Resources in Business Process Management (BPM)

Whether aware of it or not, an organization functions because it is made up of parts that are designed to work together in unison to accomplish the overall mission of the organization. These parts (employees, departments, project teams, competencies, processes, products and so on), taken together, form the business architecture of the complex social system which is the organization. The Business Architecture capability, on the other hand, reflects the organization’s intentional efforts to establish a formalized competency supported by dedicated people, processes, procedures, and technology, which expressly serves the purpose of aligning the strategic and operational goals and processes in the organization. It is safe to say, therefore, that every organization has a business architecture, but not necessarily a Business Architecture capability.

Industry guru Bruce Silver recently posted essays discussing the parallels between the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and the more recent Decision Model and Notation (DMN).  Both standards, as he notes, were created with the goal of business user acceptance.  In his view BPMN has been a success because it provided a clear, business-friendly way for users to communicate, and (with BPMN 2.0) established a means to tie the modeling and execution language. It was truly “What You Model is What You Execute.”

Process management is at present one of the most often implemented methods of management within organizations (Armistead, Pritchard & Machin, 1999), though it is not a new concept in and of itself. Its foundations have been set as far back as 60 years (Deming) or even perhaps 100 years ago in Taylor's work (F.W. Taylor) (Deming, 1986). Traditional process management assumes that processes cannot be altered by process performers in the course of their performance (Gartner IT Glossary, 2016). Within the traditional model, the performance of processes is tied to the decisions of the management of a given organization, which are reflected in standard process models (often in the form of rules and regulations or procedures). But as numerous research demonstrates (Kemsley, 2009a; Pucher, 2010; Ukelson, 2010; HandySoft, 2012), traditional BPM is useful in 20% or perhaps 30% of processes of the organization.

Before an organization can embark on the journey to Organizational Excellence there are some conditions that need to exist beforehand. The five essentials are pre-existing conditions provide the foundation upon which the tools of Organizational Excellence are built.

The five essentials of Operational Excellence assumes that the organizational leadership and each functional area has a vision and a structure to direct its efforts, operates to principles, needs people to deliver value and tools to help develop basic capabilities and processes.

The five essentials of Operational Excellence are:

• Vision
• Structure
• People
• Principles
• Tools

Each is an essential and critical element, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

1. Vision