Five approaches (and maybe six) to process design

As a BPM-specialist, one can encounter different situations for improving processes. These situations will require you to choose wisely from your BPM-toolbox, depending on various aspects such as client strategy, capabilities, trust and risk-appetite. One aspect is the approach you choose to improve a process. In my process improvement projects, I have encountered five different approaches (as shown in the diagram):

Let's dive in:

1. Common sense - incremental
This improvement approach is used quite frequently: gather process participants, analyse the current process and pain points (from outside in, and inside out) and come up with improvement ideas. Pick the ones that deliver most value, in regards to the investment of implementation, and implement. Iterate.
Key characteristics: it starts with was is, and with the people involved, and relatively small steps are taken.

2. Improvement practice based - incremental
In this approach, a specific improvement practice is selected. Typical examples include Lean, Six Sigma and ToC. Depending on scope and adoption of the improvement practice, various techniques are used on a certain process (such as Value Added Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Leveling, Kanban, Bottleneck identification, etc). Key characteristics: it starts with what is, with the people involved (trained or guide by a improvement practice specialist), and relatively small steps are taken.

3. Best Practices / Reference model based - blueprint
This approach is often used, if, besides improvement goals, there are also harmonization goals (multiple locations running comparable processes). The organisation picks a certain reference process and replaces the current process with the reference process (often supported by specific IT solutions, such as ERP solutions). Examples of reference process models include eTom, SCOR, VSM, Scrum, ITIL, the dutch municipality GEMMA processes and SAP's reference processes for various industries and process domains.
Key characteristics: it starts with the to be, more top-down, often less influence of the process participants involved, a relatively large step is taken (although organizations can pilot a process in one location first).

4. Innovation driven (new business concept or IT) - blueprint

In this approach a new innovative concept has been adopted. This could be a new business concept (self-organizing teams, case management role, self-service supermarkets, mass customization), a specific technology (cloud, internet of things, BPM/Case Management solutions, digital documents/ECM, eCommerce, mobile, social) or a mix. Typically, as a team you would asses a certain set of processes, and come up with new designs, by asking what the innovation(s) could do for the processes and the involved stakeholders. 

Key characteristics: it starts with innovation,specialists assess and come up with the new to be process(es) blueprint, with top support, and implement.  Business cases may play a large role, if the innovation requires extensive investments.

5. Architectural driven Re-engineering - top down
In this approach, a thorough analysis takes place, from a new fresh perspective. All key questions around a business area is re-addressed, often in combination with a renewed strategic positioning. What is our strategy, who are our customers, what value do we want to provide, what capabilities does this require, what functions are needed, what competences, leading down to the to-be processes.
Key characteristics: is starts with the question why what, and through strategy, principles, and implementation decisions leads top-down to a process design, that is implemented.

So, here are 5 tools for your toolbox. Are there better or weaker approaches? No, it depends on the client situation and requirements. Can you manage all of these? That's a tough question. In my 20 years of process work, I think one can cover these approaches fairly well, but it takes time, effort and opportunity.

I actually think there is a sixth approach. It's called Design Thinking applied to process design. I am still investigating this approach. More to follow!

In addition, it's good to know that as part of the approach, as a BPM-specialist you will always need to figure out the type of role you need to take. This could vary from:
- Specialist/Key designer - you bring in the knowledge on improvement and design practices + the know-how on the specific process and possible improvements
- Facilitator, you help key process participants and stakeholder to discover the to-be process
Of course, typically elements of both roles can be needed. I most like the situations were clients want to learn the stuff themselves (as it's their process, their asset!), and I shift over the time from specialist to facilitator / trainer.

Last, it's also important to understand the change dynamics in the client organization. Is there a pragmatic go-try it and improve culture (promoting incremental - developmental approaches), or a more blueprint driven, think and align before trying (which asks more for a blueprint - approach)

Evolution in business-application alignment

In the 20 years that I have been working in IT, I have seen a shift in the way we try to align business needs and applications. The following diagram visualizes this shift and gives a prediction on what's trending. Note that I see various organizations still working in one of the earlier steps. 

At level 1,  we see organizations that struggle with issues (or have new objectives), that require changes in the application-landscape. At level 1, these issues are directly translated in solutions. Typical situations: business managers with enough power to order direct implementation specific solutions linked to these issues and needs: 'We want system XYZ installed' or 'Please give us 3 new tables in Oracle DB XYZ, so that we can store data XYZ'.  In these situations alignment risks are quite high: IT gives the solution, but this solution might likely not solve the business issues (surprise). (Hence the difference between the purple triangle - 'what we wanted', versus the blue circle 'what we got')

At level 2,  we see the first decoupling, where IT-requirements are used. As business analysts, we try to understand the issues, their cause and effect, and come up with traceable implementation independent requirements (functional, non-functional), that than can lead to application design and development.
Working with requirements also supports creating clear priorities. However, depending on the requirement process and content, multiple translations might be required, leading to possible information loss and assumptions. IT-requirements can also result in analysis-paralysis, and Big Design Up Front.

At level 3, we choose a process analysis focus. We try to understand the issues and needs, from a end-to-end process perspective, and looking from various angles: customer, employee, management giving better context and cause & effect analysis of the issues. Various business and process requirements are defined, leading to various process designs, and possible process - application support scenario's and requirements.
I would call this the BPM-approach. Clear process governance / ownership can support this step, but not all organizations are at this process maturity level. I find that risks of information loss and assumptions is relatively small - business people and IT people can understand the process design and the IT-requirements, through a better contextual perspective,

At level 4, we see organizations adopting agile model driven technology (BPMS, BRMS, MDA). The big advantage is typically that in very short time frames, applications can be created, evaluated and adapted : what you see is what you get. However, the optimal use of this technology, does require this level of alignment and sufficient process maturity. Otherwise, expensive technology will end up being used in level 1 or 2.

Level 5 is something new for me, and I am slowing seeing this level appear in some organizations (but still in infant mode, typically). This level is based on Human Centered Design, where customer experience, user experience and employee experience are put centrally. This is still about starting with business issues, but then focusing on human behavior (why are this issues occurring), to what experience do these issues lead, and then trying to find alternatives, test them and iterative refine them, until involved people report sufficiently improved experience and show behavior more in line with business expectations (but these expectations may have shifted, based on new insights during these iterations). As human behavior is difficult to predict, agile research is needed, based on various Design Thinking approaches. It leads to applications that engage.

Where are you in your organization? And perhaps the answer is: at various levels, depending on the business area and type of application. Here Capgemini's Application Layers come into focus, see http://www.capgemini.com/blog/cto-blog/2013/11/technovision-2014-from-train-to-scooter-0
But perhaps we all end up in 5 and 6. And what's 6? What do you think?

Collaboration models for business (process) analysis en design

When doing business analysis and process/solution design, I have encountered various situations with clients. Each of these situations required me and my team to come up with smart ways to come up with a desired future view, with the right consensus from the key stakeholders of the client. 

Some of these ways failed terribly. Some succeeded. Which, of course, triggered me to try to understand what may have caused this. My preliminary analysis has brought many points, and I want to cover one of these in this blog-item: how to pick the right analysis & design approach for the given stakeholder situation.

Recently I was interviewed, and the interviewer asked me when I would choose what type of analysis & design approach. We came up with the following model:  

Two axis (how I love these models :-)):

1. Stakeholder availability
This one is a clear one, and often an issue for process or solution design teams. In many situations, the time we want from our stakeholders is more than they can or are willing to give us, due to other priorities.

For instance, in a previous project, the department we were working for, was also struggling with a reorganization, a management change and various changing legislation, that all needed attention. The result: we had limited access to key subject matter experts. Trying to schedule long workshops would not have worked.

2. Stakeholder ability to envision what they want and to formulate it
This one is more tricky. It has to do with the complex mix of people involved in your project. How much knowledge do they have of the current situation? How open are they to innovation? How much knowledge do they have of their pain points? How much capability to see other ways/possible improvements?

