Articles

Field Notes: Decision Analysis and Process Analysis

Author(s):

Gagan Saxena

VP Consulting & Principal Consultant, Decisions Management Solutions

Business Decisions and Business Processes need to be analyzed and improved simultaneously for better business outcomes. Following are some practical notes from the field on the correct perspective for this.

1. Decisions are a network or a hierarchy, not a flow

Decision Analysis does not need a flow-based sequential thinking like Process Analysis. Unlike processes, decisions are evaluated in a network where a number of lower-level decisions are made to aggregate up to the main business decision of interest. This state-less decision can be plugged into a process with the process then flowing on down the time dimension.

BPM and Complexity Reduction

Author(s):

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

There’s increasing attention and focus on reducing complexity. Leaders recognize that certain forms of complexity in their business, which do not add value to customers, involve unnecessary costs. From an IT perspective, as applications continue to grow in size and sophistication, the corresponding challenges in the integration of complex systems are perceived to non-value added drive costs.

Paying special attention to complexity through the application of business process thinking and BPM systems can be instrumental in reducing complexity that customers are unwilling to pay for.

Generally, customers don’t like complexity. But they do like choice and value. The challenge for many organizations is to see the business from the customer’s point of view and take action to reduce the non-value added component of complexity.

Capital Planning: Capability Maps, Value Streams and Conflicting Stakeholder Objectives

Author(s):

Ganesh Balasubramaniam

Director - Business Architecture, OptumHealth

Business architecture provides a sound foundation for capital planning based on business strategies and goals in any enterprise. Figure-1 depicts relationship between value business units, value streams and capabilities. However, applying these concepts for capital planning, when working with stakeholders, could be challenging. Stakeholders from IT operations, business operations andsales tend to have different priorities & objectives. Finding a balance between varied priorities is as much an art, as it is science.

Fig 1

Source: A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge (BIZBOK™) – Release 3.0, Part 5
Figure 1 – Business Architecture Knowledge Base Mapping

What Skills are Needed for BPM Success?

Author(s):

Gregg Rock

Editor & Founder, BPMInstitute.org, BAInstitute.org and DBIZInstitute.org

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

One of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) on BPM involves the skills needed for BPM success. While most people understand the importance of modeling skills, there’s a lot more involved in succeeding with BPM and it goes beyond skills or aptitude to mental models or attitude.

Earlier this year, Gartner identified 15 skills critical to the success of any BPM project. As depicted in Figure 1, they elected to group these skills into three types of critical competency: transformational, operational and technical.

Figure 1. Top 15 Business Process Management Skills[i]

Discovering Decisions in Your Business

Author(s):

James Taylor

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and CEO and Principal Consultant, Decision Management Solutions

In previous articles we have discussed Business Decision Management, the role of decision management and decision modeling in reducing process complexity as well as the risks of focusing only on processes without considering decisions. At the heart of these articles is a focus on decisions – high volume, repeatable, operational decisions that can be identified, modeled and managed for improved business results.

Most organizations will initially identify decisions within their business processes – either finding tasks that are clearly decision-making tasks such as those handling validation, approval, calculations, assessments etc – or collapsing process complexity into a decision that was previously obscured by a nest of process gateways and conditions or rules.

Does Modern Technology Impede Modern Management?

Author(s):

Marek Szelagowski

PhD, Vistula University

The economy is undergoing accelerating, multidimensional changes, which are the result of the growing demand of customers for easier access to individualized products and services. The speed of those changes, along with their qualitative character and unpredictability, results in the insufficiency of current management principles. (D’Aveni 1994; Płoszajski, 2004) The precise characteristics of new order remain yet unknown, though it is already clear that organisations of this new type will be “slimmed down” to a flat structure, based to a much larger extent on the labour of groups, flexible through assigning rights to line workers, constantly adapting their activities to satisfy the requirements and expectations of their customers. To cope with such unpredictable and accelerating market and technology changes, use should be made of the full dynamism, knowledge and human potential existing in the company.

A Day in the Life of a Business Architect

Author(s):

Drew Guitarte

Enterprise Business Architect, Wells Fargo & Company

Tuesday was a good day at the office, although nothing out of the typical. I attended two high profile meetings with the product management team and a joint product management and technology requirements definition meeting, received news of my promotion, presented a tool that our team built to solve a resource manager’s allocation problem, and got to work on a really cool proposal to map out a business process end-to-end on a single page of paper.

I always thought simplistically that my role as a business architect is to help bridge the gap between what the owners of the company want and what the rest of the organization delivers. I stand in between those who hold the purse and those who wield the hammer (or whatever your tool of choice may be) so I can better link the two to generate outstanding business results. I’m after business outcomes and so should everyone else in the organization, right? It’s that simple.

Design with the End (User) In Mind

Author(s):

Karen Tricomi

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.

Can You Build and Measure an Improvement Culture?

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

This is such a simple but such a critical question. And it has several critical elements:

Build – meaning this is going to take some time and it will start at one level and grow to another level.

Improvement – in other words we want to have an organization that wants to keep improving itself, which is necessary for any organization to succeed. If it doesn’t grow, it dies. But here the word is improvement – keep getting better, probably in several arenas.

Culture – the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization–a corporate culture could be focused on the bottom line

Let’s define success first. How would you know that you had an improvement culture? What would you measure and what would your score be?

Here are four determinants you could use:

NIEM – A Model for Sharing Government Information

Author(s):

Ken Mullins

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is . . . not a benefit.”– William Pollard

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Author(s):

Introduction

Author(s):

Author(s):

Featured Certificate: BPM Specialist