CHAPTER 5

Creating a Process Ecosystem

This chapter describes how the principles of Process-Oriented Architecture (POA) are used to model and construct an organization’s processes into a Process Ecosystem. The primary objective is to develop an overall view that integrates a company’s various functional groups into one another in order to demonstrate how all activities within the organization are interconnected. A Process Ecosystem also links strategic goals to the necessary processes and helps coordinate the various Process Improvement efforts across an enterprise, including Information Technology (IT), Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Marketing. In addition, it provides centralized visibility of any related process elements such as Business Rules, Key Performance Measures, as well as related system or technology details. If an organization’s Process Ecosystem does not represent an integrated, cross-functional view, the business can fail to succeed in its Process Improvement efforts. This chapter provides an overview of the elements needed to orchestrate and choreograph an end-to-end Process Ecosystem.

This chapter is organized around the following topics:

•  Enterprise Modeling defined: What is Enterprise Modeling?

•  Process Ecosystem defined: What is a Process Ecosystem and how does it help organizations better manage their operations and Process Improvement efforts?

•  Process Ecosystem components: What are the various components that form a Process Ecosystem?

•  Building a Process Ecosystem: What are the fundamental activities involved in creating a Process Ecosystem and what does an Ecosystem model look like? What tools can be used to create and manage a Process Ecosystem?

•  Managing a Process Ecosystem: How is a Process Ecosystem managed and who is responsible for administering it?

•  New Management obligations: What are the critical issues in developing an effective Process Ecosystem and how does management’s involvement in Process Improvement change?

Enterprise Modeling Defined

One of the principle reasons for transitioning from functional or silo management to true process management is to overcome issues related to performance, value, and communication loss between departments. To remain competitive, enterprises must become increasingly agile and integrated across their functions. However, simply changing functional titles into process roles does not fundamentally change an organization’s landscape or provide the organization with an end-to-end view that employees can cooperatively manage and improve.

As we learned in Chapter 3, the practice of Enterprise Architecture is about transforming a business and assisting the business in making better decisions. This is done by understanding how complex the business structures and processes are and ensuring that proper process architecture and change management principles exist. We also learned that Enterprise Architecture seeks to model the relationships between the business, its processes, and any related components in such a way that key dependencies and redundancies are exposed from the organizations’ underlying operations.

Enterprise Modeling is a component of Enterprise Architecture, and is a technique used to diagrammatically architect an organization’s structure, processes, activities, information, people, goals, and other resources. Its primary purpose is to align company processes, resources, and systems with corporate goals and strategies to effectively enable compliance management, risk management, enterprise architecture, and Process Improvement efforts. An enterprise model can be both descriptive and definitional; it may cover both the current state and the “to-be” state of an enterprise’s processes and is comprised of whole or smaller parts of an organization.

Process Ecosystem Defined

An ecosystem can be defined as a complex set of relationships within a systematic environment. It is, in essence, a community of objects together with their environment functioning as a unit. Interpreting an organization as an ecosystem of interconnected components can play a critical role in enabling more meaningful Process Improvement efforts and lead organizations, particularly those of significant size, to better process designs, better analysis of performance, as well as improved management of operations.

The term Process Ecosystem is used to describe the management of an enterprise as an integrated network in which all processes and related attributes are interconnected and driving toward business success. It provides an overview of the various processes within a company; their interdependencies; how information, products, or services flow in and out of each process; and stores this information in a centralized repository. Business functions, processes, systems, applications, and other enterprise relationships need to be viewed as building blocks that can be reconfigured as needed to address changes in an organization’s competitive landscape. By having an integrated and fully formed view of an organization, a Process Ecosystem can assist Process Architects and Process Improvement Managers in determining the impact of proposed changes or improvements on all parts of an enterprise. Practical examples include

•  Determining how changing a process will affect resource consumption

•  Determining how changing a process will affect activities of other processes

•  Assessing whether changing a process will violate or break any business rules or regulatory requirements

•  Evaluating whether changing a process will affect the quality of products or services provided by the enterprise

•  Determining how implementing or purchasing a new machine or system will affect various processes

•  Determining where training or communication will be required as new changes are introduced

•  Assessing which processes may be affected by the introduction of a new strategic goal or policy

•  Assessing which systems and applications require change as well as which services and data elements will be impacted by a change.

