How to Improve Business Processes

How to Improve Business Processes:

Improving Flow and Reducing Waste to Increase Customer Value

3 day Workshop

Target Audience:
Business analysts who are responsible for requirements specification; process analysts involved in business process re-design or improvement; business managers and content experts who will participate in process re-design or process-oriented application development efforts; process or application architects responsible for developing, coordinating, and promoting an enterprise-wide view of business processes; leaders and practitioners of continuous improvement or operational excellence; business process owners and value stream leaders.

Why this Workshop?
Business processes matter.

Above all else, they matter to the enterprise, because business processes are fundamentally how value is delivered, whether externally or internally.  So, understanding how to work with and improve business processes is a vital skill for a wide range of business, continuous improvement, and IT professionals.  But too often, the available courses and literature either float around in generalities and familiar case studies, or descend rapidly into technical details, arcane theories, or incomprehensible models.

This workshop is different – in a practical way, it shows how to discover and scope a business process, clarify its context, model its workflow with progressive detail, assess it, and design a new process. Everything is backed up with real-world examples, and clear, repeatable guidelines.

Professionals around the world have benefited from the methods this workshop provides.
Description:
During the first 2 days, you will learn exactly what a “business process” is, the key factors to consider when dealing with them, what the most common pitfalls are, and how to avoid them. On this foundation, you’ll then learn how to specify the scope and goals of a business process, model the current workflow, assess it, and apply three critical process redesign techniques.

You’ll accomplish this as a result of several practice activities associated with a case study.

Then on day three, you’ll focus on improving flow and reducing or eliminating waste in a business process.  You’ll also be able to strengthen what you have learned in days 1 and 2 by examining how key concepts, principles, models, and the structured assessment approach were applied in the context of a recent award winning “lean” engagement.

You’ll be able to view and ask questions about many of the actual work products produced during the engagement-especially from the structured assessment. You’ll also be able to benefit from discussing lessons learned from applying lean thinking to a business process, which includes 7 principles for improving the flow of knowledge work.

Finally you’ll have the opportunity to identify and remove barriers to flow in a business process via a simulation, and to use measures of flow to calculate the impact this has on customer and business results.
On completion of the workshop, you’ll be able to:

• Describe the key factors that differentiate process and functional approaches
• Employ a variety of techniques to keep stakeholders involved, and promote “process orientation”
• Identify a “true” business process, and specify its boundaries and goals
• Model process workflow at progressive levels of detail using Swimlane Diagrams
• Stop process modeling at the appropriate point, and move on to other techniques or phases
• Conduct a structured assessment of a business process
• Develop a process redesign while avoiding common (and serious!) pitfalls
• Apply 7 principles to improve flow
• Recognize frequently occurring patterns of flow in knowledge work
• Assess typical barriers to flow associated with those patterns
• Use selected measures of flow to quantify improvement of flow and the effect this has on key customer and business results

Key principles are illustrated throughout with workshop exercises and discussions.

Detailed list of topics:

