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