On Process Improvement – Ligurio
Did you know that most of the process improvement opportunities can’t be identified using process maps? If anyone is trying to convince otherwise is telling you a very big lie!
On BPMN – Bruce Silver
Do you want to limit the BPMN palette to what business users already know (or think they know) from traditional flowcharting, and allow them to bend the semantics and rules? Or do you want to raise the bar and say here is a common process language that can be shared between business and IT? That takes a bit of education or training, since they probably don’t already know how to use it properly. But it’s not rocket science.
On EA and Software – Chris Lockhart
When you come to believe that a solution is a tool, or when you buy into a situation where the business has purchased a “solution” in the form of a tool, then it is time to hand in your enteprise architect credentials.
On Business Process Metrics – David McCoy
Now, if you’re measuring business process performance, and you only look at a portion of the process, you’re just fooling yourself.
On BPM and the Cloud – Ian Gotts
BPM and Cloud has a place in the technical architecture of many companies, but only once the non-technical issues have been resolved. And you should look for benefits in terms of better joined up thinking across geographies and speed to deployment rather than straight technical cost savings.
On Business leading BPM – Jim Sinur
Sure IT can lead BPM projects for cost savings, but IT can hardly optimize on end to end processes. Watch out for the business backing away from BPM programs as the times get better. If they delegate BPM to IT they are stating that BPM is just good enough to cut costs
On Governance – Sanooj Kutty
Challenging as it may be, if your governance and associated best practices allow you the transparency of when, who, what, where, why and how, you would have protected yourself even in the absence of regulations.
On Business-Led Transformation – Mike Gammage
Imagine a football manager who focussed totally on the strength, fitness and technical skills of his squad. He ensured that they were the biggest, fastest and most agile players in the world. But would they win? Probably not. Strength, fitness and technical skills are absolutely vital, but success depends upon understanding the bigger picture of strategy and tactics, leadership and team morale.
Adam Deane 
A great set of quotes. The first quote puts it most clearly – that by focusing on existing processes we miss the opportunity to fundamentally improve the value proposition. Can we infer from a process the value that it delivers to the process owner? – ok, maybe. But can we infer from the process the value that the process owner is not getting or is losing by executing the process as defined? Definitely not!
So how can we identify real opportunities for remaking processes? Corporate policy and objectives define the corporate value proposition – the value proposition requires decision making – decision making requires trigger events and context data – processes respond to events, collect and supply data, and respond to decisions made. We should start with policy setting and the decision making that it implies in order to identify process re-engineering opportunities.
Looking at existing processes for re-engineering opportunities is like looking for new planets using the wrong end of the telescope – you see what you already know reflected back at you.
By: Mark Norton on 24/06/2010
at 12:05 am