Sally GonzalezDirectorBaker Robbins & Company

Tom BaldwinChief Knowledge OfficerReed Smith

Agenda

• Definitions & pedigree

• Alignment of information and processes

• Specialized design methodologies

• Real world examples in legal

What is Business Process Management?

• Management field focused on aligning organizations with the wants and needs of clients

• Holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology– Transition from “build-to-last” to “built for change”

• Attempts to improve processes continuously

• Sometimes described as a "process optimization process“

Sources: Wikipedia & Gartner Group

Trends and Directions

• Family tree includes Taylorism (1900), Deming’s production improvements (40’s), TQM and Six Sigma (90’s)

• Initially focused on improving single department or function

• Today focusing on cross-departmental, enterprise-wide, or cross-enterprise processes– Requires new ways of thinking about business

• Perceived benefits– Cost savings– Productivity improvements– Business innovation through insight– Agility

BPM Starts with Law Firm Value Chain

Copyright, Michael Farrell Group, 2002

Exceeding

Expe

ctat

ions

Supporting The Practice

Managing The Firm

DoingWork

DoingWork

StaffingWork

StaffingWork

GettingWork

GettingWork

ManagingWork

Get More Work

Deconstructing the Business Process Model

IndirectMarketing

DirectMarketing

WorkFinished

ClientBilled

Time andCharges

Recorded

DeliverablesPrepared

ProjectManaged

ProjectOpened

ProposalPrepared

InquiryReceived

ConflictsCleared

ProposalDelivered

WorkStarted

TeamAssigned Legend:

Work processes

Learning loops

GETTING WORK > STAFFING WORK > DOING WORK > MANAGING WORK

Copyright, Michael Farrell Group, 2002

BPM Requires Aligning Information & Process

BPM Requires Enabling Information Flows

Blocked Information

Flows

Work Required Skills & Expertise

BPM Requires Enabling Information Flows

Aligned Information

Flows

Work Required Skills & Expertise

BPM – Examples

• New Business Intake

• New Joiners/Leavers

• Matter Management

• E-Mail Management

Key Success Factors

• Leadership to drive change across multiple business segments

• Effective partnership between IT and the business– Change seen as business goal, not technology change– Design enabled by consistent policy and standards– Strong vision in technology and business solution

• IT adoption of specialized development methods

BPM Development Life-Cycle

• Design – Focus on improving existing processes– Include process flow, actors,

alerts/notifications, SOPs, SLAs, and task handovers

– Good design reduces usability and cost issues over process lifetime

• Modeling– Assess variable conditions

• Execution– Buy COTS or build– Blend automated tasks with human

Intervention for complex areas

• Monitoring– Track and report on process states

• Optimization– Collect monitoring or modeling data and improve process

Successful BPM requires specialized development

• Understand what the organization wants to accomplish and get buy-in from stakeholders

• Understand how people work now

• Understand how business needs drive change in work practices

• Translate that understanding into clear requirements

• Translate requirements into clear directions for developers

• Provide the right amount and style of communication and training

Design Goals

• Any system embodies a way of working

• A system’s function and structure force users to accept particular strategies, language, and work flow

• Successful systems offer a way of working that users want to adopt and addresses the way they think about things (their “mental model.”)

• There needs to be a way for a cross-functional team to come to agreement on what users need and how to design a system for them

Goal-Directed Design gets you to successful BPM

Streamlines design, development, and training by providing clear steps to avoid designing unnecessary processes and features that only meet a portion of user needs.

The StepsResearch: Gather information on users, domains, and business objectives. Conduct contextual interviews.

Model: Develop conceptual personas and day-in-the-life scenarios that will be translated into specific features and functions.

Envision: Prepare mockups and key path scenarios. Conduct walkthroughs with users to verify the design.

Refine: Via iterative testing, validate features and refine appearance and behavior. Prepare specifications to communicate design requirements to development team.

“Personas” are key elements

• Represents goals and behaviors of a real group of users

• Synthesized from interviews

• Captured in 1–2 page descriptions including:– Behavior patterns– Goals– Skills– Attitude– Environment– … and a few fictional personal details to make the

persona vibrant

Personas and Roles

• Roles address the actual tasks and tools needed to accomplish a persona’s goals in the workflow process

• Personas support the accurate development of role requirements– Put a human face on abstract data about a particular

role in the development of a workflow process – Minimize "self referential design" reflecting

designer/developer’s mental models rather than the real user’s

– Assist with brainstorming, use case specification, features definition, and prioritization based fit to persona needs and roles as they perform workflow

Persona: Adam Trexler, Matter Manager Role: ApproverGoal: Give me an option where I can easily see information about resources assigned to a project so I can accurately assess the staff when approving a Staffing Workflow

Persona: Ross Fallon, Payment AdvisorRole: Check Request Receiver and RouterGoal: Show me a meaningful list of requests, who needs what, when they need it, when they requested it and how to contact them.

Persona: Lorraine Faraday, Client ManagerRole: ApproverGoal: Give me an option where I can easily access a listing of collections for the day and hours so I can assess the profitability of a matter before approving Opening a New Matter

Persona Examples: Matter Management

BPM takes a village…

• You cannot define system functionality without user research

• Identify each and every role in the process

• Give each role an identity by preparing a persona

• Keep roles in mind throughout the entire process of design, development, implementation, and change management

Example: NBI Team

BPM in Law Firms

Real World Examples