Designing a To-Be Process

By Romana Hnatkivska5/16/2015

About the speaker

Business Analyst at SoftServe

8 years total experience in IT

CCBA – Certification of Competency in Business Analysis

Projects in Healthcare and Human Resource

Management

About the topic

Today’s business demands constant change

Legacy systems often function-centric and hard to change

Multiple channels for interactions with customers

Increasing demand for customer self-service

Focus shifting from applications to managing and optimizing

processes.

Demand for process agility

Agenda

Definitions

Typical Process Flaws

Process Optimization Principles

Process Optimization Anti-Patterns

Q&A

What is a business process?

A collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer.

Hammer & Champy, 1993

A process is essentially a way an organisation can choose to organize its resources (people and their work, equipment, information, etc.) to accomplish necessary results. Processes exist only to produce desired outputs (results).

Alec Sharp

What is a business process?

Has a specific objective

Has a customer

Runs from trigger to result

Cross-functional

Has boundaries

What about workflow?

A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity.

It is a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person or group, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.

Workflow may be considered a view or representation of real work.

Types of Business Processes

Management processes

Operational processes

Support processes

Example: Move telephone service

Capture service order

Assign network facilities

Install premise equipment

Confirm service quality

Activate customer account

Customer requests telephone service moved

1. Telephone service moved

2. Active account3. Receivable posted

Example: Staffing Process

The BA perspective

Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

Business analysis can be used to understand the current state, to define the future state, and to determine the activities required to move from the current to the future state.

BABOK 3.0

AS-IS vs TO-BE

AS-IS Process – how a business process currently works

TO-BE Process – an envisioned future state of how a business process will work

How to improve a business process?

Automate it!

Or not?

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Bill Gates

Automation simply provides more efficient ways of doing the wrong kinds of things.

Michael Hammer

First, find out what is broken in the current process!

Typical Process Flaws

Too much manual work

Too much tracking and control

Outdated assumptions on what is important to the

customer of the process

Alec Sharp

Diagnosing the AS-IS process

Dan Madison

Four lenses of analysis: Frustration

Quality

Time

Cost

Example: Permit Issue Process

Dan Madison

Main problem: Incomplete information on permit forms

Need: Ensure all the information that was needed was in place from the beginning

The amendments to the process included: Single point of contact

Permits clustered, with a separate process for each cluster

Check sheets and templates

Key Process Design Principles

Design the workflow around value-adding activities, not around job titles, functions, departments, or locations

Ensure a continuous flow of the "main sequence" – those activities that directly add value to the customer

Key Process Design Principles

Make sure work is performed where it makes the most sense

Key Process Design Principles

Provide a single point of contact for customers and suppliers whenever possible

Key Process Design Principles

Consider every handoff as an opportunity for error (delay, loss, contamination)

Have as few people as possible involved in the performance of a process

Key Process Design Principles

If the inputs naturally cluster, create a separate process for each

cluster

Key Process Design Principles

Redesign the process first, then automate it

Key Process Design Principles

Bring downstream information needs upstream

Capture information once at the source and share it widely

Key Process Design Principles

Push decision-making down to the lowest levels that make sense

Key Process Design Principles

Use simulation, practice, or role play to test new process designs

risk free

Key Process Design Principles

If your process deals with complexity, consider using teams

Co-locate or network the teams

Key Process Design Principles

Create a process consultant for cross-functional processes

Key Process Design Principles

Reduce or eliminate bottlenecks

Various sources

Key Process Design Principles

Reduce or eliminate backlogs

Key Process Design Principles

Reduce the time required to complete a process

Time to perform a task

Wait time between tasks

Key Process Design Principles

Consider which tasks are not inter-dependent and could be done

in parallel

Process Optimization Anti-Patterns

Rainer Stropek

Optimize during initial development

Optimize without measuring

Measure in non-representative environments

Optimize without a baseline

Optimize without specific, quantifiable goals

Optimize without knowing the basics

Optimize everything at once

Confuse performance with user experience

Assess proposed improvements against business goals

Goal Assessment

The objectives must be specific and measurable

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.Peter Drucker

Metrics in business process optimization

References

Alec Sharp “Workflow Modeling”

Daniel Madison “Process Mapping, Process Improvement, and Process

Management”

BPM CBOK

Questions?

Thank you!