BPM Library

Interesting game for BPM for traffic, supply chains and customer satisfaction.


The game

BPM solution Goals

The BPM solution must meet the following goals:


* To provide users with electronic forms, whenever paper forms currently exist.


* To provide as many re-usable components as possible for future BPM solutions to take advantage of them (i.e. Prognosis).


* To allow for electronic notifications whenever applicable.


* To seamlessly integrate with other existing systems, therefore eliminating manual work.


* To provide a robust user interface that will provide custom capabilities to users and with the possibility to integrate with the existing portal.

Power / Interest Grid for Stakeholder Prioritization


To see where an stakeholder is positioning, use the scale from 1 to 10 and make this graphic.
Who has interest/ impact on the horizontal scale and who has influence / power on the vertical

• High power, interested people: Manage Closely - these are the people you must fully engage with, and make the greatest efforts to satisfy. Most critical stakeholder group: collaborate with closely.

• High power, less interested people: Keep Satisfied - put enough work in with these people to keep them satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message. Useful for decision and opinion formulation, brokering: mitigate impacts.

• Low power, interested people: Keep Informed – keep these people adequately informed, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues are arising. These people can often be very helpful with the detail of your project. Important stakeholder group, in need of empowerment: involve, build capacity and secure interests.

• Low power, less interested people: Monitor (minimal effort) - again, monitor these people, but do not bore them with excessive communication. Least priority stakeholder group: monitor or ignore.

  
  

A very Good Business Process Definition - A business process is a flow of decision-coordinated activities, conducted by participants and acting on data, information and knowledge то reach a goal.

Business Rules Approach, the four C's:

o Classify - classify the type of employee or customer or contract, the type of entity that we are dealing with, to narrow down where that rule applies to.
o Compute - for example how many purchases or orders we have for the past three months, it could be a database look up or a data that is provided within in the process
o Compare - compare all data with predefined lines. To put in action the rule.
o Control - whether or not the discount apply to the customer or particular fact are true and hence that control back to the business process.

The requirements gathering is a major part of the Business Analyst responsibilities.
As a first step of every project the requirements are crucial for the next phases of the project. They have to be complete and useful.

Here is a list of the characteristics of the requirements

• Cohesive - The requirement addresses one and only one thing.

• Complete - The requirement is fully stated in one place with no missing information.

• Consistent - The requirement does not contradict any other requirement and is fully consistent with all authoritative external documentation.

• Correct - The requirement meets all or part of a business need as authoritatively stated by stakeholders.

• Current - The requirement has not been made obsolete by the passage of time.

• Externally Observable - The requirement specifies a characteristic of the product that is externally observable or experienced by the user. "Requirements" that specify internal architecture, design, implementation, or testing decisions are properly constraints, and should be clearly articulated in the Constraints section of the Requirements document.

• Feasible - The requirement can be implemented within the constraints of the project.

• Unambiguous - The requirement is concisely stated without recourse to technical jargon, acronyms (unless defined elsewhere in the Requirements document), or other esoteric verbiage. It expresses objective facts, not subjective opinions. It is subject to one and only one interpretation. Vague subjects, adjectives, prepositions, verbs and subjective phrases are avoided. Negative statements and compound statements are prohibited.

• Mandatory - The requirement represents a stakeholder-defined characteristic the absence of which will result in a deficiency that cannot be ameliorated.

• Verifiable - The implementation of the requirement can be determined through one of four possible methods: inspection, analysis, demonstration, or test. The expected methods are usually test or demonstration. The inspection or analysis are done just in special cases.

How to get detailed information for Business process:

People - who is involved?
- Roles
- Employees

Systems - is the task performed by a system?
- which one
- define inputs and outputs

Time - how long the task is performed?

Location - where is the task performed?

Documents - which documents are involved?

Decisions - where are the decisions set?

Information transformation - Are there any changes of the information?
- size
- format
- structure

Control - are there any possibilities for changing the KPIs or changing the rules

How to make a success checklist during the launch pad phase of a BPM project

Ask the stakeholders the flowing question and write the answers. They will be a very good success checklist.

It is six weeks after the completion of the project and you are sitting back at home in front of the fireplace having a red wine and reflecting on the project. You decide that it has been outstandingly successful. Why?

1. Definability: It must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output.

2. Order: It must consist of activities that are ordered according to their position in time and space.

3. Customer: There must be a recipient of the process' outcome, a customer.

4. Value-adding: The transformation taking place within the process must add value to the recipient, either upstream or downstream.

5. Embeddedness: A process can not exist in itself, it must be embedded in an organizational structure.

6. Cross-functionality: A process regularly can, but not necessarily must, span several functions.

There are three types of BP:

Management processes - the processes that govern the operation of a system
- Corporate Governance
- Strategic management

Operational processes - processes that constitute the core business and create the primary value stream
- Purchasing
- Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Sales

Supporting processes - support the core processes
- Accounting
- Recruitment
- Technical support

Design Document - The document that describes the how of the project. The steps to make the project happen

Project Notebook - the document that records events that take place during the project

Functional Requirements Specification - The document that details the what of the project and describes the system

Business Requirements Specification - The primary BA deliverable providing the why of the project

International Institute of Business Analysis
International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) is the leading international, professional association for business analysts and the business analysis profession, offering the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) and Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) designation.

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We strongly recommend that you first establish a set of principles for building your BPM system. This set of principles must be agreed unanimously by all major stakeholders. Take, or make, the time necessary to obtain this agreement – it is a cornerstone for all the work that follows. Remember that ideas agreed by the group are priceless in comparison with those imposed from the outside.

Such a set of principles usually includes a few high-level design heuristics and decisions. (Useful information is found in the book “Toyota Production System” and “Art of System architecting”). But the actual content should depend on the assessment of your needs with respect to the task, and it should also take into consideration the needs of the stakeholders.

1. A few definitions can be useful

2. Endorse the “building block” architectural concept from TOGAF

Building blocks, services and processes can be considered to be intimately related since in real terms
• all our services are building blocks,
• all our processes are services,
• some operation(s) of a service can be implemented as a process, and
• a process may use services for its implementation.

3. Avoid modification of shrink-wrapped commercial or freely available software

4. Danger of premature optimisation

5. Avoid the trap of the selection of “top-down” vs. “bottom-up” – use the “pinball” style

6. Explicit is better than implicit

7. The big picture

8. Horizontal and vertical coordination

9. Long-running processes

10. Avoid dispersion of the business logic

11. The importance of business events

12. BPM stakeholders’ views

13. Digitalisation of artefacts

14. Externalisation of artefacts

15. Virtualisation of artefacts

16. You may break any principle provided that you master it

Sure that any of principle is just an advice. It is quite normal to break any them if you know the reasons which are behind a particular principle and how they do match to a particular situation. For example, in the chess game is it recommended to novices do not exchange the queen vs. a pawn, but such an exchange can be a part of a combination which leads to the checkmate.

Thanks,
AS