Preface

Today’s business environment requires organizations to be fast, flexible, and fluid. As a result, corporate cultures and subsequent operational practices have had to adapt and evolve to meet ever-changing market requirements. Executives know their business is dependent on constantly adapting to these shifts in the marketplace, and adjusting business processes has become a primary means of sustaining industry competitiveness. Adopting a process-oriented perspective can assist organizations with delivering attractive products and services to customers, add efficiency to the way in which they operate, and in many cases facilitate their survival and prosperity in the face of competition. Whether an enterprise is focused on efficiency gains, innovation, growth, cost reductions, or customer satisfaction, Process Improvement has become an essential ingredient for business sucess.

Unfortunately, wide adoption of Process Improvement as a discipline has inspired an increased development of models and methods, and this proliferation has led to conflicts in goals and techniques, wasted investments in competing training programs, and overall confusion about which of the various models best applies to an organization’s specific needs. As a result, developing flexible processes and finding trained practitioners to facilitate improvement efforts has become increasingly difficult. Organizations have found themselves struggling to attract, develop, motivate, organize, and retain talented people who possess the training and foundations of Process Improvement needed to deliver a unified and winning outcome.

Over the years, there have been many texts that focus on individual Process Improvement methodologies, but very few that help professionals understand Process Improvement as an end-to-end enterprise construct, or the issues involved in designing effective Process Improvement structures, organizations, and cultures. Moreover, we have observed several other recurrent problems that have led to organizational frustration and unsuccessful or undesirable Process Improvement outcomes. These include the following:

•  Process Improvement efforts are often carried out without an enterprise perspective in mind, leading to situations where the wrong problem or only a fragment of the real problem has been resolved.

•  Process Improvement efforts often overlook how process changes will affect the employees who will interact with them, leading to stakeholder resistance to future improvement engagements.

•  Process models and designs are often executed without following a set of proper architecture principles, leading to opposing or redundant implementations.

•  Process Improvement Managers are often confused about which Process Improvement method to use and the scenarios in which certain methods are most appropriate.

•  Many Process Improvement projects are very complex and have multiple and changing objectives. In addition, current Process Improvement methods do not incorporate agility, making the development and application of improvements more challenging.

•  Process Improvement vocabulary and concepts are often presented in confusing, unintelligible, or unfriendly ways to stakeholders, leading to business fatigue and frustration.

•  Organizational Process documentation is often stored in disparate systems or locations with no centralized view that is easy to explore or navigate.

•  Process Improvement organizations lack a comprehensive framework where enterprise architecture principles and process modeling and improvement concepts are strategically aligned and have standardized definitions.

•  Process Improvement lacks a common set of roles or titles to describe practitioners and professionals similar to other disciplines, such as Project Management or Business Analysis.

•  Process Improvement lacks a comprehensive standard or body of knowledge that defines the necessary terminology and concepts in an unambiguous way.

In a business environment that demands faster responses, better service, and increased agility, organizations must ensure that Process Improvement is an enabler of organizational change and not a hindrance. With the huge growth in spending on Process Improvement by enterprises and the strong evidence that significant investment in this domain can lead to cost savings and better business decision-making, the time has come to make the Process Improvement discipline more professional. The Process Improvement Handbook serves to establish the foundation and instruction needed to create, maintain, measure, and flex processes while equipping practitioners with the necessary knowledge to create consistent and successful outcomes. This handbook is intended to provide a framework and a set of tools and principles that can substantively address the problems that often burden the Process Improvement profession.

TRISTAN BOUTROS

TIM PURDIE