For instance, in a previous project, a bank wanted to adopt a document management systeem, with scanning software, to digitally route documents and create more complete customer views. Their knowledge and experience in document management, and in these IT-changes was very limited. Asking them what they wanted would not have given valuable answers. Even in terms of requirements, they needed a lot of work.

My belief is that in the combination of these two variables, one can find four main approaches for analysis and design of a desired future.

A. High ability, High availability: co-creation
A dream for many designers. Working with people that know what they want, and might even know how they want it, and enough time to dive into details. For me, the approach in this situation is co-creation, in which the competences of the stakeholders combined with the A&D-team are leveraged to come up with the desired future. I usually work with groups and iterations, using facilitated sessions and various work-forms.
In some cases, the A&D-team could even revert back to a pure facilitation-position, but many times still will need to bring in feedback around feasibility.
In my days of BPR/Rapid Application Development, we often could run 2 - 3 week workshop weeks, where we had a full team of stakeholders. Great times, but I see less and less of this, unfortunately.

 B. High ability, Low availability: rapid elicitation and design validations
This situation I encountered at a Investment department of an insurance company. These people were security traders, were earning lots of money per hour for the company, and could hardly be missed. They fortunately had a very sharp eye on the issues and required changes in processes and IT-systems.
In this model I choose for one-on-one short interviews and quick validation sessions using very concrete results (prototypes).

C. Low ability, High Availability: Empowerment and stepwise 'Co-invention'
This is a situation I am currently in with a client. We are getting time from a number of people, with sufficient knowledge of the current situation, some knowledge of pain points, but also a lack of understanding of possibilities. And even: in same cases they have gotten used to certain pain points and take them for granted.
Their ability to envision and formulate a desired future is limited (but growing!)
The key point is: people can, and often like to grow. Another key point: all people can contribute value. It is easy to fall in the consultant arrogance-trap 'They don't know, so we will tell them what they want'.  This often fails. And if it succeeds, certain gems that the stakeholders could have brought, are lost.
The approach we have chosen in this situation: empower these people with knowledge (solution concepts, technology, requirements formulation, etc.). And work with them, to define, in steps, the desired future, firmly from their perspective and starting points. Make them discover parts of it, by feeding them with concrete possibilities, and then translate back to requirements. In our situation this approach has given many new insights, that were also unknown to us!

D: Low ability, low availability: Trust based best practice injection
So you are given a client, with no time, a burning need, but no real capacity to define the desired future (only to a certain high level extend). Ouch. In this case, the key factors are trust and the availability of certain best practices, proven to work in the client's context. The approach is to adopt a certain best practice framework, and simply go do it. Implement, perhaps in pilot forms, and then learn, adapt, and extend.

A third factor: the domain/technology knowledge of your team
A factor that also influences these choices is the knowledge and experience in your analysis&design team.
If the knowledge in your team is high, all approaches above will work.
Is the knowledge in your team low, then....
- Option A is only possible, if the client accepts your team as purely facilitating (and your team learns very quickly)
- Option B will become demanding. Challenge: how to get the respect of these visionary professionals?
- Option C will become time-consuming, as both the client and your team will need to learn. Challenge: do you have the time, and does your client have the money and willingness?
- Option D will become very risky, don't go there.

 My conclusion: pick the right approach for the right condition! And tell me what you think....

No Process (cross-post from Capgemini CTO Blog)

On Capgemini's CTO Blog, I posted this blog-item on 'No Process', as part of Capgemini's TechnoVision 2014.

Process On The Fly #3 - No Process

Building on the next generation of Business Process Management, Business Rules, Event Processing and Case Management platforms, new flavors of process can be modeled, executed, monitored and managed. Guided by context-sensitive and analytics-driven support many fixed, inflexible processes can be replaced by concurrently executed activities that optimize the time of human resources and their knowledge by having them ‘swarm’ around cases and results that need to be produced, never following a predefined path. So in the end, the ultimate Process might be No Process at all.For quite some time, process models, procedures and process-based work instructions have been used to attempt to influence the behavior of employees, in the hope that this creates efficient, customer-friendly and compliant processes. And, as part of IT innovations, Business Process Management technology has been used to create process-aware systems, in the form of workflow systems, that coordinate the execution of processes using these process models.

Although these process models have their power, they have two serious problems.

First problem: As an instrument for influencing behavior, process models are not very motivating. Quite the opposite. Most people prefer to leave process models in dusty binders as long as possible. And if they use them, often hesitantly to try to find how to deal with a situation, they frequently get lost (as these models are often incomplete, sometimes quite abstract, and not organized towards the contextual situation-specific approach).

Second problem: Process models are rigid. When a customer request is delivered following the process model, the model is usually deaf and blind for unexpected events, new insights and needs for other activities or paths. Thankfully, most of the time, employees are smart enough to work around the process when needed, but unfortunately we all encounter enough employees who are not.

You might compare the use of these process models to driving towards a certain location using a prescribed route that you brought along on paper. You enter a large traffic jam, but don’t know an alternative. You pass a beautiful forest, but don’t want to leave the route as you are scared to get lost. You realize you want to buy some food on the way, but again are afraid to detour. The process model limits your freedom. And then the inevitable happens: An exit has been blocked due to roadwork. The paper process model is suddenly useless.

Of course, one can attempt to create the all-encompassing model, with all possible events, rules, activities and routes. But this path won’t work. First, the process model will explode in complexity. Second, some situations simply cannot be fully prepared at ‘design time.’ Think of a complex diagnosis and treatment in a hospital – the possible symptoms, causes, possible treatment interventions and patient reaction to treatment. You just won’t know upfront; the process path will emerge, patient by patient.

In modern car driving, the technology (not perfect, but quickly maturing) to better deal with these ‘process model aspects’ is of course the navigation system. Modern navigation systems offer the strength of a process model (direction: what’s the next move to get from A to B), without the limitations:

- Context driven: The system knows where you are, and gives you only the relevant information.

- Responsive: The system offer insights (traffic jams, road blocks) and suggest other routes.

- Goal driven but flexible: The system doesn’t impose the route – if a driver decides to take another direction, it simply adapts and determines a new route to B.

- Support compliance: These systems are capable of advising against certain actions (for instance, driving wrongly into a one-way street) using signals and smart routing suggestions.

Does the driver feel he or she is part of a process? No, not really. That’s why we call the trend that we see in these solutions ‘No process’!

These ‘No Process’ solutions are proving their value in business as well. In a business context, they can be seen as flexible case management systems that have swarms of possible activities floating around customer cases. Based on technology for rules and events, for a specific customer case, the system can suggest possible ‘next best actions.’ This supports the employees to handle (navigate) the situations they encounter. In a way these solutions offer ‘just enough process,’ helping employees to pick the best (goal-driven) activity, but allowing the employee to choose another activity or path to deliver the best value.

No process - The perfect solution for today's knowledge worker times. Have a nice trip to your destination – happy customers and engaged employees!

Patterns of coordination (part I)

In my last blog item, I described a number of typical work patterns, that people usually pick when faced with the need to work together, in some type of (process) way. The main patterns that I will work in this blog item are:
- Procedure delivery: a pre-defined procedure can be established, which needs to be executed. The procedure might contain various decisions and paths, but all are known beforehand.
- Dynamic adaptive delivery: a set of typical activities (most standard) are known, but the path is emergent (due to unforeseen events, needs or insights). Many possible paths exist, too many to capture effectively in a procedure.

In this article, I will describe a number of typical coordination mechanisms that people pick how to coordinate the execution of the process, e.g. how are people triggered to get work done, and relate them back to the work patterns.

Pattern 1: 'Relay race' (Dutch: estafette)

In the coordination pattern 'Relay race', there is someone that starts the process, following a certain trigger (an incoming e-mail, order form, etc). The person executes a number of tasks, and then hands over the execution to a next person, and so on. 

This patterns works great for:

- Procedural delivery(see my previous blog-item)

Here, each person can find out the next in line, using the procedural agreements (process model / workinstructions)

- Dynamic delivery

Here, each person can decide, based on case specifics to whom he or she will hand over to. 

