Recently I’ve been teaching benchmarking in large BPM networks where I repeatedly encounter a couple of significant mistakes, and I thought this article presented an excellent opportunity to discuss them. There are six basic steps in benchmarking: identify sets of process networks, select the important networks and prioritize them, choose a BPM strategy, set a […]

In my previous article, The Design phase, I discussed the concept of designing the change from the current way the process operates to the improved way with very few constraints. Does this mean that you can do without rigorous deployment planning? No, but you need to separate the discussions: First focus on what needs to […]

When I teach how to optimize the IT Supply-Chain with SCOR I take the experiences of the re-engineering my team did with HP, and I encapsulate it with a fictional organization called “Helping Hand”. This organization is a business set up to provide disaster relief - rebuilding, counseling, shelter, food, clothing, and so forth. […]

Recently somebody asked me what some of the key reasons of failure are for new teams adopting Business Process Management or SCOR. The number one risk is obvious: lack of sponsorship. A close second however is the inability to prove the value (of the team). One of the biggest start-up problems is the focus on […]

Have you ever visited an Ikea? Ikea has starter kits for those that are starting a life for themselves away from home. My cousin, an about-to-be-student, headed to the local Ikea and selected furniture, furnishings and kitchen ‘equipment’. At Ikea, as a starter he doesn’t have to figure out what he needs for his kitchen, […]

I have a certain fondness for reading about mathematics. One topic that I find especially interesting concerns the “great unsolved problems” in mathematics. A good example is Fermat’s Last Theorem. Fermat conjectured that there are no whole-number solutions for the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ, where a, b, c, and n are all integers.[1] I don’t lay […]

The promise of Business Process Management, like other management techniques, is the promise of a kind of business utopia where your business is growing, reducing costs, and simultaneously improving performance, all in a wonderfully self-optimizing system. Business people, however, are frequently rational, and to a rational business person, this utopian promise sounds a bit too […]

When Paul Harmon asked me to write a column for Business Process Trends about my experiences as Senior Director of IT Business Process Management at Hewlett Packard, I felt that it would be a wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts on some of the problems and the opportunities involved in setting up a BP change organization. At […]