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| Chapter 4: Business Process Design |
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The first step in acquiring BPMS is process discovery and design. Before the BPM team starts process design it is critical for the BPM team, stakeholders and senior management to + Understand and document how business strategy is linked to the particular business process. + Define the problem that needs to be addressed. The goals of the process design efforts should be clear. Depending on the type of business process the primary design goal and secondary design goals should be established. It could be visibility, efficiency, cost reduction, etc. + Develop key performance metrics against which the process can be benchmarked once it's deployed. ... ... Process discovery and design As we have seen business rules and processes are everywhere. Most manual or semi automated processes are opaque as they have evolved overtime and they are not well defined or documented. Some ways of working are explicit and others are implicit. I was in a BPM conference talking to companies who have implemented BPM systems. Most people I spoke to say the single biggest problem they had was discovering their business processes. Most BPM teams spend a lot of time in process discovery. I am not surprised by that, and this time spent is a clear reflection of opaque and rigid processes most enterprises have. To implement a successful BPM system, developing a robust business process design which reflects the real life process is critical. Figure 4.2 shows the methodology needed to develop a correct BPD. The BPM team (IT, business analyst, business owners and other business people) need to first discover the existing process. In the process discovery phase all details about the current way of working, who does the work, which IT systems are involved, where the work is done, any partners or suppliers, why it is done that way, what are the outputs of the process, etc are documented to form a picture of the "as-is" process. The as-is process represent the current picture of the process. At this stage the BPM must look at the as-is process and identify areas that need to be improved. KPIs (see Chapter 7) are key performance indicators which need to be identified, so that when the process is deployed the success of the process deployment can be benchmarked. The BPM team must then use graphical process design tool to develop the "to be" business process design. From a higher level below are the some of the typical goals for the process discovery and process design phase .... .... BPM Tool Requirement - The Process Designer The process designer is the common language between the IT team and the business team. Even if the IT people need to be involved to do hardcore coding for the automated activities, the process design diagram is still easily interpreted by the business users. So with BPM we now have this common ground whereby the business user and the IT team can evaluate what they are doing and how useful it is. A good process designer tool will be flexible and powerful to cater to all process stakeholders. A graphical process designer is an integral component of a BPM product. The key components of a robust process designer capable of modeling complex business processes are + Intuitive process flow design + Multiple process repository support + EAI activities + Multiple Form Support + User directories and routing + Nested Model Support (Sub Processes) + Collaborative Design + Process Simulation + Declarative Event Notification System + Process documentation .... .... |
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