Process Ecosystems also assist process operators and stakeholders better understand how the company works as a whole and allows individuals to place their day-to-day activities within the context of the processes they are responsible for executing, the departments they work with, and the organization they are employed or affiliated with. When well-designed processes are arranged in a business process ecosystem, managers and staff can drill down through the model from the highest level of detail to the lowest level in order to view an assortment of organizational data. For example, an individual can search for where the function of Order Processing occurs within their organization, view the details of the Order Processing process, and click down to an individual activity within that process, such as entering an order into the company’s financial system, and viewing its procedural-level detail. This level of interaction allows managers to measure how well processes, departments, and individuals are performing; adjust activities or even entire processes to improve performance; keep pace with changes in the business environment; or reflect new company strategies. Alignment at each level of the Process Ecosystem and across all parties involved helps ensure organizations remain agile and maintain their ability to quickly adapt to their customers’ changing needs. Process Ecosystems also help enforce company-wide standardization and federation. Ultimately, building a Process Ecosystem means having the ability to view an organization as a cohesive whole in which the individual parts and the relationships between those parts can be identified and optimized. It is about identifying problems and opportunities and formulating changes to address those problems while exploiting Process Improvement opportunities.

NOTE   A Process Ecosystem is often referred to as a business landscape or process landscape. Each term carries the same meaning and possesses the same underlying purpose, that is, to better manage and improve business processes and related components in a cross-functional and centralized manner.

Benefits of Modeling and Constructing a Process Ecosystem

Process Ecosystems help companies implement a structured approach to Process Improvement. Through a combination of POA principles and ecosystem modeling practices, organizations can align company processes, resources, and systems with corporate goals and strategies to effectively enable compliance management, risk management, and Process Improvement. Process Improvement Managers, Process Owners, as well as Process Operators and leaders can collaborate within one repository to build, share, and improve enterprise processes. Implementing a Process Ecosystem approach also helps those involved in Process Improvement projects that span several workgroups or divisions better share information.

A Process Ecosystem also

•  Provides clear visibility into all of an organization’s processes

•  Provides greater understanding of the linkage and interdependencies among organizational components

•  Enables end-to-end monitoring and correlation

•  Identifies unused process or technology components that still consume resources

•  Predicts future state process and technology needs to ensure sustainability

•  Identifies gaps within process ownership and support

•  Reduces the time, cost, and resource strain of Process Improvement activities

•  Outlines any areas that require consolidation, retirement, or improvement

•  Improves performance, transparency, and compliance

•  Increases agility by easily analyzing the impact of process changes

•  Helps evolve organizations from a silo functional design to cross-functional process design

•  Increases fidelity and reuse of process assets

•  Enables plug-and-play or “Lego-Brick” design of components into a composable enterprise model

Applicability of the Process Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a community of elements such as processes and subprocesses as well as smaller but related components that interact with these elements such as business rules and policies. Consequently, Process Ecosystems can vary greatly in size. For example, large Fortune 500 companies may be comprised of thousands of processes and hundreds of business rules, strategic goals, or technology systems, whereas small businesses may contain only a few dozen processes and related components. While several attributes may be found in both organizational sizes, the extent of the ecosystem and the quantity of items within may differ significantly. Additionally, organizations may elect to iteratively deploy ecosystem models across the enterprise in order to reduce the inherent risks with large transformation efforts. This means that an enterprise ecosystem can contain a series of smaller ecosystems that are linked together or operate as one large biodiverse system. Within any organization, large or small, disruptions or changes to processes can impact processes elsewhere with unforeseen results, unless they are visible and managed appropriately. In order to be truly agile, organizations require a degree of integration that is not possible without the use of an enterprise process model, and this is true for organizations in any industry and of any size.

