Business Process Models in Visio

Simon Sinek: If You Don't Understand People, You Don't Understand Business

The 10 BPM Commandments

And Moses went up the mountain and stayed there for 40 days and 40 nights

And the people cried upon him “Why is tho taking so long?”
And Moses explained that the 10 commandments have already been written. But now he and God were working on the BPM commandments.
“Never hurry on the design of the business rules” explained Moses.

And the people groaned, for they knew that design phases can go on forever…

And when Moses returned he was shocked to see the people dancing and worshipping the document management systems.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear.
They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen.”

And Moses called upon God and said: Forgive my people, for they do not know any better, and have never been enlightened to the glory of BPM.
And God forgave his people for worshipping the document management systems and told Moses to cut the BPM commandments into two tablets of stone.

And the people listened to Moses as he showed them the tablets, as people always like things that are documented correctly.

1. You shall have no other workflow software solutions but BPM. There has not ever been, or will ever be a solution as cool as a BPM solution!

2. You shall not make for yourself any workflow design idol, nor bow down to it or worship it, as workflows will always change, and the design must follow the changes.

3. You shall not misuse the name of the workflow.
No “process”, “procedure” or “policy” can be used instead of the word “workflow”. You will need to learn the difference between them.

4. You shall remember and keep the Audit Trail holy. Ensure that every action appears in it. That includes user actions and system actions.

5. Respect internal company politics. As these can stop any BPM project in its tracks. If you need to shmooze- then shmooze. If you need to put your foot down – always ensure that you have the active backing of a strong stakeholder.

6. You shall not kill workflow instances. You must allow built-in solutions for human errors. Instead of rolling back a workflow instance, allow users or administrators to terminate instances as part of the process. Plan for errors!

7. You shall not process adultery. Stop screwing around with other processes. Don’t try to mesh two workflows into one to fit each other’s scenario – it will never work. If you have duplicate functionality – create a subflow to be used by both workflows.

8. You shall not steal time. That includes design and implementation. Don’t try to save time or create shortcuts. Do it once – Do it properly!

9. You shall not lie. Every project has problems. Your software does not walk on water, nor smell of roses. Be blatantly truthfull on raising every problem and worry that you might have. Projects are always late and always overbudget. The future of your company does not rest on your shoulders. Raise the problems and let the project manager deal with the solving the problem. That’s why project managers die young.

10. You must not be envious of your neighbour’s software solutions. Yes, ERP, CRM, ECM have lovely features, but their gods have grey hairs from their own problems. I promise you that they are quietly envious of BPM. The grass always looks greener on the other side.

And a voice came out from the clouds and said “I am the Lord your God, am a jealous God, and will punish all that use other software solutions, but will show love to a thousand generations to those who love BPM and keep my commandments.

And the people saw all that he had made, and it was very good…

SOURCE: Adam Deane

ISO9001: 2015 Achieving Successful Certification

Henry Ford was a man who knew a thing or two about doing things differently and this quote of his is resonating with me right now because of the conversations I’m having about the ISO9001:2015 revision.

There seems to be a plethora of opinions which range from “The new version is going to be really different” to “I don’t think we need to worry, we’ve got all our procedures written down and we can carry on doing our Certification the way we always have.”

So which is it?

Perhaps it is worth looking at what the ISO Committee intends successful certification to accomplish. To do this, I think it is the Quality Management Principles which give us the biggest clue. If you are not familiar with them, these unsung heroes sit in Annex B of the Draft International Standard (once the standard is finalised and published I’ve been advised that they will be freely available on the ISO website).

In the current draft of ISO9001:2015 there are 7 Quality Management Principles (QMPs). The principles are there to be used by senior management as a framework to guide their organisations toward improved performance.

Our first clue!

Principle 1:  Customer Focus

The primary focus of quality management is to meet customer requirements and to strive to exceed customer expectations.

In following this principle, the benefits you would expect to see include: increased revenue and market share obtained through flexible and fast responses to market opportunities; increased effectiveness in the use of the organisation’s resources to enhance customer satisfaction; improved customer loyalty leading to repeat business.

Do you see a strong customer focus in your Quality Management System? Is customer focus evident in your organisation’s practices? Do your people habitually discuss and understand the customer’s requirements in the process of their everyday work?

Principle 2:  Leadership

Leaders at all levels establish unity of purpose and direction and create conditions in which people are engaged in achieving the quality objectives of the organisation.

When Leaders work this way and engage their people with the organisation, people will understand and be motivated towards the organisation’s goals and objectives. Their activities are evaluated, aligned and implemented in a unified way and the miscommunication between levels of an organisation will be minimized. Hallelujah to that!

How does your audit reflect the role of your leadership team and how they achieve this way of working in your organisation?

Principle 3: Engagement of people

It is essential for the organisation that all people are competent, empowered and engaged in delivering value. Competent, empowered and engaged people throughout the organisation enhance its capability to create value.

