How to Establish a BPM Center of Excellence

	Bookmark This Page Email This Page Format for Printing Submit an Article Read More Articles
	Related Tools & Articles BPM Roles and Responsibilities 3 Steps for Aligning Projects to Business Priorities Getting a Practical Education in Process Change
	Discussion Forum "The key to implementing a dashboard and scorecard system is to have the person responsible for the system on the C-level team. Or at least have a champion on the C-level team. Otherwise, it's tough to get full buy-in from the top leadership." Contribute to this Discussion

By Glenn Smith

Several articles and analyst reports highlight the value of a center of excellence (COE) for companies undertaking business process management (BPM) initiatives. While the benefits of a BPM COE are well-documented, little has been written about how to get one started. The following is a proven approach to establish a BPM COE.

Define the Goals

For an enterprise beginning its first BPM projects, it is essential to set the COE’s goals realistically. Like BPM itself, the COE is not a single step, but rather a journey of continuous improvement. There will be mistakes to learn from. Many of the early recommendations and best practices a team defines will be superseded as the COE matures and learns. Establishing the COE should not get in the way of achieving the real goal: improving the business through the application of BPM. A COE will not have a complete set of tools and methodologies before the first project begins.

Start by defining and documenting achievable goals and expectations for the project sponsors. Typical activities of a COE include:

• Defining BPM methodologies and best practices
• Providing reusable tools and templates
• Ensuring consistency of BPM projects with applicable corporate standards
• Providing expertise in the use of the selected tools
• Providing guidance and performing reviews for all projects

In general, the COE will not perform development activities in support of specific projects. Project teams must not assume that COE staff is a resource for completing their projects. Rather, the benefits the COE provides to each project are primarily in the areas of project acceleration and risk mitigation. By providing proven approaches and reusable components, the COE will accelerate the delivery schedule of each project. By providing guidance and reviews it will help teams avoid pitfalls, and thereby reduce the risk of each project.

Define the Process

Now that the goals and expectations for the COE have been defined, it is time to explore a process to achieve those goals. Depending on the maturity of a company’s existing development processes, it may already have many applicable policies and procedures in place. Wherever possible, BPM projects should be treated the same as other software development projects. Existing tools for configuration management and version control will work with BPM. At a high level, policies for testing and acceptance are applicable. Start by reviewing all of the existing tools, policies and procedures to determine which are applicable to BPM, and to identify gaps which need to be filled. Use a vendor’s consulting staff to help start the COE, but use them sparingly. They are the best source of deep product expertise, and probably have insights based on experience with similar organizations, but they do not know an individual company’s people, culture and values. Limit their involvement to the tasks for which they are the best resource, not as a substitute for resources already in-house.

Staff the Team

The next step is to identify people to staff the COE. For most COE team members, that will only be a part-time assignment. Management commitment to schedule the time for COE activities is critical. Consider two primary aspects when staffing the team: 1) personality traits and 2) roles and specific skills.

Personality is the first consideration because it is the more critical in determining the success of a COE, and its impact on BPM efforts. Attitudes toward BPM, or any big change for that matter, can vary widely within any organization. Some will be enthusiastic, many will be neutral or undecided, and a few will be hostile or feel threatened. Only people in the first category belong in the COE. Establishing a COE and implementing the initial BPM projects are challenging tasks which are likely to suffer many unexpected setbacks – key team members must have the belief to allow them to carry on to the goal. Initiative is a key characteristic. This is, by definition, new territory. The team can not rely on what worked in the past. The COE will need to set its own priorities and objectives, typically with insufficient information. People will need to figure out on their own what to do and how to accomplish their goals. The other critical characteristic is leadership. The COE will not control project budgets or staff – it will depend on soft skills to influence people without direct authority. The COE team needs the respect and trust of the organization.

