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When a business standardizes one of its processes, it is justified, financed and sustained within the boundaries of a business process management project charter. Therefore, a project charter defines the issue to be resolved, the scope and the goals of the undertaking and the roles and responsibilities of the parties involved. It is a contract between the management and the team that will implement the change.

In light of the above, this article will highlight how to write a business process management project charter.

To start with, there is no single way to write a project charter. The length and format are purely in the prerogative of the writer. However, if you want it to be read, write a brief one. The ideal project charter should be 2 pages maximum; if you really have to exceed this, then 5 page is your final limit.

When analyzing a function for improvement, it is common practice to document the existing operations into what is widely known as a current state. This current state operational view serves as a baseline for improvements. It identifies the inputs, work steps, and outputs (and often a lot more). It serves to ground the team and provide a starting point for designing a future state. In contrast, future states are the destination. They are the sum total of the improvements to the current state to get to a new more effective and efficient operational state. Generally current state and future state views are documented as process maps or flows. Both the current state and the future state are powerful steps for improvement teams to understand where they are today and where they are going in the future.

Robotic Business Process Automation is all the rage right now. It is the new cost reduction initiative that many executives are eager to implement. There are numerous conferences focused on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and the evolution to Cognitive Processing or Machine Learning (AI). There are many emerging companies that show great promise and businesses are strongly considering adopting these tools. The following from Accenture, is a succinct depiction of the spectrum of Robotics, with RPA being the simpler end of the spectrum.

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/robotic-process-automation-software 

Let me start with a definition of agile as it applies to operating models or processes: “being able to turn on a dime for a dime” and “being able to change faster and more cheaply than your competitors”.   These phrases are taken from Craig Larman, who was part of the team who coined the term agile as being relevant to the lean and six sigma community.  In this community, agile is associated with short-period (often six-week), test-and-learn projects, at the end of which priorities and direction can be reset based on what has been learned.  It is also associated with “minimum viable product”: the way of testing a new idea.