances. I’ve read many more since but I’m glad I started with those four because they left me with a very broad process view that can be summarized, as I have noted previously as follows: Business processes are the conduits through which organizations deliver value to external customers, themselves, and other stakeholders. There is no other way to deliver such value. Functional areas alone are not able to deliver such value. It also follows, therefore, that every organization executes its strategic intent via its business processes. The profound sequence from strategy to execution is: Organizations exist to deliver value to customers and other stakeholders. That’s strategy. They do this via a series of coordinated activities across a number of functional elements of the organization. That’s a process. It makes sense to optimize these processes so that they satisfy the requirements of customers and other stakeholders. That’s process improvement. Taking a coordinated view of the performance of the processes by which an organization delivers value optimizes performance. That’s process management. Process management allows organizations to focus on processes that create the market differentiation described by the strategy. That’s execution. For me, being process-centric is not just about modeling, it’s not about being inside or outside, it’s not about IT. BPM is a holistic management philosophy that seeks to deliver appropriate products/services to customers in a way that is sustainably beneficial to all involved. All processes exist in a complex ecosystem. Being process centric means achieving the equilibrium to optimize value for all stakeholders. We need balance in both rhetoric and actions. I discuss below some of the more important “points of balance.” We must think carefully about, and act on, the practical realities of these balance points if we are to optimize the delivery of value to all stakeholders. This is Balanced Process Management.

The only purpose of BPM is to improve business process performance.

A Process By Any Other Name.... “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene I What’s in a name? Not so much? What is important is what we mean and understand by the thing that is named. Shared understanding is everything; without understanding, there is no effective communication. If we begin with unknown differences in the way we visualize and name basic concepts, there is no way we can converge on common understandings and develop sophisticated models of how the world works. Without understanding, we can’t even have rational conversations about our different views. While the nature of an object is more important than what we call it, language can be a powerful force for understanding, as well as for misunderstanding. When it comes to gaining a shared understanding in BPM and related areas, we are too often ‘separated by a common language’. In the general discourse around business processes and their modeling, management, and improvement, we have a problem with the conflicted use of process language. When we start conversations about business process theory and practice with fundamental differences in the conceptualization of the idea of ‘process’, it’s not going to end well. The problem is that we can have very different ideas about what a process is, and these differences can exist in every language. It’s much more fundamental than us saying inkqubo, فرآيند, processus, quy trình, proceso, proces, inshila, próiseas, اجراء عمل, prozess, mchakato, prosess, processo, inqubo, prosessi, प्रक्रिया, or process.