Business Processes and Strategy–Process Alignment - ONGOING PROJECT
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7fe_framework_phases.docx7FE Framework Phases
1. Foundations. Refers to an agreed set of driving and guiding business foundation principles to manage business processes within the organization. This phase includes ensuring that the organization strategy, vision, strategic goals, business and executive drivers are clearly understood by the project team members. Do stakeholders expect short- or long-term gains from this project? Is the value proposition of the organization clear and understood by everyone? It is important to understand that strategy is not a “plan”; strategy “is a purposeful process of engaging people inside and outside the organization in scoping out new paths ahead” (Stace and Dunphy, 1996: 63).
2. Enablement. Refers to the creation or provision of the key architectures and detailed elements that must be provided to support and enable business capabilities to enhance the successful delivery of all components of the BPM strategy. This phase is where the key architectures, rules, principles, guidelines and models are specified and agreed to enable the implementation of BPM across the organization.
3. Launch pad. This phase has three major outcomes: • • • the selection of where to start the initial (or next) BPM activity within the organization; agreement of the process goals and/or vision, once the processes have been selected; the establishment of the selected activity. Determining where to start is a difficult exercise in its own right, and the framework will provide you with several ways of determining where and how to start. Process goals and vision need to be aligned with the organization strategy, foundations and the process architecture to ensure that they are enhancing or adding value to the strategy. Once a business unit and processes have been selected and the process goals agreed, the BPM activity must be established to maximize the likelihood of success. Establishing the BPM activity includes deciding the BPM team structure, the scope, the stakeholder management, creation of the initial business case, and expected business benefits. The Launch pad phase ensures that BPM activities benefit from other ongoing or completed BPM activities and increase the success rate of BPM over time.
4. Understand. This phase is about understanding enough of the current business process environment to enable the Innovate phase to take place. It is essential that process metrics (including metrics from customers, suppliers and partners) are gathered to allow for the establishment of process baseline costs for future comparative purposes. Other essential steps are root-cause analysis and the identification of possible quick wins. There will be a need to identify, and ideally implement, quick wins along the way, as the business will not (and should not) provide unlimited funding for BPM without benefits being realized. The ideal situation is for the BPM activities to become self-funding because of the gains made by the implementation of these quick wins.
5. Innovate. This is the creative phase of any BPM activity, and often the most interesting. It should not only involve the BPM team and the business, but also relevant stakeholders—both internal and external. Once the various new process options have been identified, there may be a need to run simulations, complete activity-based costing, conduct capacity planning and determine implementation feasibility, to enable the finalization of which options are the best. Additional metrics should be completed to allow a comparison with the baseline metrics established during the Understand phase. Additional possible quick wins are identified and prioritized within the business.
6. People. This is a critical phase of the framework and it could put the rest of the project at risk if not handled thoroughly and to a high standard. The purpose of this phase is to ensure that the activities, roles and performance measurement match the organization strategy and process goals. At the end of the day, it is people that will make processes function effectively and efficiently, no matter how much automation is involved. The People phase should not be confused with the People Change Management essential (which includes organizational culture) as change management requires attention throughout the project in all the phases.
7. Develop. This phase consists of building all the components for the implementation of the new processes. It is important to understand that “build,” in this context, does not necessarily mean an IT build. It could involve the building of all infrastructure (desks, PC movements, buildings, etc.) to support the people change management program and changes in the support of the people who execute the processes. It also involves the testing of software and hardware.
8. Implement. This phase is where the “rubber hits the road.” It is where all aspects of the project (roll-out of the new processes, roll-out of the new role descriptions, performance management and measures, and training) take place. The implementation plans are crucial, as are roll-back and contingency plans. Many organizations believe that the project has been completed after implementation has been successful. However the next two phases are the most important in a BPM project.
9. Realize value. The purpose of this phase is to ensure that the benefit outcomes outlined in the project business case are realized. This phase basically comprises the delivery of the benefits realization management process, and benefits realization reporting. Unless the benefits are realized, the organization should not provide additional funding to continue further process projects. It is the role of the project owner, project sponsor and business to ensure that these benefits are realized. The BPM project team must support the business in the realization of the benefits. Although this is described as the ninth phase of the framework, it is in fact not a discrete phase in its own right because many of the steps are executed in previous phases. Therefore, we advise the reader to study the appropriate part of this chapter in conjunction with every other phase. The steps have been grouped together in this chapter to provide an end-to-end insight into the role of realizing value in a BPM activity and to ensure that the BPM project team takes time after the Implement phase to realize the benefits specified in the business case.
