Process Thinking
“If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.” -- W. Edwards Deming
OK, so no one is going to hire me as a graphic designer. The above image is referred to by my colleages as 'the Mickey Mouse slide.' Apparently they feel that the bubbles representing Roles and Resources resemble the famous ears.
The graphic above is my rendering of a generic process model drawn by Pink Elephant's Rick Petti during my ITIL Foundations training. It is scribbled on the front cover of my Foundations book, which is fitting- as process thinking is a foundation to building a learning organization.
It is difficult to develop a learning organization if you cannot define what you do. Not only what you produce, but what the orgranization does and how it does it.
Whether they have been deliberately defined or not- organizations are built on processes. Processes entail the breakdown of activities into manageable chunks to support the Value Chain, or other necessary business goals.
Elements of a Business Process
Goals -
When learning about a business processes- it first makes sense to
pay special attention to the goals of the process and the high level
activities that are defined for the process. Every process should
have a goal- and its outputs should be measured against that goal.
Bear in mind- each separate individual process should support the
overal goal(s) of the organization.
Roles and Responsibilities-
Each process has defined roles and responsibilities. A key point is that these are not necessarily isolated in specific departments, but cross boundaries throughout the organization. In fact, a principal purpose of Business Process Management (BPM) is to manage processes according to purpose and goals and without regard for organizational function.
A key role, which can be a difficult concept for organizations new to process management to accept, is that of process owner. Each process should have a single owner who is responsible for the output and funcitoning of the process. This is often controversial in organizations new to the process approach as it is seen as a challenge by functional managers.
Roles and Responsibilities can be documented in an ARCI matrix.
ARCI – for each activity or task in the process a matrix is defined:
- A – Accountable (viz. the Process Owner. Ideally there is ONE person accountable for a business process.)
- R – Responsible – several people or roles may be responsible for carrying out specific activities or tasks
- C – Consulted – these are the individuals or roles that need to be consulted before activity is undertaken
- I – Informed
Activities-
Each process will have activities- these can be broken down into procedures and work instructions.
Procedures identify clearly defined sub-activities; while work instructions provide a deeper level of detail.
Inputs, Outputs and Resources
Every process – by definition - has Inputs and Outputs. After
understanding the goal, it makes sense to learn the inputs and
Outputs of a process.
As well a process may use resources.
Measurement - Reports- Improvement
Reports are an output, but metrics (KPIs) are used to provide feedback to the process. The goal is continuous monitoring to facilitate continuous improvement of the process.
Each output should be measured against the goals of the process. Is what is being produced by the process measuring up against what is needed and desired?
Process Policies
Each Process should be governed by policy statements. Policy statements identify what should be done under certain circumstances.
Control Objectives
Control objectives are used to monitor and measure the operation of a process itself. They define the enforcement and compliance of a process.
Scope
Defines what the process covers; e.g. a Change Management process may have scope only for production systems.
Receivers
In a framework of integrated processes, such as ITIL, it is helpful
to define what other processes may receive outputs from a process.