Process Ecosystem Components

Process Components are the fundamental units or objects of a process. Process Ecosystem development uses an object-oriented or object-based approach to structure processes and associated attributes within an organization. It models an organization as a group of interacting objects where each object represents some unit of interest within the organization. Ultimately, structuring organizational processes into a Process Ecosystem means considering the enterprise, not as a set of separate functions that are performed, but as a set of related, interacting objects that work together to produce specific outcomes. Figure 5-1 outlines several common object groupings or categories. The task for Process Improvement professionals is to determine which objects or group of objects is being used by an organization (or should be) and to define each component, analyze and determine interrelationships among the various components, and remove any duplication or waste, ultimately driving the organization to higher maturity levels.

FIGURE 5-1   Sample Process Ecosystem Groupings

For example, in a manufacturing organization’s Process Ecosystem, the manufacturing process is considered an object and the departments that execute the process are also considered objects. The Employees within each department are also objects as are any systems those employees use to execute the manufacturing process. Any policies or business rules that govern the way products are manufactured are also considered objects; however, they may also have specific relationships or associations with other processes outside of manufacturing. The most commonly used components that form an organization’s Process Ecosystem are described in the following paragraphs.

Strategic Goals

Strategic Goals are planned objectives that an organization strives to achieve. They transform an organization’s mission into specific performance targets that are measurable. Also, they outline what needs to be accomplished, when it needs to be completed, and who is responsible for its completion. Since strategic goals are often process-oriented or require changes to one or several processes, aligning a Process Ecosystem with a company’s objectives helps stakeholders identify which processes will be affected by a particular goal and ensure that any required process improvement projects are focused appropriately.

Policies

Policies are basic principles and/or guidelines formulated in order to direct and limit actions in pursuit of an organization’s Strategic Goals. Capturing an organization’s policies and associating them with any relevant processes or related attributes ensures that anyone involved with operating or improving those processes is aware of any operating standards set forth by the organization’s leaders, board members, and shareholders.

Processes

Processes are a series of activities or subprocesses taken to achieve a specific outcome. They are documented graphically by way of process maps and identify the sequence of activities needed to produce a particular outcome as well as illustrate who is responsible for each step. Documenting processes is the most critical component to building Process Ecosystems as processes are the backbone of process improvement efforts. Consolidating processes into a centralized Process Ecosystem repository allows people across the organization with a role in processes, such as Process Owners, Process Performers, or Process Improvement Managers, to have a transparent view into the part they play in the ecosystem and how any proposed changes might affect them.

NOTE   Subprocesses and activities are usually children of major, or parent, processes. These subprocesses and activities should also be thought of as separate and unique objects within an ecosystem as both may contain attributes or reusable elements that can be orchestrated or choreographed within other processes or areas in the business.

Procedures

Procedures define the specific instructions necessary to perform the steps or activities in a Process. They define how process activities are performed and are typically documented in step-by-step fashion and describe in detail each activity within a process, including human- and system-driven tasks. Building procedure-level detail into the Process Ecosystem ensures that it will serve as a useful tool for all members of an organization. It enables Process Improvement Managers and project stakeholders to easily see workforce elements that will be affected by process changes and focus on how those changes might affect the Human Performance element. Also, they allow professionals to pinpoint just how proposed technology changes might affect how individuals or departments carry out their process activities.

Key Performance Measures

Key Performance Measures (KPMs) are a set of indicators that are represented at key points along a process or group of processes. They help organizations understand how well their people, processes, and systems are performing in relation to any strategic goals, standards, service-level agreements, or required process outcomes. Ensuring KPMs are attached to all possible processes and activities within an organization’s Process Ecosystem enables stakeholders to understand whether the organization is on track or not and makes it possible to better pinpoint exactly where critical performance errors such as waste are happening. Being able to pinpoint performance anomalies and their exact location within an organization expedites root-cause analysis (RCA) efforts and enhances process improvement activities quickly if performance is insufficient.

