Experience with Business Process Model Projects

[chris_seiler]

Hello all,

Does anyone know anything or anybody who has made experience with Business Process Model / Management System Projects in terms of:
- how to introduce the modelling process in the organization?
- how people have been participating / do think about it?
- which lessons have been learnt and can be given to other organizations wanting to build up a model by themselves?

I am an Open University Business School student ((broken link removed)) and employed at Alcatel, Germany. For my B826 project (title: "An evaluation of the benefits to Alcatel TND Germany of introducing business process modelling") I am interested in any kind of experience from other organizations in the field of business process modelling: analysis of the processes, identification of metrics, improvements based on the analysis and, what is also very important from my point of view: how do the people who are living the processes, both the employees and the managers, perceive this activity: do they feel that this makes sense, do they think they are involved in the activity, are they interested in the findings and the ideas generated from such an analysis.

What I want to find out is, how can such an activity be improved in order to have a maximum benefit for all the stakeholders involved. To be honest, the management is driving this process in order to create more transparency in their organization (to identify performance weaknesses, ill-structured processes etc.) and to improve the organizational's overall performance. Therefore the management will have a big interest and benefit from a working management system.

Will the middle-management, junior-management and the employees also benefit from it?

For me this is a crucial question: if these people (the majority of the company) don't perceive any sense or benefit from such an activity rather than another restructuring project which causes
additional workload, the success of such an effort will be very limited.

If you have any ideas or links to resources (online or offline), I would be very grateful if you could give them to me.

Kind regards and thanks a lot for your cooperation.

Christian Seiler

 

[Jim Biz]

Suggest you keep reading the threads here -- many of them deal with using modles (at least in -practice 0if not in those exact words) try searching for KEYWORDS

If you have a mind to - you can also e-mail Marc for premium membership and gain access to the training & busniess model presentation slides that are there.

 

[WALLACE]

It seems to be more about culture.

Chris,
Jim made the best suggestion to you, ask all the questions you want at the Cove. I suspect that your investigations are more about analyzing the cultural integrity of organizational infusion of quality management systems and practices.
I suggest that you might want to search out Lean business management and production practices and analyze the difference Management by numbers and management by means, I found the book called "Profit beyond measure" to be extremely informative.
Wallace.

 

[chris_seiler]

Yes, its about culture - and more

Thank you for your contributions. Yes, its about culture. Let me explain better:
What I experienced in my MBA studies was, that management theory is often and mainly driven by fads. It sounds good to use those buzzwords (like "learning organizaation", "continous improvement", "knowledge management" etc. etc.) and there are many intelligent people out there who can make sense out of this, no question.
What I want to interrogate is the question, whether these buzzwords or theories are applicable in the real life. My project is anchored in my company as a feedback and evaluation project on people's reactions and experiences with the application of a "business process model". I mainly focus this question on the more wicked and multidimensional workplaces of marketing, sales, customer services, customer order fulfilment, product management and development departments, rather than in the production. Its more an introduction of a thinking process or a thinking mode (thinking in processes, living the processes rather than the structure), rather than an introduction of an IT system or something more tangible (which is definetely required in production departments). Its more a question of: are people ease or unease with the idea that modelling their mainly unconscious decision and interaction processes?
I have to apologize if my english is not as good as I would like it to be to express my thoughts more precisely.
So, and in analysing and researching the people's opinion in my company, I want to know if there are any other experiences out there which address the same problem space, who have made similar experience and investigations which they would like to share with me. What I hope to gain from that is a deeper insight into my problem context and to focus my research on the main issues, and also to have a comparison to other companies, organizations, businesses in the sense of some "intangible benchmarking" (wow, perhaps I have created a new buzzword here!?)

Well, thanks anyway for the first hints. I will keep on researching!

Have a nice day,
Chris

 

[Greg B]

Hi All,

I know Marc usually digs into the past and finds us some gems to mull over but recently I saw a 'Google Spider' reviewing this thread and thought I might too. It is interesting to see Christian mentioning management by FADs. I have seen this in many companies where someone will go away on a course and the next week we are all up to our necks in Juran and Deming Theories, 5S, Behaviour Based Safety, Benchmarking, Six Sigma, Kepner Tregoe etc etc until the next one comes along. It is like management think they have found the ultimate business tool. Is there anyone out there with similar issues?
I'd like to hear more from people that could answer some of Christian's questions in relation to Business Process Modelling. I know that Roxane has a very good system of Metrics that she reports on.

Greg B