1. INTRODUCTION
Over time, organizations have been increasing their interest in process management institutionalization. The growing complexity and scope of processes, and the frequency with which process modeling, improvement, deployment, integration and coordination occur require companies to structure in such a way as to manage their processes [2][5]. In such a context, organizations have sought concepts and guidelines towards structuring a process center of excellence [1][3]. However, there is still no consensus on how to structure a process organizational unit or governance [4]. This article presents a main macro-processes as a value chain of a process center of excellence – PCE. The paper is the first of four.
2. PROCESS MANAGEMENT TASKS
There are three possible models for process management: completely functional management (organization structure contains no formal representation of processes, only departments or organizational units); functional management of cross-functional processes (cross-functional processes are recognized by the organization, which continues to have functional elements, but acknowledges cross-functional processes as of secondary importance) and completely by-process management (cross-functional processes define the major dimension for organizational design)[5].Paim, Caulliraux & Cardoso [5] point to a set of tasks necessary in process management. That study did not show how these tasks make up a managerial process nor who might be responsible for carrying it out. This article builds on those tasks to order them logically into a “process management process”.
3. DEFINING PROCESS MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
In order to gather information on the structure of a process center of excellence, a study was conducted with the following purposes: (i) to understand what view large organizations take of process management; (ii) to identify those possibly involved in organizing process management tasks; and (iii) to identify how process management tasks can be structured into a process management process.
The Process Management Process
The macro-process diagram represents these activities from a perspective that bears more directly on the “how to” of process management. Activities are represented in terms of their sequential logic and timing in a model. Figure 1 shows the macro-process of a Generic Process Office. These processes are divided into four types:
Managerial processes
The managerial-type processes ensure that processes are managed in the most interconnected and integrated manner throughout the organization. It enables the center of excellence to: promote process governance by attributing responsibilities and presenting results; understand the organization strategy and align all business processes with that strategy; prioritize processes and select the best tools and techniques for managing them; manage the budget allocated; set standards of work and carry out audits; manage the portfolio of projects, adjusting work standards used in previous projects to new projects; and lastly, manage its own processes.
The process design life cycle
Processes of this type range from the need to understand, through to the deployment of, new ways of working, and allow the center of excellence to: prepare and carry out process improvement based on modeling of the “as is” situation and according to parameters defined for the processes; and define process-related indicators, systems, competences, risks and responsibilities.
Day-to-day management
Processes relating to day-to-day management are regarded as an end purpose when the center of excellence also plays a role in coordinating day-to-day matters in the organization. These types of process enable the center of excellence to: monitor and control process execution; record process performance; record and control deviations with impact; and evaluate process performance.
Support for the process center of excellence
The processes relating to support for the center of excellence are responsible for: preparing and maintaining the process center of excellence team; maintaining process center of excellence systems; recording process-related learning; and maintaining the process center of excellence communication plan.
4. Findings and conclusions
This article identified a basic structure of a process center of excellence, by finding conceptual frameworks and conducting interviews in Brazilian companies. The PCE may be essentially normative, focusing on work project design and directed more towards AS IS modeling, improving and deploying new processes. However, it may move into coordinating and controlling the activities and resource allocation that occur as part of organizations’ day-to-day operations.
The outcome was that the processes were validated within the five organizations, which increased the degree of confidence in using the model for structuring the process center of excellence proposed.
The case studies revealed that PCE are not responsible for day-to-day management. Therefore, it’s not possible to state these cases as being more closely associated with by-process management. The cases were also useful to create and validate a “process management process”. The next paper will detail the three different managerial models. The third will present a responsibility matrix defining which organization unit does what in process management and the last one will present PCE organization structure scenarios.
This study was conducted by a team composed by Rafael Paim, Vanessa Nunes, Bruno Pinho, Flavia Santoro, Claudia Cappelli and Fernanda Baiao from GEOS/Cefet-RJ, Np2tec/Unirio & GPI/UFRJ.
5. REFERENCES
[1] Davenport, T., The Coming Commoditization of Processes. Harvard Business Review. Vol.83. No. 6, pp. 100-108, 2005.[2] Fettke, P., Loos, P. & Zwicker, J., Business Process Reference Models: Survey and Classification, In: Bussel et. al. (Eds.), BPM 2005 Workshops, LNCS 3812. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2006.[3] Hammer, M. The audit process. Boston: HBR Press. 2007.[4] Harmon, P., Wolf, C., The State of Business Process Management, Business Process Trends, In: www.bptrends.com, 2006, 2007, 2008.[5] Paim, R., Caulliraux, H. & Cardoso, R. Process Management Tasks: a conceptual and practical view, Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 15. N. 5, 2008.
