The Insiders’ Guide to

BPM7 Steps to Process Mastery

By Terry Schurter Step 2 – Build and Elegant Design

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 2

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

This presentation goes through the following steps:

1) Identify the Participants in the Process2) Perform the Agile Style Task Analysis3) Calculate the Process Baseline (work and complexity)4) Identify Actions that reduce work and complexity5) Assess improvement against Goals (from Step 1)

Templates are included at the end of the presentation to help in building Elegant process designs.

How to Build and Elegant Process Design

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 3

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

Every process is a story. It is the story of work that people do, how they interact with their environment, and with other people in the organization.

Without an understanding of this story, we cannot hope to produce an elegant process design. Can you imagine editing a book without knowing its story first?

In Step 2 of the Insiders’ Guide to BPM, we need to build our understanding of the process story so that we can then improve upon it.

We start to build our understanding of the process story by identifying the participants in the process.

Processes tell a story…

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 4

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

Participants (who does the work in this process?)

Process Participants

1 Customer Service Representative2 Agent3 Processor4 Underwriter5 Customer Liaison

Process Participants

1. Participants should be identified by their role, most commonly a job title.

2. Participants can also be non-employees, including Customers, Partners and Suppliers.

Though it is not required, it is recommended that participants be recorded in the order of their first appearance in the process.

Documenting the participants in the process sets the stage for next part of Step 2, creating the Agile Style Task Analysis.

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 5

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

The Task Analysis uses the Agile story-style sentence structure like this: As a [participant] I [action] [object].

There are important implications to this technique that include:• Tasks are described in first person – encouraging the analysis to “look

through the eyes” of the person doing the work.• The Task sentence structure influences the analysis to identify Tasks as

the interactions [action] of the process participant to the objects [object] around them.

• The Task sentence structure builds descriptive work statements that are easy for people to relate to and to visualize.

• The Task descriptions are in a form that is conducive to identifying additional work context needed to drive personal productivity, align process designs to real work needs, and create process transparency.

The Task Analysis…

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The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

The Agile Style Task Analysis

ParticipantAction(the task being performed)

Primary Object(the object of the

Action)

Work Object Type

1 As an Underwriter I review the application Document

The Participant (from our Part 1 list) is who performs the

task

This describes what the

participant does…

This is the object the participant interacts with…

*Tip – it’s often easier to define this before the Action…

Object Categorization (Customer, Person, Document, System, Queue, etc.)

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The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

With the Task Analysis in hand, improvement actions are sought (or validated) by their reduction in these key process variables…

1) Work as defined by the number of Tasks2) Complexity as defined by number of Tasks, Hand-offs, Participants,

Objects and Challenges

In all cases, we are looking for reduction, or elimination, of work and complexity. This is primarily achieved through design and automation*.

*When automation removes work or complexity as experienced by the Participants in the process, it is essentially removed or eliminated from the process experience (assuming the automation does not introduce any new work, interactions or challenges into the process).

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication Leonardo da Vinci

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The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

Assessing Process Improvement

# Tasks

# Hand-offs (each time

work changes hands)

# Participant

s

# Objects(unique

)

# Challenges

B

1

2

nBaseline – Total for each category before improvement

# Tasks – Total number of Tasks Eliminated

# Hand-offs – Total number of Hand-offs Eliminated

# Participants – Total number of Participant (roles) Eliminated

# Objects – Total number of different objects Eliminated

# Challenges – Total number of challenges Eliminated (defined in Step 3)

Baseline

Improvement

1

Improvement

2

Improvement

n

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 9

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

Calculating Net Gain

Tasks

Hand-offs (each time

work changes hands)

Participants

Objects(unique

)Challenges

B 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

1

2

nTasks – Percent Improvement (Tasks Eliminated/Baseline Tasks)*100

Hand-offs – Percent Improvement (Hand-offs Eliminated/Baseline Hand-offs)*100

Participants – Percent Improvement (Participants Eliminated/Baseline

Participants)*100

Objects – Percent Improvement (Objects Eliminated/Baseline Objects)*100

Challenges – Percent Improvement (Challenges Eliminated/Baseline

Challenges)*100

Baseline

Improvement

1

Improvement

2

Improvement

n

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 10

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

With improvements assessed and improvement calculated, it is a now a simple process to compare planned improvements to the Goals outlined in Step 1.

1) Step 1 built Goals as percent improvement (Targets)2) Step 2 assessed improvements, and calculated their percent of

change3) From this, it is easy to assess the probability that our

improvements will (or will not) achieve our goals*

*If the Target is not being met with the improvements identified, what do we do? This can be an important motivator to go back to improvements and innovate on new ways the process can be improved

Alignment to Goals – Are we on Target?

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 11

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 2

Build an Elegant Design

http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-BPM-Process-Mastery/dp/0929652096

Would you like to learn more about Mastering BPM?

http://acuitystudio.com/human-centric-process-analysis-and-improvement/