Our third set of people, interesting, not a procedure in sight yet! This principle is at the core of achieving results through the involvement of people and harnessing their abilities, the right people, doing the right work well. Where this exists, you will see motivated, committed and involved people within the organisation; innovation and creativity in furthering the organisation’s objectives; people being accountable for their own performance; people eager to participate in and contribute to continual improvement.

When you review your audit, how much diagnosis is there about the involvement of your people, how they contribute to the success of the organisation, how they actively seek opportunities to enhance competence, knowledge and experience, openly discuss problems and issues?

Principle 4: Process Approach

Consistent and predictable results are achieved more effectively and efficiently when activities are understood and managed as interrelated processes that function as a coherent system.

I particularly like the inclusion of the words ‘consistent and predictable’ here, it’s not just enough to get results!

When we manage by process, not procedure, what is different?

All too often a procedure may be a documented way of performing a process, but it gives little surety that the procedure is consistently applied, or that it reflects the current best-known way.

When we manage by process we see that the process will have been mapped by the people who own and operate it; will be analysed and measured to understand its performance and capability; will have known and acceptable variation identified and understood; will be continually reviewed to maintain its performance; will have evaluated the risk or impact on customers, suppliers and stakeholders of its performance.

The benefits of working by a process are lower costs and shorter cycle times through effective use of resources, improved, consistent and predictable results, focused and prioritised improvement opportunities.

How much attention is put on the process by which work is performed as opposed to the procedure which is followed and how is this information reflected in your audit report?

Principle 5: Improvement

Successful organisations have an ongoing focus on improvement.

I have yet to walk into an organisation where improvement isn’t one of its objectives, apart from anything else this is a natural, genetic requirement for our species to survive and to do that we need to continuously evolve.

However, the difference is palpable when an organisation aligns its improvement activities at all levels to its strategic intent. In these cases, the organisation sees how it can gain a performance advantage through the improvement of its capabilities and it builds in the flexibility to react quickly when improvement opportunities are identified.

Improvement becomes everyone’s objective for their products, systems and processes; they have established goals to guide and measures to track improvement; they recognize and celebrate it.

How does your audit report reflect your organisation’s ongoing focus on improvement and how this is an intrinsic part of how your people work with your products, systems and processes?

Principle 6: Evidence-based Decision Making

Decisions based on the analysis and evaluation of data and information are more likely to produce desired results.

The art of decision making can be a challenge and the best decision makers will tell you it’s a recipe of: data, analysis and experience topped with a spoonful of gut feel.

This gut feel or instinct does play a part, however, it is the system’s ability to provide the analysis and evaluation of data to the people who need it, at the right time, which enables them to make decisions. This can be the determining factor between a good or poor decision.

Data needs to be time-bound, accurate at the point of need, have repeatable measurement methods, it must be analysed using valid methods, and then when you have this, it can be used effectively to challenge, review, change opinions and make decisions. Without this type of data, gut feel is no more than a guess.

How does your data enable you to make informed decisions, demonstrate the effectiveness of past decisions and how is this reflected in your audit report to be able to trust you will continue to have this capability in the future?

Principle 7: Relationship Management

For sustained success, organizations manage their relationships with interested parties, such as suppliers.

Whilst this statement specifically mentions suppliers, the term ‘interested parties’, needs to be understood in more detail so that the organisation knows: who are the interested parties that are relevant to their system; what are their requirements; and have an ongoing process for monitoring and reviewing information about them.

If you haven’t already got one, developing a System Map can really help to flesh out these interested parties, such as:

It is the integration and alignment of the processes that will achieve the desired results, give people the ability to focus on the strategic areas and will provide confidence to interested parties as to the consistency, effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation.

(See my previous blog on developing supplier relationships)

Naturally we need our people to have the right skills and behaviours to be able to build and manage our relationships with these interested parties, but these skills alone are not enough. We also need a systems approach to managing and leading the organisation to ensure we pay the right attention to the interested parties.

How do you see your organisation as a System of interrelated processes, where everyone understands the purpose of the system, the interdependence of their part of the process within the system and its impact on interested parties?

A good place to start

If, like me, you want your organisation to be the best it can be, then the 7 QMPs are the place to start in terms of understanding how the ISO9001:2015 standard can help you achieve this.

And if you want to know what’s going to be different in terms of the Certification and Audit process to help you achieve the results as intended by the ISO:

• Get to know the 7 QMP’s
• Take a good look at your current audit report
• Compare the information you see in that audit with the 7 QMP’s

And ask yourself:

“How does my current quality management system reflect the 7 Quality Management Principles?”

and

“How does my certification audit report help guide our organisation towards improved performance?”

Doing that is what is going to be different.

SOURCE: Process Management International

Learn how to manage people and be a better leader

Despite the Risks, Entrepreneurship Will Always Beat a 9-to-5 Job

For the many individuals who have ever thought about starting their own business, chances are there was one thing that stopped them: the risks.

In my industry especially, I talk often about the risk/reward relationship of entrepreneurship and why I love it. Many of us think about starting our own business only to be turned off by the projected risk, time commitment and extra work involved. True, there is much more involved in entrepreneurship than there is in a traditional nine-to-five job, but there is also great potential for reward.