Advantages of this pattern: 

- There is always clear ownership 

Disadvantages of this pattern: 

- All activity usually takes place serially (where some parallel activities could speed up through put time)

- It takes time to find out 'where' a case is and what the status is

Pattern 2: 'Cloverleaf' (Dutch: klaverblad)

In the Cloverlead pattern, there is someone centrally coordinating the execution of the process. This coordinator or case manager will step by step perform certain tasks, then give an assignment to someone, wait, perform some tasks, and then again assign someone a certain activity, until the coordinator decides the work is done.

This pattern can be used for procedural delivery, but this pattern is expensive, as the procedure is known but in every step, the coordinator needs to take action (e.g. many hand-overs)

The pattern is great for dynamic delivery, as the coordinator can assess the state of the case, and dynamically decide who should do what next to move forward in the case.

Advantages of this pattern: 

- There is always clear ownership

- The coordinator knows what the status is 

Disadvantages of this pattern: 

- All activity usually takes place serially (where some parallel activities could speed up through put time)

Pattern 3: 'Collaborative Planning & Monitoring'
In this pattern, a group of people, often multidisciplinary assesses a certain case, and together come to an agreed activity plan. The people will each perform their activities, and will update each other on the status and results.

This pattern can be used for procedure delivery, but again is expensive, as the procedure is known.
The pattern is great for dynamic execution, if the knowledge required to assess the situation and to decide on actions is advanced, and requires more people.

Advantages of this pattern: 

- The team knows what the status is

- Progress is monitored and social controls can be used to adhere to rules and agreements

Disadvantages of this pattern: 

- It requires quite some time of various people (cost, productivity) for the planning, status reporting and monitoring

- Disagreements might cause delays

- Unforeseen events require the response of the group, but people might not be (timely) available, causing delays or risks

In a next article I will cover:
Pattern 4: 'Predefined Workflow Driven Orchestrator'

Pattern 5: 'Situation Specific Configurable  Orchestrator'

Pattern 6: 'Flexible Next Best Action Advisor'
Pattern 7: 'Garbage can'

Patterns of work and their do's and don'ts

Based on an earlier blog-entry, I defined 4 typical patterns of work. In this article, I repeat these patterns of work, as I want to use them to position (in a next article) when discussing various coordination patterns in processes.

These patterns of work are derived from my observations on how people tend to organize the execution processes that have different characteristics.

Direct Execution

Aspect	Work pattern
Number of employees involved in specific execution	One single employee
Process	No process (in terms of coordinating activities among multiple employees, but a single direct set of tasks, performed in coordination with the customer by one employee at one time one place (otopop)
Activities	One standardized activity (which will be composed of various standardized tasks, done by one person directly)
Responsibility	Clear (based on the job title and responsibilities of this one person, or persons with the same role)
Typical situations	Call center - answering a question Buying item in a store
Do's and don'ts	Do: Provide all data and usable systems the employee needs, and make sure these systems are fast enough. Make sure they have a 360 view on the customer. Don't: Put them in situations where they can not meet customer expectations

This work pattern is typically used in service delivery where:
- The service is simple (but might be knowledge intensive)
- The service can be done by one person
- Interaction with the customer can be low to high

Procedural Delivery

Aspect	Work pattern
Number of employees involved in specific execution	More than 1.  People each perform certain activities (as part of their role). A limited number of roles.
Process	A clear, predefined, process (based on a clear procedure, that defines trigger, activities, roles, decision points with their business rules, and all possible paths).
Activities	Multiple standardized activities.
Responsibility	Clear, using roles.
Typical situations	Processing of incoming invoices, expense claims Simple insurance claims Opening a bank account, closing a commodity based insurance contract Standardized service delivery (McDonalds, simple Public services) Simple IT-incidents and changes
Do's and don'ts	Do: Create workflow driven solutions, that provide the right contextual information when an employee performs an activity. Use business rules technology to support routing and decision making. Create process visibility Don't: Force people to go and try to find the status of a certain customer request or force them to manually collect and report performance data

This work pattern is typically used in service delivery where:
- The service requires people with different skills
- The service can be laid out as a series of predictable steps
- The service is standardized
- Interaction with the customer is low to moderate

Dynamic Adaptive Delivery

Aspect	Work pattern
Number of employees involved in specific execution	More than 1. Various people with various roles may be involved dynamically.
Process	An emergent process, as the path at run-time is not clear. Based on inputs, data, new insights and events, new activities might be required, assigned to currently involved employees or other employees, leading to new information, leading to new activities, etc.
Activities	Multiple standardized activities, and possibly some ad-hoc activities.
Responsibility	Usually clear, using roles. However, sometimes people need to handle ad-hoc activities that may not be part of their role & typical responsibilities.
Typical situations	Medical diagnosis and treatment Invoice disputes Complex claims processing Coordinating more complex IT-problems Legal trial Handling complex life events of customers (death of partner of customer) Case management of unemployed citizens
Do's and don'ts	Do: provide an information rich, case based environment, in which case managers can easily plan activities, supported by patterns and next best action suggestions driven by events, data and rules. Think navigator. Provide easy access to the case status, history and information for all participants. Don't: lock people in with rigid workflows, as they will be forced to 'tweak' the system or place valuable information and work-activities outside of the system

This work pattern is typically used in service delivery where:
- The service requires people with different skills
- The service can not be laid out as a set of predictable steps, but emerges
- The expected value of the service is (fairly) standardized
- Interaction with the customer is typically high
- During the service process, expected and unexpected events and insights might require unanticipated activities (and support of certain people/roles)

Collaborative Coordination

Aspect	Work pattern
Number of employees involved in specific execution	Many
Process	A very dynamic and emergent process, that might (or not) converge to a certain desired outcome, that might not be fully know yet
Activities	Many ad-hoc activities, very limited are standardized
Responsibility	Usually unclear, but in some cases supported by roles. People may shift in or out the process, as a result of new insights. A clear owner of a specific execution might lack (when multiple organizations need to collaborate) or might shift due to evolving circumstances.
Typical situations	- Crisis management - Creating a strategic plan - Complex negotiations - Severe and urgent IT-problem
Do's and don'ts	Do: create clear objectives (and let these evolve over time, and communicate them often), define clear roles and mandates, and let people self-organize where possible. Make sure all information (including decisions) is available in real-time for everyone. Don't: overstructure the process

This work pattern is typically used in service delivery where:
- The service requires many people with different skills but also different mandates (for instance partner-organizations)
- A lot of collaboration is needed to converge to a certain result
- The service or expected outcome is not standardized and not clear at the beginning
- Many new insights, events or partner policy / strategy changes can be expected

The 4+2 model for understanding and changing processes

When you work in the area of process-analysis and improvement, the beginning of process analysis can be complex. There is a lot of aspects one wants to understand. And there is a risk either to miss important aspects, or to be overwhelmed and get lost. The same applies when you improve and implement a process.
Based on these insights some years ago I created the 4+2 model for processes. This model makes it clear that in and around a processes, various areas of activity are present (or need to be implemented).
In addition, it makes clear in what typical areas, some often overlooked, large potential for improvement exists.

The 4+2 model in a diagram:

Let's go through the areas...

Essential part of the process
This is the area that most analysts, especially beginners, start to analyse and understand. These are the core activities required to deliver specific value (in terms of delivering a product or service). The key question here: what is needed to deliver a product or service? It's about value added work.

For example, let's take the process of requesting a grant, the essential area would be about:
- Receive request
- Review request
- Decide on request
- Inform the requester
- (if positive decision) Pay the grant

This area is of course essential. But to often this is the area that gets the most attention, and sometimes is even the only area that is addressed. This severely limits your power as analyst/designer.

Logistical part of the process
What is often forgotten is the logistical part of a process. The key question in this area is: what is needed to get the right person to perform the right task, with the right inputs and materials, at the right time. It's about flow, how do we let a request flow efficiently through the organization?  Sadly, often this area (and the complex activities that need to take place) is buried in process models in the arrows.

For example, let's continue to grant process:
- Receive the request by mail, sort them by customer, and distribute them (once a day) to the right team
- Distribute the requests in the team
- Work on the stack of requests in FIFO order, except when Prio 1 requests have been signaled
- Collect all decisions per week (in a folder) and bring this to the financial department.
- Bring the payment tape (weekly produced) to the bank. It takes 3 days for processing.

