Articles

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

Effective Use of Business Architecture

Author(s):

Frank Fabian

Owner, Frank Fabian Group

In a recent discussion with a colleague, the relevance and effectiveness of Business Architecture artifacts like capability maps, value streams and organizational maps were the topic of discussion. His belief was that these artifacts were just a way to do drawings that document what has been done. I might add that he is a disillusioned Enterprise Architect, as most of the projects he was assigned just needed him to document the project result in TOGAF or DoDAF.

Systems Thinking in Business Process Management

Author(s):

Larry Cooke

Principal, LH Cooke & Associates

In walking the line on Business Process Management (BPM) analysis and implementation, two valuable and non-technical skills are Experience and Judgment. Learning the latest techniques such as Agile, Lean and Six Sigma are filling the training pipelines. These skills are useful. Still, I recommend a second look at areas which are not currently in the forefront of practitioner popularity.

Effectiveness: Making BPM relevant for CEOs/CFOs

Author(s):

Gagan Saxena

VP Consulting & Principal Consultant, Decisions Management Solutions

Decision modeling adds explicit effectiveness metrics to the more generally accepted efficiency metrics generated by business process modeling,giving the full picture to the Executive Suite. Process efficiency measures throughput, costs, error-rates and similar, while process effectiveness measures whether the process is fulfilling its purpose – picking the most profitable customers, for example. Most business process management metrics focus on efficiency measures since effectiveness measures generally depend on the decisioning logic embedded within processes. Explicit decision modeling turns a spotlight on process goals and associated effectiveness metrics. Executive leadership can now balance and trade-off efficiency measures like throughput with effectiveness measures like profitability.

Business-Driven Transformation Strategies & Roadmaps

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

Transformation roadmaps in many businesses tend to have a heavy technology focus, to the point where organizations invest millions of dollars in initiatives with no clear business value. In addition, numerous tactical projects are funded each year with little understanding of how, or even if, they align from a business perspective. Senior management often falls victim to the latest technology buzzwords, while stakeholder value, business issues and strategic considerations take a backseat. When this happens, executives who should be focused on business scenarios to improve stakeholder value fall victim to technology’s promise of the next big thing. This article discusses how executives can leverage business architecture to reclaim their ability to drive a comprehensive transformation strategy and roadmap.

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Introduction

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