Governance – the term itself usually splits audiences. For you personally, is governance what slows you down in your agility and throttles innovation or is it the guardrail saving the organization from falling into anarchy and chaos? Well, most of us will stand somewhere in the middle depending on the concrete topic at hand.
Wiping aside all orthodoxy, current challenges all organizations are facing:
Processes and supporting (digital) tools depend on fast and efficient change in response to internal and market requirements.
Diversification of supply chains and integrated production increase complexity of change projects.
New products require complementing or changing established business models.
Customer expectations regarding delivery time, product quality and service are ever increasing.
As if that wasn’t enough:
Business operations and change initiatives are competing for the same internal resources.
Key knowledge keepers retire or leave for other reasons.
New talent is difficult to come by and takes time to ramp up.
Well…yes, feel free to consider this the new normal. So, what can we do about it?
bpExperts integrated governances solutions provide methods and tools for transformation journeys
From the current knowledge and perspective several strategic roadmaps might be correct. However, are they still correct in two years ahead?
bpExperts supports customers through these challenging transformation journeys and provides a methodology and tool set fostering three key aspects:
Transparency regarding responsibility and purpose
Transparency regarding handovers and interfaces
Manifesting ability AND agility to transform business and systems continuously with a customized integrated governance concept
Transparency regarding responsibility and purpose
Organizations that are facing transformation activities resulting in a new system landscape, a new core IT system are often overwhelmed with the quantity of alternative solution scenarios. Lucky project teams can base their work on a previous strategic decision, e.g. on a software and supplier.
Nevertheless, the quantity and complexity of modules, apps, and customized solutions is challenging. Evolved organizational habits and process specific customized solutions in each department or working group are well anchored within each team. Niche solutions are competing with the ambition of enabling end-to-end flows through large integrated systems.
Figure 1 : Highly integrated process scenarios enable visualization of process, collaboration and system interfaces.
Likely to your surprise, this is exactly where an integrated governance can help. Change project teams require guidance and guardrails to enable their work and shield off distractions and scope creep.
Transparency on the principal process landscape and architecture with clear roles and responsibilities is instrumental for distributing decision power and implementation action (Fig. 1).
This does not mean that every project will require the traditional full as-is analysis and to-be design and ‘painting’ hundreds of process charts. Interrogating the organizations’ current process understanding (documented or not) against reference content like Business Flows enables the process experts to accelerate decision-making about must-have processes, those that are nice-to-have, and where it will be worthwhile to analyze and document more deeply.
Figure 2: Business Driver and its connection to E2E-sceanrios and SAP capabilities
Not surprisingly, the trick is to focus effort where it is beneficial and cut it where added value is marginal.
Strategy and Capability maps support strategic decision-making on the management level (Fig. 2) and empower project teams in defining the best suitable solution design within the business process and for the future digitization solution.
Systematically considering value drivers and business capability filters assure staying connected to the business goals and not getting hung up on technical beauty.
Transparency regarding handovers and interfaces
Once the scope and goal are decided and transparent, it is all about enabling implementation and change.
Integrated governance solutions and associated documentation must be customized to the individual organization and must be suitable to support current and future initiatives. Process models (and conventions) must be flexible to keep up with the changing environment project teams are working in. Overly strict, ‘all processes are equal’ process governance would prevent project teams from using its value in enabling complexity reduction and visualization.
Figure 3: Factsheet with consolidated EPC/BPMN information
Factsheets (Fig. 3) may be perfectly sufficient for the majority of processes while a focused operational excellence initiative or niche tool implementation may require fine-grained documentation. In a mature concept, each stakeholder group should find value in using processes, not just change control and standards documentation. Governance and oversight are needed to still maintain a cohesive overall model and enable consistent reporting of process content.
Leveraging reference content, existing documentation, and tools rather than engaging in building documentation from scratch frequently involves connecting domain-specific documentation systems. Integrating Enterprise Architecture and BPM content like we recently showcased for LeanIX and ARIS can help optimize efforts and benefits (Fig. 4) .
Figure 4: Customized Entry Map meeting all stakeholder's entry points
With Business Flows and proven capacity and track record of integrating content and methodology across technical platforms, bpExperts is excellently positioned to fuel your initiative.
Manifesting ability AND agility to transform business and systems continuously with a customized integrated governance concept
In software development, agile incremental delivery of small-value deliverables is already state of the art.
bpExperts made a good experience with adopting agile key principles and adapting them to BPM governance. Within this homology, the Process Owner can be seen alike the Product Owner in agile development, with the BPM organization giving methodological guidance alike a Scrum Master. The team is comprised of the Solution Architects, Business representatives, and key users, and specific domain experts, e.g., data privacy or safety, as needed.
Just as individual agile teams can be scaled to higher orders or coordination so can the continual improvement of ‘atomic’ processes be scaled to larger structures and even whole templates or an organization’s digital twin.
However, just like in agile development enablement and empowerment, along with strict adherence to the method and ceremonies is instrumental for the success. There is no successful half-hearted agile project and no success in half-baked BPM initiatives.
Consistent processes architecture forms the integration layer between and across process and domains. This forms the foundation for self-organized BPM teams to find the best system design for the future organization.
Demo on Demand
At bpExperts as business integrators we work with you to embed the capabilities for continuous transformation into the fabric of your organization. If you are interested in learning more about how integrated governance solutions support your transformation approach reach out to us. Independently if you are at the beginning of your journey or if you are already “in the middle of things”.
A special occasion to learn more is our Business Transformation Day on the 10th Nov. 2022. Alternatively request a free demo anytime.