This area has often the potential for large improvements (my estimate: 30 - 50%, in terms of time and costs). I encountered one time a situation in which a analyst team had been given the assignment to shorten delivery time of a insurance transaction. Weeks had been spent on trying to cut time, but only looking at the essential part of the process. The progress: several minutes of activities could be saved. But when we started to address the logistical part, we discovered that certain arrows between the activities took 3 - 5 days. What was the matter? They needed to fetch the paper client-folder from another location, and the truck that drove between the locations had a limited schedule, resulting a long wait.
This is the area that deals with queuing, first in first out, and waiting for resources for inputs or inputs waiting for resources.

Customer journey
When understanding a process or improving it, it is important to understand what is required (or what actually happens) of the customer to keep the process going. In many process analysis I still see the swim lane/pool of the customer missing. Optimal alignment of the customer activities/process and the essential + logistical process is required to create a customer friendly delivery.
Note: the customer journey often goes through various processes, as the journey travels through phases such as 'orientation', 'selection of supplier', 'transaction', 'aftercare'.

Supplier process(es)
For certain parts of the process, inputs might be required from suppliers/value chain partners. Again, also in this area it is important to understand the activities and inputs that are required from suppliers, and how these align with the essential and logistical areas of the process.

Operational and tactical management of the process
Where the essential and logistical areas are about 'do', this area is about plan, check and act. This area deals with the management within the boundaries of the process. The key question is:  are we doing the process right?
This question is on two levels:
- Operational: how to make sure a specific delivery (such as one specific grant-request) is delivered on the right time, place, quality and cost (as defined in the required process).
- Tactical: how to make sure that the flow (the set of current work in progress) is within acceptable ranges.
Sometimes, analysts take this area into account, but limit themselves to only define key performance indicators, norms and create solutions for dashboards, so that involved people are sufficiently informed on the operational and tactical status. However, this is not enough. One needs to also consider the steering-instruments (what can you do if all the signals are in the red zones?): what interventions can we do to (for instance):
- Operational: make sure that a delayed request is prioritized?
- Tactical: decrease the average waiting time, due to seasonal influences, by adding resources?
Often, there is quite some waste involved in this area of the process. We often see many resources that need to collect, administer/maintain, and report performance data manually. And we see confusion and additional work, when different reports from different automatic and manual systems differ...

Strategic management of the process
The last area we focus on the key question 'are we doing the right process?'.
This is what I would call process management. It's about analysis and interventions in aspects such as:
Alignment
- Is the process aligned with evolving customer expectations?
- Is the process aligned with strategy?
- Is the process aligned with IT? Can it be innovated?
- Is the process aligned with HR policies?
- Is the process sufficiently harmonized with other, comparable processes?

Performance

- Is the performance of the process acceptable? Can it be improved? Should we apply Lean?
Experience
- What is the experience of the customer (during interactions)? Can it be improved?
- What is the experience of the employees? Does this process create a motivating and engaging environment?
and Maturity
- Does the process have the right level of maturity?
(For instance: is there a clear process owner, is it documented, are activities and roles sufficiently established and implemented, are KPI's defined and measured, is there a clear incident/problem & change procedure for the process? etc).
In this area improvement is also possible. Often this part is not implemented (often as a result from, but also amplifying functional silos). And this leads to various inefficiencies, loss of customers, and loss of employee engagement (for instance: if certain process issues have been reported, but never resolved)

The 4+2 model is one of my key tools to explain, understand and improve processes. I hope you like it too!

Images of Process

We live in dynamic times. New images of organization appear. New business models. New organization operating models and cultures. New roles. And a growing shift to knowledge workers, dynamic processes and increased autonomy of employees.
What is surprising that in the midst of this all, the images of 'Process' are staying quite fixed. I think this deteriorates the power of process driven interventions. It limits us, through the limited lenses that these images provide, in seeing broader pictures. As more and more organization questions are turning 'wicked', solutions can not be developed in isolation. Other process images are needed, that should help us recognize and integrate key elements of the broader context processes are part of. In the years I have been involved in process innovation and improvement, I have been pondering on this one question - what's a process. What other viewpoints can we find, other images that help us enhance our perspective?
I want to discuss 6 images of process I found, using 6 different definitions. Each of these definitions help us see various of these key elements.

Definition 1: A process is a chain of activities, executed by various actors, to transform input to output, to provide a service or product to a customer. 
This definition, and tons of comparable ones form our most common image of process. It creates an automatic focus on activities: what happens when why how where and by who. In it's essence, it's fine - it has helped many organizations to increase efficiency and improve quality. It's one of the foundations of the industrial revolution. But it is also limiting us. Let's explore other additional definitions.
Key elements: activities, efficiency, quality

Definition 2: A process is the stuff we do to delight the customer, by providing the right value and experience
I like this definition, because it helps us to focus on one of the process stakeholders that is critical for the success of people's work within an organization: the customer (internal or external).
This helps us to think outside-in in two ways:
- From a value perspective : what is the need of the customer? How do we provide the right value?).
This is one of the key elements in for instance Lean, to help us focus on understanding the voice of the customer, provide the right value and get rid of waste.
- From an experience perspective : how does the customer want to be treated? What types of interactions during the customer journey (the moments of truth) create a positive experience?
Note that using the phrase 'The customer' has a risk leading to generalization of our customer view. Remembering that customers are all different people is an important step - and segmentation and use of persona's can help us to keep this in mind. Even better - co-creation of process designs is even a better step.
Key elements: customer, outside-in, customer journey, interactions, value, experience

Definition 3: A process is the behavior of a specific group of people and machines, in response to a certain trigger
This definition reminds us, that in the end, it's about behavior of specific people. We can create great to-be process models, but in the end successful process-transformation is about changing behavior of people. It helps us to discover the value of change management, of personal transformation, learning processes.
It requires us to understand people. And it prevents us from the illusion that you can design a process and roles and then simply 'shove' people in the boxes, arrows and swim lanes.
Key elements: people, behavior, learning, psychology of change

Definition 4: A process is a specific game in which various people, with various interests and stakes, attempt to reach certain objectives (which may be be derived from personal, departmental, company or other goals)
Every process analyst and designer know that improving processes can be tricky business. Various stakeholders around a process have different interests. Perfect alignment is difficult to achieve, but one needs to be aware of these interests and stakes, to be able to come to consensus.  Both process design and execution are stakeholder games.
I also like the word 'Game'. Webster defines it as 'a physical or mental activity or contest that has rules and that people do for pleasure'. It opens the perspective of gamification, where we can introduce game-like constructs in processes to make them (more) fun.
Key elements: stakeholders, stakes/interests, alignment, consensus or compromises, games, gamification

Definition 5: A process is a social and mental structure in which people can position their activities and collaborations, and in which people might find motivation, safety and meaning through their experiences. 
This definition I am still working on - to sharpen and to digest. It's about an intuitive feeling that processes can help us to create meaning and motivation. To help us find and understand our place in society, organization and various contexts. For me, this is about employee experience en engagement. I see processes that do not create safety (people unsure, insecure and under pressure), do not create motivation (struggling people, with repeated boring tasks and repeated problems) nor (positive) meaning. This definition resonates little with current BPM-thinking, which is, in my view, a shame.
Key elements: people, meaning, motivation, (social/psychological) safety

Definition 6: A process is a living work of art, in which people are in flow and their work and interactions form a choreography with aesthetic value
Have you have been part of a team-effort, in which you felt a deep appreciation of the beauty of good collaboration? Where activities almost had a musical rhythm? The feeling of 'check check check'. The feeling of 'yes yes yes'. Perhaps you have seen it in sports, where certain games transcended winning or loosing, to pure fun and flow. Or when you where dancing with someone (salsa, tango), and the moves of you and your partner blended in beautifully.
Maybe, deeply, this is what we all are looking for - creating the conditions for people to thrive, to be able to work in deep flow, and create beautiful performances of experience for all stakeholders that are involved.
Key elements: flow, beauty, thriving

These are the images I have at this stage in my development. I have felt that all of them have enriched my work as process consultant. Seeing broader perspectives and bigger contexts. Adding more value.

