Five Ways to Kill a BPM Effort

Based on personal observations, discussions with hundreds of industry experts, and reviews of multiple industry surveys, I have identified the emergence of some of the worst practices that can affect a BPM effort. While other worst practices certainly exist, these five are the early BPM killers.

Support is Shaky: (Tent Poles are there for a Reason)

The most difficult aspect of BPM is to get support for the BPM effort. Everyone wants executive management support, and when this support exists, it is a beautiful thing. I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced it twice. The problem with executive management support is that successful and supportive executives are rare, and they are quite often distracted by career initiatives.

The next best alternative is a visionary business leader, one who might not be at the executive level, yet understands that good processes means a productivity increase for the organization. Even if you are fortunate enough to get top management support and/or a strong visionary, keeping that support is a challenge because successful leaders frequently move up and/or out.

The reality is that this does not always happen, requiring a grass roots effort to catch the attention of willing business professionals. I’ve been here as well. All one needs is a sample process that delivers results on a smaller scale that can be completed in three or four months. Of course, this would occur after a smaller proof of concept that would show results in 30 days.

Developing this kind of repeatable impact creates the kind momentum that attracts supporters. For those who can’t find a business sponsor at any level can try processes internal to Information Technology (IT) to practice readiness for the day the business folks are ready, willing and able. (see New to Process Management? Try ITPM )

Scope is Wrong: (Know when to hold them; Know when to fold them)

Just like any project, keeping scope-creep out of BPM efforts is important. It is also important to learn from iterations in the process definition and relax the scope where success or higher return on investment is likely. This is a difficult balance and requires solid judgment with an eye for process context. This can be aided by doing a thin top-level process model first and narrowing the context of the BPM effort (see A Strategist’s Perspective: Designing Process Properly ).

It is important to have the core team decide when the scope should change because many advisors make wise decisions. You will find that this links quite nicely with the idea of having frequent validations that can ultimately serve as excellent enablers for creating excellent processes.

Skills are Lacking: (The little train that couldn’t).

Even the most motivated and determined personnel need a skills boost. The key focus of any initial BPM effort revolves around process discovery, which also ties into process scope. If you can’t or won’t bring in outside help, then learning about process discovery to enable organizational and/or actual process changes that are manual in nature is crucial.

There are many resources available like BP Trends, BPMG, Attaining Edge, WFMC, and many other boutique process service providers. There are many more and the BP Trends resources tab has a great list of vendors and associations. I do not know of anyone who rates the trainers at this moment in time; however, this blog might be a place to start rating outside trainers to see if they understand process discovery (Process Discovery Done Right (R5)).

Seeking Validation is not Important: (The blind leading the blind).

The danger in working with an incremental process like BPM is that repeated validation is skipped. One of the main differences in the way BPM methodologies differ from traditional methodologies is that they are iterative in nature, so creating a collaborative team that communicates effectively is a huge key to success.

One of most important communication points is the validation stage. This stage requires the team to get together with key stakeholders and/or their designated representatives to verify and validate the results of the process development at key points in time. It would be important to try and identify these points ahead of time and set a standing time and day for feedback.

Success is not Leveraged: (BPM without pulleys)

It is important to communicate lessons learned going forward in any BPM effort, but the cardinal sin is not communicating and leveraging successes even if they are not initially dramatic. People love to see progress, so regularly communicating results even with inconclusive results is one way to gain support and momentum. Some of this occurs during the validation steps, but there are key milestones where initial results can really leverage your BPM efforts.

Once the process is in good enough shape to run live cases, there should be a good opportunity to show some of the dashboards and the process in action. After the BPM development effort, a post-process project report should be created and published so that lessons learned and benefits achieved are visible. Some organizations have required that there be at least three positives and three negatives for every post-mortem report (the project is dead and done, but the process lives on).

Bottom Line:

There are many ways to lose; Let me count the ways It is important to know where the potholes are in the BPM road so you can steer your way through to your destination. I have tried to identify five of the biggest ones and I suspect others will be highlighted going forward for those organizations that are pushing the BPM maturity curve and are learning how to manage the agility afforded in good BPM processes.

Cross-posted from www.global360.com/blog.