Businesses of all sizes around the world spend millions of hours and hundred of millions of dollars each year doing Business process modeling.
Why?
Well if you asked any of the senior executives involved in signing off the huge budgets for these projects they would tell you that it is to bring huge efficiencies to their enterprises.
But does it?
How many businesses are really better off after these projects than they were before? The answer, very sadly is, very, very few!
But why not?
Well the simple answer is that most of these modeling projects make fundamental errors that ensure that they will fail. Worse still is that these errors are all completely avoidable.
Any reasonable analyst following the basic rules for business process modeling could avoid them!
The sad fact is that even the most “experienced” analysts in these projects GET THE BASICS WRONG!
The Four Basic Errors
The four most common errors made by analysts are:
1. Incorrect or no basic definitions
2. Starting in the wrong place
3. Decomposing processes
4. Modeling the wrong thing
One of these errors would be bad enough but those analysts who get item 1) wrong are going to get the rest wrong as well – a recipe for an expensive failure!
But is not all negative. There are some good analysts out there and they do an excellent job.
But the means by which they achieve their good results is all locked away in their heads and, unless an analyst eager to learn their methods were to follow them around for three to six months, there would be no way of learning these methods.
But there is an exception. John Owens, a business systems analysts with over twenty years international experience and learning has written down the very best techniques and called it the Integrated Modeling Method (IMM).
Let us take a closer look at the Four Cardinal Errors.
Cardinal Error 1: Misunderstanding of Basic Definitions
A simple demonstration of this can be had by asking any three analysts the question “what is a Business Process”. The first response that you will get is a loud guffaw and be told not to be so stupid, because “Everybody knows what a Business Process is!”
But if you press them for a definition you will get at least four different answers and probably NONE of them will be right.
Hard to believe, but it is true. The reason for this is probably because analysis started off in the world of computing where jargon was, and still is, king. Nearly everybody in this world believes that they know exactly what each piece of jargon means and what they understand it to mean is exactly what everybody else understands – WRONG!
And if they ever have a doubt they will never ask. That would be admitting that they do not know and would risk the ridicule of their peers! So they bluff it out year to year, increasing their time in the business but not their learning.
So lets turn the tide and give some basic but essential definitions that anyone doing Business Systems Analysis [Key phrase: Business Systems Analysis] or Business Process Modeling [Key Phrase: Business Process Modeling ] needs to be able to give by heart.
Business Function: WHAT a business must do, disregarding HOW and WHO.
Mechanism: HOW and WHO does the WHAT from the Business Function.
Business Process: The order in which Business Functions need to be carried out.
Business Procedure: HOW and WHO does the WHAT in a Business Process.
Full definitions for all of these terms can be found at [Link: http://www.integrated-modeling-method.com/imm-bpm-business-process-modeling-method]
Knowing these definitions will enable all analysts to avoid Cardinal Error 1.
Cardinal Error 2: Starting in the Wrong Place
When analysts do not have the definitions for the basic elements for Business Process Modeling they inevitably start in the wrong place.
Once you know that a Process is a definition of the order in which Business Functions need to be carried out, you then know that, before you can model Business Processes you need to have modeled the functions.
Simple, but a step missed out by probably 70% of Business Process Modeling projects.
Solution 1: Start in the right place and model the Business Functions.
Cardinal Error 3: Decomposing Processes
When analysts start in the wrong place and miss out modeling the Business Functions, they then fall into the next trap and model high level Processes and then have to decompose these to get them to some useable level of detail.
Decomposing processes is a practice to be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS because 1) it generates up to 300% more diagrams than are necessary and 2) it is an inherently flawed technique when it comes to precedence logic.
When you start with the Business Functions, you can do all decomposition in the Function Hierarchy and only draw processes for the Elementary Business Functions, resulting in far fewer diagrams, lots of time and money saved, no logic errors.
Cardinal Error 4: Modeling the Wrong Thing
For analysts committing Cardinal Error 1, the errors get compounded. Because they cannot tell a Function from a Process, they also cannot tell a Function from a Mechanism.
So they start modeling Processes – as you saw, wrong in itself – they then compound their error by modeling Mechanisms (the HOW and the WHO) as steps in what they think is a Process (instead of the WHAT) and end up, without knowing it, modeling Procedure.
If you do not believe my do a search on the Internet for Process Modeling software and 70%, or more, of what you find will be Procedure modeling software!
To avoid committing all of the Cardinal Errors described above, Increase you accuracy and productivity and achieve quality results first time, every time. Have a detailed look at the IMM video:
A full set of Business Systems Modeling eBooks may be found at www.integrated-modeling-method.com
John Owens
Author
Business Systems Analysis Specialist
Business Mentor
Email: john@integrated-modeling-method.com
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