What images of process do you have? How have they helped you to see new perspectives?

The role of Design Thinking for creating optimal experiences through your channels and processes

I posted an entry on the Capgemini CTO blog about the importance of Design Thinking

http://www.capgemini.com/blog/cto-blog/2013/11/technovision-2014-think-design

Do read the other entries on TechnoVision 2014, interesting concepts and insights!

My article:

Design For Digital #7 – Think Design

Customers and employees interact, transact and work with organizations through a growing myriad of channels. Their experience during these interactions make them loyal to an organization or leave them forever: it’s a key differentiating element. And indeed, for consistent positive experiences to happen, they need focused attention from you. To create the right stage for customer and employee experiences, turn to Design Thinking. Make sure that you apply Design Thinking in your digital transformation efforts, including the design of your services and processes. Build the right consciousness, desire and capability to design and deliver compelling experiences, from an radical outside-in perspective. Delight!

Let’s start with a definition: ‘Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others' needs and experiences, together with a desire to fulfill the needs while creating a positive experience’ (Webster dictionary, with some twists). How is compassion doing in organizations? Quite some research, including from Capgemini / MIT shows that customer experiences are far from optimal. In addition, various research shows that many employees are disengaged. That these two findings relate is only logical.

Yet, most organizations truly have the desire to fulfill the needs of their customers and employees. The key issues they encounter:

- Most services and processes develop stepwise, without looking at the whole and without being sufficiently consciousness of the needs and experiences of customers and employees.

- It’s not easy to design and create integrated and consistent customer experiences over various functional units and channels.

If you want to differentiate, turn to Design Thinking as a key, foundational element in your digital transformation.

A number of essentials elements that make up Design Thinking:

- Purposeful – Customers and employees have needs and want to fulfill them. In their own way. The steps they will take for this are often referred to as the ‘Customer Journey’ (but don’t forget the Employee Journey..). During this journey, they will typically interact with many of your channels, functional silos and IT solutions. And they will go through various emotions. You will need to understand their end-to-end journeys, their emotions and you will need to understand how to respond to them, with an integrated design.

- Human centric – Forget ‘customer’, ‘user’, ‘employee’. We are all humans, not pegs that want to fit an organization’s services or internal process. Everybody has various needs and emotions, different beliefs and values. If you want your customers and employees to have great experiences, you will need to understand them (personas), and even better: collaborate and co-design with them.

- Iterative – Customers and employees can’t tell you precisely what they want. As understanding humans and designing optimal experiences can be complex, you will need an iterative approach, in which you mix research, creativity, intuition and experimentation. Take a fresh, outside-in perspective on existing websites, mobile applications and other digital channels, and the other moments of truth. Apply a mix of craft, art and science, to come to the right enough answers (designs) and new insights to improve them.

Building a design thinking capability requires new skills (human research, creative design, concept testing, co-creative dialogues), new roles (UX designer, service designer) and new innovative approaches. Invest in Design Thinking and use it to reshape your services, channels and your Business Technology Landscape. Your first step: start with piloting Design Workshops for defining and designing new products, services and enabling IT capabilities.

Trust us, it will give you a new experience. And don't forget: it's all about compassion.

Towards meaningful and motivating workplaces, delivering great service

Lately, I have been diving a lot in a number of very interesting area's:
- Service Design
- Positive Psychology

What does this have to do with BPM?

In my view, we might be looking at something that is going to converge towards a new view on organizations, processes and workplaces.

Let's start with Service Design: a growing field of insights in how to create services. Service that deliver value for the customer and the organization. Services that create the optimal customer experience, personalized where possible. Service designs that are co-created, tested, improved. Service designs that are based on really investigating people behaviour and dialogue, to understand reasons, cause and effect. Service design bringing key concepts of Experience, Moments of Truth, Customer Journey, etc.
My big discovery was that Service Design focus is not only on customer and value for the organization. It is also focuses on employees. And that's strong. Employee experience, employee motivation and engagement are key to drive customer experience and people's happiness in general. Employees have moments of truth as well. And within bad systems, employees can have a lot of bad moments of truth. This not only creates unhappiness (and potential exits, illness, etc) but leads in general to unhappy customers. We all have had our share of service delivered by grumpy people.

Now, would it be possible to create happiness in organizations? Based on a growing set of research on positive psychology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology) I think yes. Many books have been published, and check out Ted.com and the internet for great findings in this area (Seligman, Achor, Fredrikson, Boyatzis). Positive psychology, as the evidence based sequel to humanistic psychology, delivers quite some insights in what can make us happy. According to Seligman: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose, and Accomplishments.

I think it is time for incorperating these new views in our toolbox as process designers. BPM as a discipline for process design and innovation has typically had its focus on factors as efficiency, compliance, productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. Nodding? Well, where is the employee?
I think it's time to link BPM back to Organisational Development. Helping employees to create positive, engaging, meaningful workplaces. Using service design and positive psychology.

And to conclude, don't do it for them, do it for yourself: The typical process designer comes in and tries to find bottlenecks, issues, problems. Literally every day we train our brain to see what's bad, what's missing. Well, that does not help you to become happy....

APMG's Organizational Change Management Certification relevant for BPM specialists

Recently I followed a training at my employer to get certified (through two exams) for the APMG (Organizational) Change Management practioner-role. More information on the training here (Dutch).

For more information on the certification, check the official site. APMG is also the institute for other well known certifications such as PrinceII and MSP.

(Note: this training of Change Management is not related to ITIL change stuff, or processes that deal with scope change in projects. This is oriented at changing people in organisations - Organization Change Management/OCM, or  "Veranderkunde" in Dutch)

The course and exam is primarily based on the book "Making Sense of Change Management" (link here).
The strength is that it is a eclectic exploration of different views, schools and approaches. So not a simple "follow these 10 steps", but much more contingency oriented, with a broad view on approaches, and (mostly) honest discussions on applicability, strengths and weaknesses.

Contents include:
- Views/approaches on individual change (each organization change requires individual people change)
- Team development
- Metaphores of organizations
- Organization change
- Styles of leadership for change
- Change readiness assessments

In my opinion, a very relevant training and certification for BPM specialists. Why?
From some distance, most what we do as consultants is influence behavior:
- To make people aware
- To help people (power) to decide change
- To help people adapt to changes
In that light, BPM can be seen as a set of interventions to help decide, direct and change behavior.
Because in the end, most processes in my opinion, can be defined not so much as "a series of activities transforming input to output", but much more as "the behaviour that a set of people show, after a certain trigger". If you want to improve processes, you (hope to) change behavior in real people, not diagrams or (just) BPM engines.

Seeing the enormous amounts of failed innovation, IT and process improvement projects, knowledge of the change part is essential for a BPM specialist. Any BPM project is a change project. This training will broaden your view, make you aware of various approaches and will fill your toolbox!

Did I miss things - sure. The book and the course did not go into (for instance):
- Various types of interventions in more detail
- Process centric change
- Typical BPM interventions
- Motivational theory
- More modern approaches on team & artifact development (service design, SCRUM, etc)
- More modern approaches on personal development (ACT, Mindfullness, Appreciative Inquiry)

And the book is UK/US focused. In the Netherlands (and likely in other countries too) there is a wealth of research, views and approaches that were not covered in the exam (but were, high level, provided in the course by Capgemini).

Eye opener for me: many of the modern approaches are simple repeats and refinements of ideas that have been around for ages. We are (often unaware) standing on the shoulder of giants!

A good course and good exam. Recommended.

My BPM prayer for 2013

Prayer? No, I am not religious. But in the coming months there will be the lot of BPM prediction lists from the various blogs. Always fun to read. Take a basket, throw in the current buzzwords (social, big data, cloud), mix with some insights and publish.
I wanted to take another approach this year. Not so much what I expect to happen, but more what I really hope to happen. Comments welcome! And an early: happy holidays.