Process Dashboards and Scorecards

A Process Dashboard is a user interface comprised of graphical information (charts, gauges, and other visual indicators) that identifies current or historical trends of an organization’s KPMs. Linking dashboards of KPMs to the exact processes they represent in a Process Ecosystem allows organizations to monitor process performance and proactively identify discrepancies and potential quality issues. Furthermore, using dashboards helps organizations link process and people together through collaboration, and end users can work cooperatively to increase efficiencies through the use of dashboards. Since KPMs can be assigned to any process, composing dashboards from the menu of KPMs already identified in the ecosystem allows process owners to build reports that suit any level of an organization. Executives can view reports compiled across numerous processes and at various levels of detail, and staff members can view their individual performances.

Personas

Personas are detailed descriptions or depictions of customers and users of a process. Personas are based on real people and real data that humanize and capture key attributes about archetypal process customers. This data might include customer goals, preferences, personalities, and motivations. Building Personas into an organization’s processes helps owners, operators, and improvement managers make informed design decisions and, more importantly, increases empathy within process designs. The primary notion is that if an organization wishes to design effective processes, the processes must be designed on both the customer’s and the operator’s requirements. Figure 5-2 depicts what a persona might look like for a customer of a product returns process.

FIGURE 5-2   Sample Persona of a Process Customer

Resources

Resources are the components required to carry out the activities of a given process or series of processes. Resources can be people, equipment, systems, facilities, or anything required for the completion of a process step. By modeling organizational resources, Process Improvement professionals are able to understand who is responsible, accountable, informed, and consulted for different activities, including human resources directly involved in a processes operation or support resources such as applications, systems, and equipment. Mapping resources into a Process Ecosystem allows for identification of impactful relationships and the ability to plan for how Process Improvements can best support the business. Typical resources that are incorporated into Process Ecosystems include

•  Departments

•  Roles

•  Staff members

•  Business communications

•  Systems

•  Applications

•  Application services

•  Data

•  Facilities

•  Business events

NOTE   RACI is an acronym used to describe the participation of various roles in executing a business process and is useful in clarifying roles and responsibilities in cross-functional processes and Process Improvement Projects. The acronym RACI was derived from the four responsibility categories typically used: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.

Risks

A Risk is any factor that may potentially interfere with or impact the successful execution of an organization’s processes or operations. Linking risks with organizational processes enables process owners and stakeholders to manage and understand problems that could affect their business goals, processes, and related attributes. Recognizing potential problems allows Process Improvement professionals to proactively attempt to avoid them through proper action.

Business Rules

Business Rules are statements that define or control aspects of a business. They assert business structure and influence behavior by describing the definitions and constraints that apply to an organization. Capturing and centralizing business rules within a Process Ecosystem allow organizations to efficiently and consistently apply rules across its various operations and processes and ensures that all compliance initiatives are being met. Building rules into the Process Ecosystem also increases employee visibility into operating practices and provides context for operators of a process as to why they are required to perform actions in a certain manner o sequence. Easy access to business rules also enables prompt and comprehensive Process Improvement decisions that comply with the law, company policy, business unit policy, and contractual obligations. Figure 5-3 illustrates several common business rule attributes that are attached to rules stored within a Business Process Ecosystem.

FIGURE 5-3   Common Business Rule Attributes

Other Components

Virtually any business element or artifact can be a component within an enterprise Process Ecosystem if it presents value to the organization and the way it conducts its operations, drives its processes, or improves its Processes and procedures. Other components that are often built into Process Ecosystems and utilized by Process Improvement teams include

•  Process profile details (e.g., name, description, owner, suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers (SIPOC), start point, end point)

•  Job aides

•  Data models and flows

•  Organization charts

•  Projects

•  User stories

•  Use cases

•  System logic

•  Products

•  Product categories

•  Competitors

•  Contracts

•  Partners

•  Financial information such as capital and operating expenditures

Building a Process Ecosystem

An organization’s level of process maturity often characterizes the amount of knowledge it has about its own business processes. If the organization has a high level of process maturity, its processes can be modeled into an integrated ecosystem relatively easily. If the level of process maturity is low within an organization, meaning processes have not been identified or documented, the level of effort increases as significant cultural and structural changes are needed in order to formally change the enterprise to an integrated entity. In many organizations today, the task of shifting stakeholders into viewing the organization as a systematic environment and gaining buy-in to build a centralized view often fails. The primary reason for this is that organizations and practitioners do not take the holistic approach required to see the change through from conception to deployment. Implementing a Process Ecosystem and shifting an organization’s mind-set to be process oriented can be a challenging endeavor. However, Process Improvement professionals can avoid this outcome by employing a step-by-step approach that can assist organizations through this effort. The typical steps involved with successfully building an enterprise Process Ecosystem are described in the following paragraphs.

Design the Ecosystem

The first phase involves designing the Ecosystem.

1.  Develop a vision: Develop a vision to help direct both modeling and cultural change efforts along with a set of strategies for achieving that vision. This will help stakeholders see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.

2.  Assemble a team: Assemble a group of leaders and individual contributors with enough influence and authority to guide and lead the effort. Encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions. In many cases, the Process Improvement Organization takes the lead in building an organization’s Process Ecosystem.

3.  Determine scope: Identify requirements and the level of detail necessary for the Process Ecosystem. Determine the approach for modeling and mapping and what areas of the business will be included (e.g., Will it be the entire enterprise or only a subset? Will it be an iterative or waterfall deployment?). Last, determine what process components will be included in mapping efforts.

4.  Identify constraints: Determine any expected roadblocks, limitations, or legal restrictions that enterprise areas might present, such as legacy processes or architectures, potential multisite issues, access restrictions, or data storage limitations.

5.  Select the proper tools: Identify and analyze various industry tools that can be used to map and model the enterprise’s processes and components. Select a tool that is simple to use and provides a positive experience for business customers (e.g., processes should be easy to find). Ensure that the tool is flexible and maintainable as process architectures should be easy to update.

Implement the Ecosystem

The next phase involves implementation of the Ecosystem.

6.  Catalog processes: Determine which organizational processes have previously been documented and which processes require assembly. Establish process groupings and develop the contextual view of the organization. Also, determine if process components are widely understood, documented, and referenced.

7.  Standardize artifacts: Ensure that common templates, terminology, and definitions are available for use and that all stakeholders involved in mapping efforts experience a seamless experience from Process Improvement Managers.

8.  Map processes: Model and map all processes within the organization and collect and catalogue related components. Follow any architecture principles and change control methods as outlined in the POA framework.

9.  Add components: Complement processes with relevant process elements such as associated business rules, measures, and procedures. Components can be documented throughout facilitation and mapping of the processes, or, in many cases, organizations can decide to iteratively enhance process details after initial mapping is complete.

10.  Deploy tools: Launch a navigation tool for business users so that they can explore all enterprise processes, monitor performance, and subsequently participate in improvement efforts with a better understanding of process structure, reasoning, and performance.

Monitor the Ecosystem

The final phase involves monitoring the Ecosystem.

11.  Engrain processes into the culture: Articulate the connections that exist between the new behaviors and the Process Ecosystem and develop the means to ensure ongoing usage and sustainability. Integrate process architecture and ecosystem practices into standard Process Improvement activities. Launch a formal Process Improvement training program so that process stakeholders understand their roles in operating and maintaining the Process Ecosystem as well as where and how to navigate organizational processes.

12.  Continuously analyze: Analyze the new process and changes to ensure the ecosystem’s architecture is maintained. Investigate structural alternatives and use increased credibility to propose improvement projects for changing processes, systems, structures, and policies. Ensure all changes utilize the principles found in the POA.

13.  Continuously improve: Begin implementing process changes and continuously improve process performance. Complete any needed organizational structure changes to ensure proper support for ongoing process performance.

Development of a Process Ecosystem is neither the beginning nor the end of the Process Improvement journey. It is undoubtedly integral to the overall transition to process management as it focuses on what the organization is currently doing and how all of its parts are connected. It also fosters better change management but it does not replace traditional Process Improvement projects and activities, it simply better enables them.

NOTE   Process Mapping and Process Modeling are often described as two separate terms, where the activity of process mapping defines what a business does and who is responsible, and process modeling focuses more on the optimization of business processes. Both concepts create a graphical representation of activities within an organization in order to improve business processes, however, mapping is usually a one-dimensional exercise to graphically display a singular process. Modeling processes usually involves additional mapping of related processes and objects, to give an all-encompassing view of interconnected enterprise processes, activities, architectures, and components.

