Articles

Author(s):

Leading an organization requires managers to periodically take a step back and assess the organization’s operations to truly see the cards they have in their hand. An awareness of the current situation gives managers that critical understanding of their strengths and their deficiencies – necessities when plotting a future course of action. Without such knowledge, any strategy or plan floats without connection to reality and this is a surefire way to ensure confusion and chaos reign in the employee ranks.

Gemba Walks – A Foundational Methodology in Enterprise Excellence Deployment

Author(s):

Rick Hepp

Trainer, Coach & Mentoir for Enterprise Excellence, Consultant and Trainer

As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the methodologies & tools of Operational Excellence be integrated into Business Strategy?

Business Architecture – A New Depiction

Author(s):

Richard Hillier

Mr, IBM UK (Formerly)

This paper discusses a new depiction of Business Architecture within Enterprise Architecture to bring clarity on how Business Architecture relates to other Architecture domains & to Business Planning.

The Future-Proofing Business Architect: Lessons from the Field

Author(s):

Dean Heltemes

Senior Director, Ameriprise Financial

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” – Winston Churchill

The Value Creation System

Author(s):

Simona Lovin

Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Leidos

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”(Peter Drucker)

This article proposes a conceptual framework for describing business organizations as complex systems, much like live organisms, whose parts function in an orchestrated manner for the sole purpose of creating customer value.

The impetus behind it was the growing realization that while most business publications focus on the tactical aspects of running a business (the “how” of the business), few tackle head-on are the foundational principles of strong business models (the “why” of a business).

Choosing the Right Methodologies, Tools and Techniques (as appropriate) in Enterprise Excellence Deployment

Author(s):

Rick Hepp

Trainer, Coach & Mentoir for Enterprise Excellence, Consultant and Trainer

As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the tools of Operational Excellence be integrated into Business Strategy?

Maximizing the Value of Your Product Backlog (Part Two)

Author(s):

Jamie Cooke

Managing Director, Both Hemispheres, LLC

The Product Backlog is the heart of defining any Agile solution. The requirements that are identified in the Product Backlog drive the priorities that the Agile development team works on, they establish the scope of the delivered solution, and they ultimately determine the business value that the organization will receive from their Agile investment.

Deploying Metrics in an Operational Excellence Initiative

Author(s):

Marvin Wurtzel

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

Implementing operational excellence so that the organization benefits is an important question that needs close examination. An operational excellence initiative requires many elements. The model requires the implementation of:

1. Program—What are you deploying and how will you manage it?

2. Leadership—How will leadership lead the program?

3. Processes—What will you be improving?

4. Measurements—How will you know when you are successful?

5. Projects—How will improvement work be parsed into actionable and manageable units?

6. People—After these steps have been thoroughly planned and evaluated, what you have learned will be the foundation for:

7. Strategy—How will you deploy the initiative?

Going digital or going bananas

Author(s):

Ian Gotts

Founder & CEO, Elements.cloud

What is clear that every company, no matter what industry needs to “go digital” to reduce costs and improve customer experience. For some industries, it is revolution rather than evolution. “Digital” is more than just driving efficiencies, it is reevaluating business models. As whilst digital can improve efficiencies it is eroding margins at a faster rate.

Nature is a great teacher. Think about the structure of plants and shells and the Fibonacci sequence. Or the strength of the honeycomb structure. These are math and engineering. But a bunch of bananas can teach us about going digital and business change. Seriously?

A bunch of bananas

Building an Enterprise Process Map (part 2 of 2)

Author(s):

David Hamme

Managing Director, Ephesus Consulting

In the prior article, Enterprise Process Map (Part 1 of 2), I promoted enterprise process maps as a tool to enhance operational clarity and create a shared view of a company’s capabilities. It is this shared perspective that accelerates business planning and improvement activities as the time to get everyone on the same page is vastly reduced. In lieu of such a foundational view, leaders setting strategy are essentially planning a road trip without awareness of the roads to the destination.