Design for experience
I do processes, because for me it's one of the core interventions to focus on value. And I love that value is getting a broader sense in BPM. Nut just the end product, or efficiency, speed. But the realization that people that want a service are complete whole people, that experience interactions. And that hope that these experiences are positive, helpful. So, I pray that we design for positive experience. Because there are still quite some bad experiences out there.
And I hope that we don't pidgeonhole people in "customer", "user" or worse "some abstract entity that submits data, and is send the product", but as whole people.
I would love to see more psychology and antropologhy enter the field of BPM.

Design for meaning and motivation
I also do processes, because for me it's one of the core interventions to create meaningful workplaces. Workplaces should be rewarding, educating, fun, places for growth. Often they are not. Face it, we all spent major parts of our lives in workplaces. Valuable life time that we can spent only once. And the deeper needs that we have are often not well understood or addressed.
The machine-like concepts behind many of the BPM-thinking stiffle our ability to design for meaning and motivation. KPI's motivating? Come on. Process models that thrill us to all change? Come on.
I would love to see new language appear on concepts in BPM around motivation, inspiration. How to design processes, that support people to do the things they like.

Co-create, on staying out of the silo
Be honest, ever found yourself in an office, cubicle, some remote place, far away from the complexity of the workplace? In front of your screen, with the assignment to "improve the process". And busy clicking in some tool, making a beautiful process-diagram, that is just going to awe the manager to the max? Stop. You are living in a dream. It's never going to fly.
Go to the complexity. Dive in. Be shy, scared, but still go on. Talk to the people. Involve. Ask. And let them decide on what the improved process is. Be the facilitator. Influence. Help them to see new possibilities. Even better: let them see you even better possibilities. Be confused. Learn.
I am reading a beautiful book on Organization Development (and it's history). This is not new - this co-creation stuff has been there for decades. But we all, personally, have to give up the illusion that we can sit there, in our silo, and create perfect solutions.

Real working software, as opposed to ACM/BPM battles
A lot of discussions the last years on ACM/BPM. Don't get me wrong, I learn a lot of the likes of Max Pucher et al. Insights in complexity of work. Of people interaction. And let's make things simple: things are never simple. Any piece of software will be based on an abstraction of the complexity of work & interaction. Thus will have it's limits. And while the discussions on the views and concepts behind this abstraction are valuable, let's not forget that in the end, the value is in the eye of the beholder: the actual users. And the typical manager/user I speak, does not really care for these abstract discussions. They want software that supports their work. Not perfect, but good enough. Real working software that is, not abstractions. So let's go out there, make it work, and share the lessons on what (not) worked, not the rants.

On economic crisis, carreer perspective and ethics
In the BPM automation projects I am involved in, the patterns are quite simple: use BPM automation to cut cost, cut cost, cut cost, and add some quality and flexibility please. In the labour-intensive service processes I am involved in, this means cutting work. Using straight through processing and performance optimizing tools to make people more productive, and thus more people redundant.
Technology might be neutral, applying it is not. BPM automation projects have real effects on real people: typically, I see major cuts in lower educated administrative workers. And it worries me. Sure, from a business case perspective we understand. From a public services perspective also: we all want to have lower prices, and more effect from our taxpay. But the cause-effect is simple: apply BPM automation, fire people. And I wonder: if all organizations will be doing BPM automation, what work will be left for these people? What can society offer? Are we growing towards a society in which we have highly oiled, well functioning small units of service delivery, with highly paid managers, knowledge workers and IT-staff? The upper class? And the rest trying hard to make ends meet?
We need a vision on future work. On the ethics of BPM automation. And on meaning & dignity & perspective of the "lower" workforce.

BPM replacing ERP? I think not.

To start - I am not a fan of "old school" ERP. The massive, late 90's, ERP implementations with dozens of eager Accenture consultants, and endless "customize or standardize" never impressed me much. And the control and agility promisses were highly overrated. So when anyone comes with a tool that can replace ERP, I am much interested.
However, if I read blogs stating that ERP is being replaced by BPM technology, I shiffer.
Don't get me wrong, I love BPM technology, and the changes that it's bringing in Business-IT alignment.
But a simple comparison of functional features of a BPMS versus an ERP shows that there are many ERP components that are not, or not well covered by BPMS. Of course, there as BPMS vendors that have BPMS solutions with larger featuresets and smaller. But on average, there is still a gap.

In that light we have been working at Capgemini at defining what could replace ERP. Our first focus was the services industry (and even more specific: Public administration). Based on our own experiences in platform renewals, and by studying many tenders, we were able to define a quite complete set of functionalities required to support public administrative service processes in a complete, yet agile way.

The combined set we call our "Model Service Delivery Platform". I can't go into all details at this stage, but here are a number of typical functionalities required in public service delivery:

- Customer portal - submitting requests, track & trace
- Customer contact center portal - answering questions, track & trace
- Knowledge worker portal - allow workers to access cases and perform tasks, manage performance
- Process engine - for straight through processing and human tasks coordination
- Decision management engine
- Case management - services for gathering and presenting case information, and coordinating processes and adhoc tasks
- Scan & indexing facility - for paperbased request
- Document management solution - for storing digital documents/cases, to support service delivery and comply with records regulations
- Document generation - to generate documents (and also technical messages)
- Value chain integration - to request information from other parties, or update other parties in the value chain
- Operational management information - for workers and supervisors to manage service delivery
- Improvement management information - for analysing and improving process performance
- Data storage, query and management services for storing customer, request/product data, decisions
- Identity & Access Management

Interesting to see is that there are quite a number of technical implementation scenario's possible to support these functionalities. And that's what we see and do for clients. Examples: CRM centric, ECM centric, BPMS centric, Bespoke parts.
But the key conclusion: we do not see any BPMS covering all these area's well.

It leads of course to a discussion: what is a BPMS? What are it's boundaries? My point:  If I buy a BPMS, that also contains a well integrated Java development environment, and I implement the functionalities above with 10%  process automation, and 90% Java, be honest: I can't say BPMS replaces ERP.

So for now, BPMS is not replacing ERP in my opinion. It's bringing very strong components that are very powerful and play a central role in our service delivery platforms. But most service delivery platforms are still a larger set of technical components, and BPMS is just one of them.
It's the reason why many isolated point solutions,  based on BPMS centric implementations, stay small, or in the end get eaten by a larger architecture, with other technologies.

What the future will bring?
I see three directions:
- BPMS as platform for strong, but small point solutions (which needs integrations)
- BPMS vendors growing towards completer service delivery platforms (as we see in the Oracle Fusion approach)
- ERP vendors that innovate, and adopt these strong business technology components (ACM, BPM, BRM)

If scenario 2 and 3 do not happen, the larger IT-transformations/innovations at service organizations will stay complex programs with quite some integration work. This may seem of benefit for system integrators, but believe me, we rather see integrated platforms in which we can only focus on value for the business. Hence, our "model service delivery platform". (or in my language "Model Uitvoeringsplatform").

Service design and BPM - a great match

For a number of years, a lot of new language and concepts have been developed covering something we now call "Customer Experience".

Think of...

- Channels, multichannel strategy

- Touchpoints

- Moments of truth

- Customer value

- Customer expectations

- Customer experience

- Outside in thinking

- Customer journey

A number of these concepts we already knew from Lean, especially Voice of the Customer.

For the services industries, these terms have been blended into an approach, set of powerful tool : service design (sometimes also called Service Innovation). A great development: design thinking as approach for creating great customer experiences through services. 

In my opinion, Service Design and BPM have a lot of added value to each other, and to service businesses. 

At this stage Service Design is not very strong in process design from an efficiency/operational excellence perspective. And it is unaware of questions around process governance, process maturity, ongoing process improvement (from an inside out and outside in perspective). BPM can help here, including Lean. 

BPM is not very strong in the outside in thinking area. Yes, we do have VOC (from Lean). And the general notion of customer orientation and outside in thinking. But in it's discipline, it has missed the language, concepts and (evidence based) approaches. How many process diagrams I see, where the customer swim lane is missing....

Service design is a great help to help us understand for who we design processes: for the end-customer primarily.

