Some mapping initiatives are scoped very tightly – perhaps only a few workflows that are part of a much larger business process. recruiting, customer billing, etc.) is performed independently in multiple business units or divisions of an organization, there will be variation in how the process is performed among the business units or divisions.
If, for example, two or more people are performing the same work activity in a business process, there will typically be some variation in how the work activity is performed among those people. That said, it’s also important to understand that there can be multiple “right” stories. Accordingly, I typically start by engaging the people that actually perform the majority of the work activity in the processes – typically front-line staff and supervisors – and then work my way up to managers and leadership as appropriate to confirm, verify and provide additional insight into the process. There is often a disconnect between how managers perceive that a process is performed and how the process is actually performed. And, if your idea is a bad idea, the reaction from your SMEs and stakeholders will be – in their mind, not verbally, “this person does not know enough about our business and processes to know that it’s a bad idea” – and you lose credibility.Įnsure that as a business analyst, you engage a representative balanced mix of SMEs and stakeholders. Attempting to analyze and improve a business process before thoroughly understanding the process compromises the objective of current state mapping and creates credibility and trust issues between you, the business analyst, and your SMEs and stakeholders.įor example, while you are engaging your SMEs and stakeholders in mapping the current state, you throw out an idea to improve the process – saying something like “how about if you tried this rather than this thing you are doing.” Even if your idea is a good idea, one of your SMEs or stakeholders has probably already come up with that idea but was not able to move it forward – and they will be resentful of you putting forth their good idea. The objective of current-state mapping is to deeply engage subject matter experts (SMEs) and other stakeholders to develop a thorough and accurate depiction of the current state. For example, the four work activities Order Associate Classifies Order, Account Specialist Creates Customer Account, Financial Analyst Analyzes Customer’s Credit, and Credit Specialist Contact Customer are a workflow in the Order Fulfillment process.Ī business process then, simply defined, is the end-to-end set of work activities and associated workflows.ġ0 Business Process Modeling Best Practicesĭo not try to analyze a business process or suggest ideas for improving a business process while you are trying to understand and map the current-state of a business process. Reviews Order for Acceptance, etc.Ī “workflow” is a sequence of work activities that result in an end point in the process. For example, some of the work activities in the Order Fulfillment process (see process map below) are Order Associate Classifies Order, Account Specialist Creates Customer Account, Sales Mgr. Work activities are where the actual work of the process is performed. There are two core components of a business process – work activities and workflow.Ī “work activity” is a cohesive unit of work performed by an actor (person or system) that transforms inputs into outputs in accordance with a set of business rules (formal or informal).
Note: for the purpose of this post the term process model and process map are used interchangeably. However, modeling a business process, both current state and future state, is essential to the successful analysis of business processes. The focus of this blog is on that core set of best practices for modeling business processes, not on analyzing business process – that is the subject of an upcoming blog post.
My experience is that there are a core set of business process modeling best practices that apply regardless of industry, business function or type of organization. I have created hundreds of current-state and future-state business process models across pretty much every industry, business function and type of organization (public companies, private sector, government).