Related: 5 Signs You're Ready to Start Your Own Business

When it comes down to it, there will hardly ever be as much risk involved with sitting behind a desk at a nine-to-five job as there will be as an entrepreneur. You have too much responsibility for there to be. However, you also have more freedom, more power and more potential for reward. 

As an entrepreneur you have the incomparable thrill of freedom. Not only the freedom to make your own decisions and do things the way you want them to, but the freedom to work when you want and to make what you want. Compare this to an office that has set times, set pay and no flexibility, and you can see why freedom is one of the biggest draws of self-employment.

There is also an increased amount of satisfaction that entrepreneurs are able to get from their work that individuals working in a traditional office setting simply cannot reach. The money you make as an entrepreneur is based entirely on your hard work. Every dollar you make is equal to the time and effort you have put into your career. This feeling cannot even compare to the small bonuses you get over time with job promotions. 

Related: The True Meaning of 'Entrepreneur'

As an entrepreneur, your freedom also comes with the benefit of not having a boss. This means no more reporting to superiors up the food chain of the corporate structure or being harassed by bosses you don’t agree with. As an entrepreneur, you are the boss. Being the boss means you are not only limited by the demands of your superiors but you are not limited by an actual office either. You can work where you want and when you want, whether it's from your sofa or an exotic location.

But of course, there are those risks. There is always the risk of losing your money based on your own actions. There is a risk of not working hard enough. You can’t slack for an hour or day like you can at a traditional job and still get paid. There is no medical support from your corporation and no benefits. If you want benefits such as insurance or a 401k, you need to get them yourself.

Being an entrepreneur also comes with a high risk of failure. There is no getting around that. Many people who try to start their own business fail. To even have a chance of making it succeed, you need to be willing to be competitive and to sacrifice everything, including your personal life. For many people, this is the ultimate risk: losing their personal lives while they work to get their companies off the ground.

Next time you find yourself wavering between the decision to hold on to your traditional job or venture into the world of entrepreneurship, remember that while it is normal to be fearful of the risks involved, there are also great rewards to be had for those who are willing to take the plunge.

SOURCE: Entrepreneur.com

Business Process Reengineering: Current vs. Future State

Business process reengineering and improvement is one of the most critical aspects of an ERP implementation. In fact, according to our2014 Business Process Management Report, organizations that effectively define and document business process improvements as part of their enterprise software initiatives are much more likely to complete their projects on-time and on-budget. Additionally, they are more likely to receive the business benefits that they expect from their ERP systems.

Despite the well-documented criticality of business process reengineering, too many project teams, ERP vendors and consultants tend to overlook this important detail. There are a number of reasons for this – whether intentional or because project team members don’t know any better:

Business process reengineering appears to cost more time and money – at least on paper.  During the conceptual phase of implementation project planning – where some things look good on paper but don’t translate to reality – project teams decide business process reengineering will take too long, cost too much money and expose the project to too much risk. After all, isn’t it reasonable to assume that if we start configuring software without spending time to change our business processes, that the implementation will go faster? On paper, yes. In reality, no. Failure to address or improve business processes too often results in additional complexities caused by inefficient operations that result in immensely slowing down the technical aspects of an implementation.

Less experienced ERP implementers defer to the ERP software to deliver business process improvements.We’ve all heard it repeatedly during ERP vendor sales cycles: don’t think too much about your current or future business processes until after you buy our software. This is often referred to as the “easy button,” which most of us know does not exist for ERP implementations. In reality, most ERP software is extremely robust and flexible, meaning that even the simplest business processes can be executed in numerous ways, resulting in millions of potential variations across any one organization. This complexity is overwhelming, will slow down your project and will ultimately cost you a great deal of money if your business processes aren’t well-defined prior to beginning the design and build phases of your implementation.

Too many organizations think that they will simply start with a clean slate and throw out their old business processes. We get it: your current business processes and systems are outdated, inefficient and ineffective – and you want nothing to do with those broken business processes going forward. However, too many organizations throw the baby out with the bath water by neglecting those things that have made them successful. In addition, employees won’t understand the future state business processes unless they are communicated and trained in a way that connects them to the current way of doing things – or those processes that they understand best.  Even the best-designed business processes will be ineffective if your employees can’t understand them in the context of how processes work today.

So what is an ERP implementation team to do? There are three ways to help ensure that your team is able to avoid the three common pitfalls outlined above:

1. Don’t forget to address both your current and future business processes. This will help you identify the gaps between your current and future state which is critical to ensuring your employees understand what is changing and how.
2. Begin defining business process improvements prior to your ERP implementation. It is never too early to begin defining and documenting potential process improvements. If you are able to make the improvements prior to evaluating ERP systems, it will make your evaluation process much more effective.
3. Use your reengineered business processes as the foundation for your organizational change management and training strategy. Once business process changes have been defined and documented they should serve as the premise for training, communication and other organizational change management activities.

By taking these steps to address the important business process aspect of your large-scale business transformation, you will be setting the stage for a successful ERP implementation.

SOURCE: Panorama Consulting