For all BPM-specialists, do check out "This is Service Design Thinking". 

http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com

For all Service-design specialists, do check out BPM (and it's many books and websites!)

An interesting development (as far as I understood in my meetings with service design agencies) service design is also attempting to address on of the missing links in BPM: How to design processes that not only create a great customer experience, but also a motivating and rewarding employee experience...

And a last observation: as BPM-specialists we are in the services industry ourselves. We work with many stakeholders attempting to help design and implement great processes. Every thought about the customer experience of that work? Service design can help us there as well. It explains why and how we can pick interventions that are motivating and value adding for our stakeholders, in their customer journey to great processes.

10 OCM-consequences of introducing a BPMS/ACM solution

I am currently quite busy guiding the implementation of a Case Management Solution for a public sector client. My focus is the Organizational Change Management (OCM). And I have been working with this client to prepare them on the business & IT side for all consequences of introducing BPMS/ACM based solutions for various processes, realized on a generic shared platform. This OCM approach is vital, as many BPM/ACM projects tend to focus most attention to IT-aspects, and forgetting the business & IT-support side.
The last weeks we have simply been identifying and discussing consequences and critical succes factors that need to be taken into account when introducing BPMS/ACM solutions. Note that the implementation we are doing, includes digital documents (ECM, scanning solutions).

Here is a list of consequences and CSF's that we have identified. It serves in my opinion as a good checklist for most BPMS/ACM implementations.

1. The daily routine of workers and managers will change a lot. 
Most organizations come from a situation, where they work with a mix of paperfiles and data entry IT-systems. The switch to full digital documents and a process guiding system is quite a change for people, and requires the right change approach, with various interventions (from involving the users in Agile/Scrum to training and other enablement activities)
For coordination and management things also change considerably. Typically management information is collected using various meetings, spreadsheets and IT-queries. The modern BPMS/ACM solution has near-realtime dashboards.
The best practice: have a OCM-stream in your BPMS/ACM project/programme.

2. The possible service concepts and customer facing processes can be innovated
Many organizations are working with modern eBusiness/eGovernment channels (web, mobile), as well as Customer Contact Centers (phone, email). With the right linking, case handling can be linked to these channels, creating more possibilities - for instance for customers to digitally submit requests, track & trace cases and get automated alerts when status changes (through SMS, email, etc). And for customer contact centers, these BPMS/ACM platforms are great to quickly determine status or to fire questions to the back office employee handling a certain case. In the silo-based architecture, this was all often quite difficult to achieve.
Best practice: review your service concept, and if needed, apply service design / service innovation.

3. Capacity demand for various competences will change
Many organizations have people dealing with administrative tasks around paperfile handling. Storing, searching, finding, distributing, adding documents, archiving.  All this work can be reduced significantly, using ACM solutions with digital documents. This leads to cost saving opportunities, reducing FTE's. But to actually realize these savings/business case, FTE reduction needs to be started.
Best practice: have a clear business case and FTE-reduction plan

4. A lot of operational management data will be available. But correctly used as well?
As said, BPMS/ACM solutions can provide quite some insight into the operations: cycletime, workload, utilization. This requires a good steering model: what do we want to measure and why, and what do we do if measures signal potential issues. It also requires competences on the management level to handle this data and act correctly, and a clear responsibility model.
Best practice: improve the maturity of measuring & steering

5. Have a clear scope for process analysis and improvement
To implement processes in the BPMS/ACM solution, process analysis is mandatory. But this analysis can also be done to identify improvements. It is important to have a clear, and shared understanding of the process scope:
- 1 on 1 transfer to the BPMS/ACM solution
- Standaardize / harmonize only
- Improve minor things
- Redesign, with innovations such as straight trough processing, business rules
- Redesign, with co-creation, Lean and outside in Service Design approaches
Best practice: have a clear scope

6. Standardization versus TCO
When using a shared platform, re-use can potentionally bring a lot of value to the BPMS/ACM efforts. This can be standardisation for processes, for management info/steering model and for IT-components. However, harmonizing and standardizing these items require strong governance, and requires negotations. If this is not management, variation and complexity will drive up cost of the solution (TCO)
Best practice: standardize where possible, local variation where needed

7. Process management maturity will facilitate the BPMS/ACM efforts
When introducing an BPMS/ACM solution, the more mature processes and process management is, the better. Process management maturity is linked to items such as:
- Processes are identified and have been documented
- Documentation is being kept up to date, and compliance is checked regularly
- KPI's have been identified, and are measured
- There is clear ownership of the operational management of processes
- There is clear ownership for the tactical / strategic management of processes (strategy alignment, reactive and pro-active process improvement)
- A PDCD cycle has been implemented
- A process culture has been established
Best practice: implement BPMS/ACM solutions as part of BPM as a discipline, or try to start a linked effort

8. Using a shared BPMS/ACM platform for multiple processes requires different IT-governance model
In most silo based organizations, IT governance is also silo based. When a company switches to a central platform for (in the future) all processes, another type of IT governance (demand-supply) needs to be implemented.

9. BPMS/ACM solutions bring agily - but only with agile people and processes
BPMS/ACM solutions make use of business technology: what you model is what you execute. Part of the solution becomes maintainable by people that have a combination of business & IT-skills (instead of the hardcore techies). By making sure that the most changing aspects are implemented in agile business technology and by placing these people close to the business, surrounded by fast processes, agility can be achieved.

10. A shared solution creates depencies and risks
As a company moves from silo IT-solutions to a shared BPMS/ACM solution, the dependency of single point of failure/frustration is created. This requires a strong focus on non-functional technical aspects - availability, recovery and performance, as well as focus on useability (advice: add an interaction designer to any BPMS/ACM effort).

Input welcome!

There must be 50 ways to....

There must be 50 ways to support the transparency, management and improvement of processes…..

I have tweeted it before: getting tired of the many people I meet that still associate process management first and most of all with documenting processes. Almost like a reflex "Ah, we will work with processes, so… we need to model and document this/all processes".
Sure it can help, but first of all it's not the only action a business can take. And second it may definitely not be the right action – other actions might add much more value.
Therefore, here are fifty (ok, some more) other possible interventions that can support the transparency, management and improvement of processes. Did I miss something? Let me know!

(Note, I concentrate on interventions focused on a specific process, and have left out the many interventions one can do to support implementation of process management and BPM within a company on a larger scale…)

The key activity
1. Understand all possible interventions, understand the context, and select, based on best practices, budget and requirements, a good set of interventions for the process, in close cooperation with key stakeholders and in line with your process management strategy (do you have one?)

High level understanding
2. Identify the process (and more important: the service/product that it delivers) and place it in a Product Catalogue
3. Identify the process (name it) and place it in a process architecture/decomposition
4. Identify all stakeholders in the process and understand their goals and high level role in the process
5. Identify all external stakeholders to a process (suppliers, partners, customers) and identify the primary interactions with the process (flows of information, physical goods)
6. Establish SIPOC – Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer, but only one a very high level
7. Understand how this process is related to other processes (input/output/supporting/managing) and the fit
8. Classify the process using certain classification criteria: high/low volume, routine – ad hoc, high/low cost, high/low strategic relevance
9. Understand how this process relates to your core competencies. Discuss and decide on sourcing strategies
10. Define the products and services that are output and that are input to the process, and establish quality criteria
11. Understand what IT-systems are supporting the process, with what functionality
12. Understand the relation between the process and core business objects (data) : Create, Read, Update, Delete.