Sample Process Ecosystem

As previously outlined, a Process Ecosystem is created by modeling and mapping the complex set of relationships that exist between an organization’s resources, departments, processes, and related attributes. As such, Process Ecosystems are often likened to the human anatomy, whereby any critical function or functions of the enterprise (core processes) are articulated via modeling them as a backbone and any other components that support the organization’s vitality (management or supporting processes) are modeled as extensions of the backbone and form the organization’s skeleton or central nervous system. Figure 5-4 illustrates a sample Process Ecosystem designed with this comparison in mind.

FIGURE 5-4   Process Ecosystem Concept

This conceptual model outlines all of the core processes and related subprocesses within a mock organization. The organization’s core processes are characterized through the center of the diagram and represent the organization’s primary function at its highest level, including all of the processes required to successfully deliver outcomes to customers. Subprocesses are then laid out as children to their higher-order associations, and other processes such as organizational or support processes are listed within the model as attaching nodes or spokes. Process components are also attached to the various process areas, completing the makeup of the organization’s Process Ecosystem at a macro level.

NOTE   Another common analogy for a Process Ecosystem is comparing it to a subway or transit system.

An organization’s process components can also be represented in detailed form through hierarchies or folder structures that outline the various objects and classes of an organization’s ecosystem. Figure 5-5 outlines a simple folder view of an organization’s ecosystem components. With most of today’s modeling and mapping tools, each component is stored in clickable fashion so that anyone in the business can see a holistic view of each object, including attributes and details such as name, description, and relationships to other objects.

FIGURE 5-5   Process Ecosystem Structure

Process Backbone

As noted, the Process Ecosystem leverages the mental model of a Process Backbone. A Process Backbone is the set of core processes that run a business, and that all other processes and organizational components service. These core processes are structured to optimally deliver value as an interlinked process chain. The Process Backbone provides the ability to monitor the performance measures at a high-level collection point that signals business process health. Additionally, the process backbone aids in the identification of cost points that can be inspected for opportunities to reduce expense and address quality issues and wastes within the context of the end-to-end business model. As the enterprise collection of processes becomes more mature and the holistic landscape takes shape, the Process Backbone can be used to simplify understanding, provide executive summary, and generate critical attention to areas that need improvement within an organization. Ultimately, a Process Backbone represents an organization’s core function at its highest level, illustrating all of the components required to successfully deliver value to customers.

Process Modeling and Management Systems

Process Modeling, Analysis, and Improvement systems continue to grow in importance as Business Managers, Process Architects, and Process Improvement Managers seek to better understand, streamline, and automate business processes. Process Architects use these tools to work collaboratively with business stakeholders to build out an organization’s process architecture and to ensure that all processes conform to the requirements, principles, and models of the organization’s change agenda. These tools are also used by Process Improvement Managers and Process Stakeholders to capture the details of business processes, ensure that process flows are properly mapped, and ensure that the quality of as-is and to-be gap analyses in Process Improvement projects are improved. Furthermore, these tools can serve as a bridge to improve the alignment of various efforts across an organization such as IT, Facilities, or Infrastructure initiatives. Process modeling as part of Process Improvement is becoming a starting point for a growing number of process management and compliance projects. Process modeling can help combat the common pitfall of organizations rushing to execution without truly gaining an understanding of root problems or causes. Equally, Process Improvement and Management Systems make it possible to simulate possible changes and improvements to a process or series of processes in an organization’s Process Ecosystem. There are several solutions in the marketplace today that can assist organizations model their Process Ecosystems as well as help optimize business processes. These include

•  iGrafx^® Enterprise Modeling

•  ARIS by Software AG

•  Metastorm by OpenText

•  Process Manager by IBM

•  PowerDesigner by Sybase

•  MEGA Suite by Mega International

NOTE   Many Process Improvement solutions can be used by enterprise architects as part of the Enterprise Architecture tool market. Given how closely linked the activities of architecture, modeling, and Process Improvement have become, several tool sets outlined in this section are now focused on providing all-encompassing tools for the market. These tools can be used to build out the architecture of an organization’s Process Ecosystem, model and map any processes and process components, execute Process Improvement projects, and simulate the effects of proposed changes.

