Karen Tricomi
March 12, 2006

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Karen Tricomi




Articles by: Karen Tricomi

Policies, Procedures, and Standards

Policies, Procedures, and Standards

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

At a recent engagement, I encountered several departments that asked me to help write their departmental policy on a particular subject. When I inquired as to the governance process for changing existing company policy, they looked at me blankly and said no, I didn’t understand – they needed a new policy, just for their department. After a little probing into the governance of their company policy (this enterprise had a single policy covering everything), and some further discussion, we ultimately settled on writing a new procedure and developing accompanying forms and workflows. I ended up helping this department rewrite their documents into the appropriate format, and working with them to better understand the hierarchy.

This got me to reflecting on how many times in my career I’ve heard confusion about policies, standards, procedures, and guidelines. Reasonable people will differ in their definitions, but here’s how I understand them to work best.

A (Compressed) Day in the Life of a Business Analyst – Part 2

A (Compressed) Day in the Life of a Business Analyst – Part 2

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the second of a two-part look at a “Day in the Life” of a Business Analyst (BA). During the first half of our “day”, the BA met with principal stakeholders multiple times to understand the problem, document the As Is and To Be, and perform a gap analysis between the two that will form the basis for the solution. The BA speculates that this will involve a combination of changes to people, process, and tools but the next step is to list and prioritize what the solution must include

A (Compressed) Day in the Life of a Business Analyst – Part 1

A (Compressed) Day in the Life of a Business Analyst – Part 1

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the first of a two-part look at a “Day in the Life” of a Business Analyst (BA). It’s broken into hours as a simple way to illustrate the myriad duties and skills that a BA needs to have, but in real life the process described below would take weeks, months, or possibly years, depending on the size of the effort. And, as every BA knows, there’s no such thing as a typical day – or even a standard job description. We’ll look here at the phases that every effort has, and tools that every BA needs. 

Win the Game with Metrics

Win the Game with Metrics

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

I admit it; I waste hours a week playing video games. On my phone, laptop or tablet; on a train, bus or airplane; when I have time and when I don’t, I and millions like me find that the positive feedback from these games keeps us addicted. A silly banner pops up and says “Congratulations, you’re a winner!”, or tells you you’re still lagging behind the champion, and you just have to play again.

Design with the End (User) In Mind

Design with the End (User) In Mind

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

Introduction

Stephen Covey advised us to “begin with the end in mind.” That would seem an obvious place to start whether we are designing a process, a product, or a software application. However, it’s surprising how many designs seem to have anyone but the end user in mind. In this piece we’ll take a look at several examples of where designs fall short, and suggest how good requirements practices can help produce sound designs.

Change – Too Much of a Good Thing?

Change – Too Much of a Good Thing?

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

Agile. Continuous Improvement. The Virtuous Cycle. It’s true – change is necessary, and we all need to get better at adapting to change at an ever-more rapid pace. The increase in the pace of change in today’s world is exponential.

No one wants to get stuck in analysis-paralysis while the competition moves on without us, and there’s nothing wrong with experimentation and trying new things. However, it does sometime seem that changes are made for the wrong reasons, and not driven by pro-active, intentional movement towards goals. We’ve all seen decisions made without the necessary due diligence, and often those are compounded over and over as companies shoot from the hip, reactively trying to fix (or cover) their original mistake.

Driving Improvement With Management Reporting

Driving Improvement With Management Reporting

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

Introduction

Companies spend a lot of time and resources reporting on their businesses.  There are balanced scorecards, KPIs, executive, management and status reports done daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. Executives and managers have so many reports they have trouble reading them all and employees complain that reporting takes up more time than the jobs for which they’ve been hired. After all that, the sad fact is that many reports are read and deleted, read by the wrong people, or not read at all.

Here we’ll talk about how to streamline the number of reports produced, and how to tell the right story to the right people.

Building a Process Catalog: Final Steps

Building a Process Catalog: Final Steps

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the final article in my series on building a process catalog for the organization in which I work.  For reference and context, you can find the first three articles at these links:  Building a Process Catalog: The Journey Begins; Building a Process Catalog, The Ongoing Journey; and Building a Process Catalog: Moving Ahead.

As we have wrapped up the calendar year, the Process Catalog that we began last October finally can be completed.  Below is a brief recap of the stages we’ve gone through to get the catalog to the current state. 

Building a Process Catalog: Moving Ahead

Building a Process Catalog: Moving Ahead

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the third in a series.  The first installment, Building a Process Catalog – The Journey Begins, was published in the April BPM Institute’s online journal.  The second installment, Building  a Process Catalog, The Ongoing Journey, was featured in the August bulletin. 

Recap

My first two features described how I use SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer) diagrams to capture some essential characteristics of major business functions. 

Building a Process Catalog: The Ongoing Journey

Building a Process Catalog: The Ongoing Journey

Author(s):

Consultant, The Process Geek

Recap

In the last article, I described a project to capture and catalog the major cross-functional processes within a 7-department business unit.  The article provided an example of a modified Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer (SIPOC) diagram, discussed the problem statement, and described the steps we took to get buy-in from the Sr. Management of the business unit. 

This time, we’ll explore the modified SIPOC in greater detail to illustrate how it is created, and how it can be used.  We’ll discuss the catalog that is the inventory list of the SIPOC processes that have been diagrammed. 

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