Measurement & Governance
13. Establish goals, associated key performance indicators & targets for a process and start measuring
14. Define a Service Level Agreement with the key customers (internal/external)
15. Discuss and understand the control model: what can we do if all KPI's are in red?
16. Plan the process execution. Create a simple plan, that estimates demand, defines required capabilities and needed resources (per month, quarter, …)
17. Assign someone / people to be accountable for certain aspects of a process (execution, quality, performance measurement, improvement, improving maturity). Make sure there are clear lines of responsible for process vs. line management
18. Implement reporting lines and procedures for these accountable people
19. Set up a "quality circle" of process experts, that discuss and propose improvements
20. Establish a evaluation cycle that follows a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle for the process
21. Implement a cross-function process governance board (strategic and tactical level) in which functional departments govern process performance and improvement activities
22. Implement procedures and supporting roles/resources for participant support (helpdesk), process incidents, problems and change requests/change management
23. Implement a regular customer satisfaction measurement/evaluation – outside in
24. Make sure all your process KPI measurements are stored safely, so that in time, you can do trend analysis and inline simulation
25. Audit compliance and report on findings

Analysis & Improvement
26. Determine the voice of the business: how this process needs to operate to execute the strategy
27. Adopt a best practice process framework (such as APQC, SCOR, eTOM, …) and assess the process
28. Understand all applicable regulations and policies and understand compliance requirements
29. Perform an outside in analysis of the customer: who is the customer and what is important for them (voice of the customer)
30. Determine the "voice of the employee": what do the process participants find important in terms of roles, development, employee happiness and fulfillment?
31. Assess the performance of the process (specific measurements, such as cycle time, throughput, cost, quality, compliance)
32. Perform a value added/waste analysis, and remove waste & non-value added activities
33. Perform a bottleneck analysis (ToC)
34. Understand process breakdowns, using a Rootcause analysis
35. Assess the capability of the process, based on the current resources: what are the limits & regular operating levels?
36. Identify the risks in the process and come up with/implement controls
37. Identity quality aspects and implement first time right / error proof interventions and checks where required + audits to proof adherence
38. Measure a certain aspect and it’s variance, and attempt to understand natural and special causes for the variation
39. Define a process improvement plan, including key indicators, and make someone / people responsible for executing it in a certain time frame

Maturity
40. Assess the maturity of a process and define the required maturity
41. Define a maturity improvement plan (based on a maturity model), including key indicators, and make someone / people responsible for executing it in a certain time frame
42. Implement PDCA cycle, roles and responsibilities focused on Maturity

Culture, awareness and HR
43. Train the process participants and managers in the process. Create a RACI matrix.
44. Understand the roles and come up with clear functions, with clear business rules around mandate and separation of duties
45. Understand the roles in a process (and the activities they execute and/or manage) and define required competencies
46. Organize awareness sessions to make people understand their role in a process and the impact of their behavior on customer, other people and process performance
47. Train relevant stakeholders in process thinking
48. Organize a BPM-game, where participants learn about the concepts of process, process improvement and process management through an engaging game
49. Organize a BPM day for various departments involved in a process, and use it to build (social) cohesion and alignment
50. Build awareness and capability at the management level in process thinking, process improvement and process stewardship
51. Implement incentives for process improvements (as opposed to rewarding repeated fire fighting behavior)

Technology
52. Go and buy a BPM Suite and automate the process and the BAM
53. Go and buy a BRM suite and support business rules and knowledge support

And finally: document your process(es) (are you really sure??)
54. Understand the stakeholders, goals, life expectation and required detail for documentation
55. Create a process model with supporting documentation, containing a detailed analysis of activities, events, business rules, roles, data flow, physical flow
56. Publish the process model & documentation to relevant stakeholders
57. Place the process model & documentation under configuration management and implement processes to signal updates/deviations and keeping documentation updated

BPM Research - 2011 live! Correlation BPM and Performance.

General

We recently concluded a research into BPM, together with the University Utrecht.

Key facts: Focus on The Netherlands, web based Survey, 168 participants, statistically healthy, and from all major companies and organizations in The Netherlands (Private and Public sector).

One of the interesting findings

We asked various questions on the adoption of BPM practices (such as identifying processes, documenting them, assigning ownership, implementing plan-do-check-act, etc.). In addition we asked them about the satisfaction on process performance (cycle time, cost, quality, etc).

We calculated averages and found the following (in diagram):

We found a positive correlation (and yes, we did check all the statistics).

I would say: a first statistical finding that shows that BPM actually can help.

Interestingly, when you look at the point-cloud, you see a small top-performing group (high process performance) with average high BPM maturity. And a group with low performance satisfaction, that varies in BPM maturity.

We performed research to find out if there were significant BPM maturity factors in the top-performers, in comparison to the lowest performers. We found significant factors - the key one being "management has an active role in the improvement of processes".

Interested in more findings? Such as the 7 key trends in BPM adoption? The 10 critical barriers? The most used BPM technology in The Netherlands? The Dutch survey results can be found on http://bit.ly/jttlwv.

An english summary is available (mail Roeland dot Loggen at Capgemini dot com or twitter me - Roeland).

Sense-Research-Respond patterns

In recent discussions and a number of projects we have done, we see an emerging pattern: Sense-Research-Respond.

Typical situation: the need to respond to an ever increasing number of alerts/signals/data, but to do this as cost effective as possible.

A number of business situations:

- An organisation knows it can and should detect signals of fraud by clients and internal workers and respond to it, but is trying to find an efficient way

- Inspection agencies that need to cut cost, and are moving to more risk-based inspections instead of trying to do 100%. But: how to pick the right risk-situations and tune the selection process, based on insights?

- Organizations that see the enormous growth in social media, and are finding references to their products and organization (positive and negative) and want an innovative but economic way to deal with these developments

In the last years we have seen the following pattern for these type of business situations:

The key ingredients:

- The capability to sense: to filter and detect data/events (and when needed correlated ones), that need attention. Usually driven by business rules ("risk profiles"), and easily tuned. The typical technology: Complex Event Processing, based on technology from for instance Tibco, IBM.

- The capability to research: advanced tooling, such as Palantir, SAS, to further research a certain situation, link it to other earlier events and to support decision making: will we need to react to this,and give it priority over other signals (as resources and time is constrained)

- The capability to effectively handle the situation, efficiently coordinating people in own and possibly other organizations. Sometimes this can follow pre-defined structured processes, but often, as situations can differ greatly, might require more flexible case management solutions. Technology such as Pega, Cordys, BeInformed, IBM.

And we have learned that technology is mature enough to handle these situations.

We have even developed a number of offerings around it, such as our "Grapevine" offering for social media. See here for a short video. Another is our Alert offering for Fraud detection.

Fascinating times. My lesson: don't ignore the growing available data-volumes (and become obsolete). Don't drown (and go under). But conquer in a smart way to use effectively. The ability to respond is a critical capability in modern organizations.

The Future Process-App: think Navigator

Do you remember the time that we did not have navigators installed in our cars?

Two typical situations I remember:

1. Driving with my wife, on vacation, where she was frantically trying to understand the map, while I was stressed out, since our next exit might be the one, and the next one was 30 km ahead.

2. Coming well prepared with a Google Map's driving instruction, only to find out that at step 23 there was a roadblock, making the rest of the procedure unusable. (And the frustration that we saw beautiful other route possibilities, but were afraid to divert from our Google route).

Both situations show a remarkable similarity to the current support of IT-solutions for knowledge workers:

1. No process support at all, just data. IT solutions that are great at storing and providing information (system of record), but not helping to plan and coordinate activities. For the knowledge worker, this means that he or she needs to plan and coordinate actions with other means, such as e-mail, spreadsheets, notes, etc. And for managers it make it quite difficult to get an oversight of the work in progress (who does what, what is still ahead?)

2. Solutions that provide support for activities (systems of engagement), but only using a very rigid procedural template, that locks the knowledge worker in : current workflow solutions. For the knowledge worker, this often means: tweaking the workflow (filling in false data to get access to the right functionality later in the process) or turning to shadow systems for activity management, just to be able to serve the customer request correctly. Both choices lead to incorrect or incomplete management information for the manager.

Based on the projects we are doing for various customers, a new paradigm is dawning:

The navigator as metaphor for the modern process-driven knowledge worker IT-solutions!

Key features:

- It provides real-time situational awareness (where are you? Where do you want to go? What are possible routes? Where are the traffic jams, possible roadblocks? What traffic (business) rules limit your choices?

- It provides goal-driven suggestions, but the knowledge worker can still decide to change route, and the system will re-establish other suggestions. It gives the right balance between standardization and freedom, driven by business policies

- It's easy to use

That's exactly what our Advanced Case Management solutions are providing: a navigator for goal-driven case handling.