Benefits of Using Process Management Systems

There are several benefits of investing in modeling and improvement tool sets, including

•  The ability to organize, manage, monitor, and deploy all process artifacts, applications, and services from a scalable central repository and control center

•  Increased leadership’s confidence that process changes align with strategic endeavors

•  Full business user visibility, making it easy for process owners and stakeholders to engage directly with Process Improvement efforts

•  Process versioning and change management capability

•  Federated view of process tasks across the enterprise

•  Ability to integrate Process Improvement Projects with all process elements in an organization

•  Dashboards that provide visibility into process performance and enable process stakeholders to respond to events in real time

•  Ability to search and share content between process operators

•  Elimination of static collections of Excel, Visio, and PowerPoint documents

•  Easier Process Mapping through the use of templates and customized shape pallets

Simulation and Optimization

The act of simulating processes can be defined as imitation of the operation of a real-world process over a specific period of time. Once a Process Ecosystem is developed and all processes are documented, including all manual and system activities, a significant benefit of Process Management tools is that they allow Process Improvement practitioners to simulate the effects of process changes and analyze different scenarios in order to solve process performance issues. A common issue that arises throughout Process Improvement efforts is that a process may be fully capable of delivering a desired output but it may not do so at an acceptable performance level. In other words, a newly designed process may be functional but may not be optimal. Process Simulation enables all stakeholders involved in an improvement initiative to identify where process bottlenecks may occur in newly designed processes and where changes will benefit performance the most. Some examples of how Process Simulation can benefit Process Improvement Projects include

•  Predicting how long process activities will take compared to an existing process design

•  Predicting how often a process may be initiated

•  Predicting the cycle time of each process activity

•  Determining where resource constraints may impact performance

NOTE   Process Simulation is a subset of process modeling and mapping. It uses preset information such as performance thresholds and KPMs along with other data elements that are added to a Process Ecosystem to predict the outcome of various scenarios and proposed changes to processes within an organization.

Managing a Process Ecosystem

As we’ve learned, Process Ecosystems help organizations gain an overview of their main processes and their interdependencies. However, the creation, improvement, and ongoing monitoring of an organization and its processes, particularly an organization of significant size, are not simple endeavors. After an organization produces a robust model on an enterprise scale, the model requires ongoing maintenance. For this reason, Process Improvement Organizations often generate two roles for managing the construction and ongoing sustainability of their Process Ecosystem and accompanying tools: the Process Improvement Architect and the Process Improvement Coordinator.

Role of a Process Improvement Architect

A Process Architect typically architects and designs an organization’s processes. Process Architects are responsible for executing and maintaining POA principles and building the organizational ecosystem model needed to support the organization’s processes and any associated components. They also work to resolve any differences between Process Improvement Managers and process owners from within the business units or organizations they support. The Process Architect’s role involves documenting the interrelationships between processes, people, and systems and identifying the hierarchy of processes, subprocesses, and process attributes that make up the Process Ecosystem. The Process Architect’s overall aim is to ensure that all process attributes are managed and organized in one central platform and that all improvement efforts meet the organization’s overall business strategy and do not duplicate or break other process components. Other responsibilities include defining and managing all ecosystem objects, determining interrelationships between objects, ensuring enterprise objects are reused across multiple models, guiding process development and improvement, and modeling and managing the organization’s hierarchies. Ultimately, the Process Architect’s primary goal is to uphold the principles found in the POA in order to increase the speed of development for Process Improvement efforts and ensure the sustainability of the enterprise’s operations and processes.

Role of a Process Improvement Coordinator

The Process Improvement Coordinator is generally responsible for maintaining any procedural and administrative aspects of the Process Improvement Organization and serves as the designated point of contact for all Process Ecosystem issues and questions. The Project Coordinator’s primary responsibility is the maintenance and housekeeping work involved in keeping the Process Ecosystem and any Improvement Projects assigned to the organization running smoothly. This includes a variety of tasks such as ensuring that repository permissions are in place, changes to the ecosystem are communicated, any standards that are required for its use are documented and distributed and administering the overall solution.