• Thinking in process terms – concepts, terminology, principles, and techniques
• Variations on what is meant by “process,” and the impact on process identification
• Three guidelines for well-formed processes
• What makes a process a “business process?
• Real-world impacts of incorrectly identifying business processes
• A clear method for determining when one business process ends, and another begins
• Example – using this method in identifying “true” business processes
• Summary – five rules for business processes
• Impact of process identification for application and process architects
• A brief history of “business processes” – the rise, fall, and rise again of “BPx”
• Hammer’s legacy – understanding functional and process perspective
• The good and the bad, part 1: Why functionally-based organizations are a good thing
• The good and the bad, part 2: Why functionally-based organizations introduce process difficulties
• Reconciling the two – philosophies and methods for helping functions and processes get along
• Introduction to modeling techniques – when to use decomposition, when to use flow diagrams
• What makes for an effective “swimlane diagram?”
• A five tier framework for relating business objectives, processes, applications, and data Modeling techniques for each perspective
• Achieving progressive levels of detail – working through scope, concept, and specification levels
• Understanding the six enablers of a business process
• A three-phase approach to completing a process-oriented project
• A reading list
• Discovering your enterprise’s business processes
• “Process areas” – families of related business processes
• Depicting process areas with an “overall process map” or “process landscape”
• The role of standard process areas such as “Customer Relationship Management”
• Why top-down process identification often leads to incorrect results
• A bottom-up method for process discovery
• Beginning your analysis by clarifying terminology – a structured approach
• Introduction to the major case study
• Hands-on practice with process discovery – team work and group debrief
• Framing the process – scope, issues, and goals
• A critical concept in all business analysis – separating the “what” from the “who and how”
• Four components of the “what” scope definition – the essence of the process
• Three components of the “who and how” scope definition – the current implementation
• Tips for ensuring you haven’t defined the process smaller than it really is
• Case study – hands on practice with documenting process scope
• Initial assessment of the “as-is” process and goal-setting for the “to-be” process
• A compelling and blame-free format for the case for action, and methods for communicating it
• Clarifying strategic direction – the process “differentiator”
• Case study – hands on practice with process assessment and goal specification
• Workflow models – techniques for modeling process workflow
• Components and terminology in workflow models (“swimlane diagrams”)
• The most common errors in workflow modeling – missing the point, “deception by sanitization,” and a rapid descent into detail
• Avoiding errors with three questions to drive the development of your initial swimlane diagram
• A real-life example of applying the three questions
• Principles and guidelines – making your models useful, and knowing when not to model
• Guidelines for actors – who or what can or cannot be an actor on a swimlane diagram,
• Guidelines for steps – naming, multi-actor, and sequential, parallel, and collaborative steps
• Guidelines for flow – what that arrow really means, common errors, parallel vs. exclusive flows
• Representing the basic concepts in BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation)
• Additional symbols, keeping it simple
• Managing detail – controlling the detail of your models, knowing when to stop
• Real-life example – why detail must be managed
• Controlling detail – three levels of workflow model (handoff, service, and task)
• Definition, use, and example of each of the three levels
• Business modeling vs. specification modeling, and the problems with being too precise
• When to stop – how to know when you’ve crossed the line and aren’t modeling workflow anymore
• Making the transition to use cases, procedures, and task specifications
• Techniques for facilitating an as-is workflow modeling session
• The basics – participants, resources, and tools
• Facilitated session ground rules – specifics for “process” sessions
• Tips and guidelines to ensure you’ll actually get through the process
• A reminder – the three questions to drive your initial “handoff level” workflow model
• After the initial pass – five questions to validate and extend the model
• Case study – hands on practice with developing the initial workflow model
• Progressing to further levels of detail
• Tips for designing the to-be process
• Three common redesign problems, three techniques to avoid them
• Final assessment of the as-is process – a framework for assessment and its role in redesign
• Surfacing and challenging assumptions – using a “challenge session” to generate improvements
• Characterizing the to-be process – generating creative improvements
• Uncovering unanticipated consequences – using an enabler-based assessment to avoid problems and understand the requirements for process change
• Factors to make the new process sustainable
• Creating the new workflow – turning the to-be characteristics into a workflow mode
• Review of selected work products from a structured assessment; a quest for the secret sauce
• 7 Principles for improving flow of knowledge work
• Waste in knowledge work

• Flow – definition and anatomy
• Enablers and flow
• Barriers to flow – recognizing patterns that frequently occur in knowledge work
• Waste and flow
• Measures of flow – lead time, cycle time, value-creating time; rolled throughput yield, productivity
• Assessing flow- “where to look, and what to watch for”
• Simulation-Hands on Practice in finding and eliminating barriers to flow and quantifying the related business improvement results

Instructor – Alec Sharp:
With over 25 years of consulting experience, Alec has provided hands-on process modeling and improvement expertise throughout North America, Asia, and Europe – this workshop is based on real-world experience, not textbook theory. Alec has also delivered hundreds of Workflow Process Modeling workshops, and top-rated presentations at international conferences, including “The Seven Deadly Sins of Process Modeling,” “Crossing the Chasm – From Process Model to IT Requirements,” “Getting Traction for ‘Process’ – What the Experts Forget,” and “Five Common Errors in Process Improvement.” Alec is the principal author of “Workflow Modeling” (Artech House, 2009) which is a consistent best-seller in the field, and is widely used as an MBA text and consulting guide.

Instructor – Robert Damelio:

Robert is a consultant, author, and President of THE BOTTOM LINE GROUP, a Dallas, Texas based management-consulting firm.  Robert has spent 25 plus years working with both Fortune 500 and Government organizations to help them strengthen operations, increase productivity, and provide customer-perceived value.  Throughout his career, he has focused exclusively on understanding and improving knowledge-intensive work in service, professional, administrative, and “non-manufacturing” processes.  He’s designed and facilitated hundreds of hours of classroom learning and also provides coaching and guidance in process improvement, process management, and change management to individuals at all organization levels. During the last 10 years especially, Robert has been helping leaders within Client organizations plan, implement, and measure the results of their major organization change and improvement initiatives.

Many of you may know Robert from his current ASQ Lean Enterprise Division leadership role, as Chair of the Lean body of knowledge and certification committee, or as the author of The Basics of Process Mapping.

You may reach Robert by email at rwdamelio@gmail.com, or by phone at 214.995.1960.