Business Process Management:Process Identification

prof.dr.ir. Hajo Reijers

BPM recap

• Any process is better than no process• A good process is better than a bad process• Even a good process can be improved

Michael Hammer(1948 – 2008)

BPM life-cycle

DeploymentIdentification Discovery

Diagnosis

Planning

Control

Design

Execution

Agenda

• Identification phase• The link with process modeling

Goal

• Identify processes that are worthwhile to manage• e.g. to redesign or to support with workflow technology

Identification phase

Key activities

• Enumerate major processes• Determine process boundaries• Assess strategic relevance of each process• Render high-level judgments of the “health” of

each process• Qualify the culture and politics of each process• Define manageable process innovation scope

See Davenport (1993)

Process selection

What is a process?

Processes are not functions

“Some people take the lazy way out. They use the term ‘process’ without really understanding it […]. A common indication of this occurs when we ask someone to identify the organization’s processes and the response is: ‘Sales, marketing, manufacturing, logistics, and finance.’ Simply calling your functions processes doesn’t make them processes.”Hammer and Stanton (1995)

Business process

• “A set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome.”Davenport (1990)

• Two important characteristics:• it has customers, either internal or external to a firm• it crosses organizational boundaries, i.e. it occurs

across or between organizational subunits

Rule of thumb

“If it does not make at least three people mad, it’s not a process.”Hammer and Stanton (1995)

Examples of business processes

• Ordering goods from a supplier• customer: user of the good• involved parties: purchasing, receiving, accounts

payable, supplier organizations• Developing a new product• Creating a marketing plan• Processing an insurance claim• Etc.

Issues

Process enumeration

• Typical number of processes is unclear• Trade-off:

• ensuring process scope is manageable• process scope determines potential impact

• Rule of thumb: 10-20 main processes

Process boundaries

• Processes are interdependentInsight into relations is required

• main processes – subprocesses• upstream – downstream processes

• Processes change over time• identification should be exploratory and iterative• improvement opportunities are time-constrained

Process selection

Four criteria:1. Assess strategic relevance of each process2. Render high-level judgments of the “health” of each

process3. Qualify the culture and politics of each process4. Define manageable process innovation scope

Process selection

• Concurrent process initiatives• limited resources• coordination complexity

• Limited number of “active” process management projects

The link with process modeling

DeploymentIdentification Discovery Diagnosis

Planning

Control

Design

Execution

BPM Life-cycle

High-level process overview

is sufficientRequire detailed models of processes

Rendersa detailed

understanding

Conclusion

• Identification is a necessary first step• Few strict rules, many issues• Process modeling is required for all further phases of

the BPM life-cycle