The Process Improvement Coordinator’s overall role is to serve as the Process Improvement Organization’s primary point of contact for the Process Ecosystem and accompanying tool kit. The coordinator is publicly listed as the individual to whom questions concerning the Process Improvement Organization and the Process Ecosystem can be directed. In addition, the Process Coordinator leads the drafting of Process Improvement guidelines, coordinates the implementation of ecosystem changes, and may also be required to facilitate small Process Improvement initiatives and change requests.

New Management Obligations

Managing complex work is never easy, and Process Improvement is a continuous cycle of complex improvements and change management efforts. Along with managing these complex changes, leaders in Process-Focused enterprises must also extrapolate the tools and techniques of Process Improvement to change how people, technology, and processes are managed within the context of the work environment and new leadership paradigms to deliver better results. Traditional Process Improvement focuses primarily on the improvement of one process at a time, the organization of the project team, the project artifacts, and the rules under which the project team operates. Managing through a Process Ecosystem requires leadership to think about the entire work environment as well as the specific leadership abilities expected from the organization’s managers and stakeholders. Being Process focused is a fundamental paradigm shift, with the objective of making the organization more successful and the people within the enterprise happier in order to deliver better results.

Getting managers to become more Project focused and to think in terms of what is best for the overall organization requires changing behaviors and using a more democratic approach to management. More specifically, Leadership in process-focused organizations requires managers to

•  Empower management, process owners, and team members through self-organization and commitment to results

•  Transfer authority to process owners and stakeholders in order to determine how best to accomplish their tasks

•  Transfer decision-making to individuals who are closest to the activities

•  Demonstrate a greater openness to ideas and innovations

•  Provide the necessary support and resources to Process Design and Improvement activities so that they successfully accomplish their expected results

•  Become a change agent within the organization by accepting and publicly endorsing the idea that the status quo is not acceptable and that the old methods are no longer adapted to the organization’s new reality

•  Systematically involve business people in the definition and execution of solutions

•  Adapt the style of management so as to use an inclusive and democratic approach

Chapter Summary

As we’ve learned, the dynamic nature of today’s markets and the rapid introduction of disruptive technologies place a huge burden on businesses. Today, more than ever, businesses must be agile in strategy, innovative in technology, and responsive to customer demands. In order to do this, businesses must be able to make decisions faster. In addition they must improve required business processes rapidly. Static and siloed approaches, isolated project efforts, and static collections of Excel, Visio, and PowerPoint documents are no longer sufficient in attaining business excellence. Enterprises must manage themselves as an integrated network in which people, processes, and IT are blended into in an end-to-end Enterprise Process Ecosystem. The result is lower costs, better quality, higher throughput, faster reaction times, and proactive error correction. In this chapter, we also learned the following key concepts:

•  Enterprise Modeling, which is a component of Enterprise Architecture, is a technique used to diagrammatically architect the organization’s structure, processes, activities, information, people, goals, and other resources.

•  Process Ecosystem is a term used to describe the management of an enterprise as an integrated network in which all processes and related attributes are interconnected and driving toward business success.

•  Process Ecosystem development uses an object-oriented or object-based approach to structure processes and associated attributes within an organization.

•  There are 10 common Process Ecosystem components. These include Policies, Processes, Procedures, KPMs, Dashboards, Personas, Resources, Risks, and Business Rules.

•  There are three phases to building a Process Ecosystem: Design, Implement, and Monitor.

•  A Process Architect typically performs the task of architecting and designing a Process Ecosystem.

•  The Process Improvement Coordinator is generally responsible for maintaining all of the procedural and administrative aspects of the Process Improvement Organization and an organization’s Process Ecosystem.

Chapter Preview

At this stage, we’ve discussed the principles of Process Architecture, Process Modeling, and what constitutes a Process Ecosystem. Chapter 6 takes you through a basic Process Improvement framework that includes common Process Improvement methods and techniques so that you can select the right tool to achieve effective improvement within an organization.