There are a number of roles typically associated with a BPM COE:

• BPM executive sponsor: The BPM executive sponsor is not really a member of the COE, but his role in supporting it is critical. He will spend little time on the BPM initiative, but is the final authority when decisions cannot be resolved elsewhere within the team. This individual typically comes from the business side, not IT, and should be responsible for a large portion of the business operations. The executive sponsor controls the BPM project budgets, and it is his organization which realizes the benefits.
• Visionary: The next key role is the visionary. This is someone with a deep understanding of the current business operations, and the vision for how it can be improved with BPM. This person will play a key role in selecting and prioritizing projects, and in selling the concept throughout the organization. Within the development teams, the visionary will keep the technical people focused on the business value, not the technology.
• Expert in existing infrastructure: A similar role on the IT side is the expert in the existing corporate infrastructure. Nearly all BPM solutions interact with existing IT resources. Operational support for BPM typically comes from existing operations groups. Success with BPM depends on smooth interaction with the existing IT infrastructure, policies and procedures. The person in this role must have broad knowledge of the current IT operations and good contacts throughout the IT organization.
• BPM tool specialist: The final required role is the BPM tool specialist. Initially, this will most likely be someone from the vendor’s consulting team bringing a depth of product knowledge. Over time, this role can be transitioned in-house, but on-going participation of the vendor is helpful. They will have advance knowledge of future product directions and can advise your team on how to maximize the benefits of their tool.
• Other possible roles: Several other roles are often included, but not absolutely essential; their importance will depend on the size of the initiative and the culture of the organization. The COE often includes a full-time business analyst. This person is not assigned to any particular project, but provides oversight to all, with the responsibility to ensure consistency across all projects. (For smaller initiatives, the visionary may also fill this role.) Another common role is the BPM tool developer. This person develops customizations and extensions to the core tool for use in multiple projects. Occasionally, this person may also develop components for a specific project, but while doing that they are not acting as a member of the COE. This role is often staffed as needed.

Getting the COE Up and Running

Now that the goals, expectations and staffing for the COE have been defined, how does it get up and running? This is a bit of a "chicken and egg" problem. If a business tries to establish the COE and define best practices before its first project, then the COE is working in the dark, with no prior experience to build on. On the other hand, if the plan is to wait until the organization has the experience, the odds of early projects failing increases. The solution is to start in parallel.

There are probably many applicable policies in place from other technologies. The COE can start by identifying these, and documenting their application to BPM. The COE should also provide a significant percentage of the staffing for the initial project. Vendor consulting resources can also be valuable during the initial project to help the team avoid pitfalls and accelerate the schedule. Having heavy COE participation in the first project is mutually beneficial. The project team gets the best available resources, and the COE gets first-hand experience.

As the organization gets more experience with BPM in general and the specific tools selected, the relationship between the COE and individual project teams will evolve. Over time, the COE repository of methodologies and best practices will grow. Project teams will increasingly be staffed with experienced BPM developers. The need for active day-to-day COE participation in projects should diminish. The role will be more oversight and mentoring.

At a minimum, the COE should participate in project kick-offs to establish working relationships. It should participate in requirements, design and code reviews, and it should lead a "lessons learned" session after project completion. This step is often skipped for terminated projects, but that is a mistake! Learning those lessons is even more important than identifying what worked for successful projects – it is the only way to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Finally, there is the interaction of the BPM COE with the broader IT organization. The impact of BPM will be pervasive throughout the IT organization. If an organization is making the investment in a BPM COE, there are likely similar organizations supporting other technologies. The BPM COE should regularly liaison with all of these organizations.

Conclusion

This approach for establishing a BPM COE is based on a methodology that has been proven in the field across many organizations. These are not absolute truths, but should be taken as guidelines and adapted to the specific circumstances of each organization.

The critical points for establishing a successful COE are:

• Do not wait, get started today.
• Set reasonable expectations.
• It is okay to make mistakes if they are learned from.
• Demonstrate high-level management commitment.
• Staff the COE with the best available people.
• Use the vendor or other outside experts only as necessary.

Most importantly, when initiating a BPM center of excellence, plan on a journey of continuous evolution and improvement. 

About the Author: