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Embrace business process modeling!

All higher education establishments, from small colleges to large campus institutions, are involved in some complex processes to deliver effective teaching and learning. It is usually plain to see that there is room for improvement for the methods used. The issue now becomes, how do they tackle the problems and what do they tackle first? The implementation of new systems then becomes imperative since it’s usually a drive for considering how to carry out the business process.

Business process modeling is the graphical representation of a company, in this case, higher education institutions, as a means to identify potential improvements. They can achieve this through different graphics methods such as data flow diagrams or the use of flowcharts among other types. 25% of organizations worldwide are conducting training in business management systems, so quite a number of institutions are getting onboard.

Agile is an iterative form of software development. Through its rituals and ceremonies, it provides a quicker way to deliver value to the actual customer of the software. Through its focus on prioritization, agile insists that the work most important to the customer be completed first. Through its dedication to team empowerment, agile pushes the “how” to the team level where the team takes ownership of delivery and quality. As agile has proven its value in the software engineering field, it also has many concepts that can prove beneficial to other IT areas. Listed below are some of those concepts and examples of how they might be implemented.

I worked with an Agile Coach who used to be a development manager and was famous for telling people he could expect a 5-10% attrition of his employees when Agile was getting introduced. It begs the question of why in the world an organization would be willing to undergo such a disruptive change in how they work, knowing that such a large portion of their current staff will consider leaving because of it?

For many organizations, the answer became self-apparent. They have recognized the need to be faster, more adaptive in their market. They became self-aware in knowing that, without such a change, they would quickly become an afterthought.

So, the need for change is apparent but how does an organization deal with the inherent personnel issues that could come with adopting an Agile culture? By not taking this part of the change into serious consideration, you could be inadvertently undermining your entire transition into an Agile organization!

If you are leading your organization’s business capability model (BCM) development, here are some guidelines that you can follow. First, agree on a definition of a business capability. It’s important that the team nails this down upfront. The distinguished architect Ulrich Homann, while working for Microsoft as a solutions architect in 2006 defined business capability as “a particular ability or capacity that a business may possess or exchange to achieve a specific purpose or outcome.” He was deep in SOA research and some of his work should be taken with a grain of salt in relation to business architecture. In hindsight, there will be ways to improve this definition but this seems to work for most organizations. The bigger challenge lies in distinguishing a business capability from a business function, for example. Or from a service domain, especially those familiar with the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) Service Landscape.