Frederick Winslow Taylor is known as the father of scientific management.

In the late19^th Century, FWT studied the gainful organization of work within the corporation, from a structured, ordered perspective.  In his view, there were two types of people engaged in this endeavor. Those who do the work, and those who manage the work.  Put simply, the work of the workers is to do. And the work of the managers is to think.  Managers do not work; they control work.  And workers do not think, they do.  Managers = Brains. Workers = Brawn.

Here is a Taylor quote from Wikipedia that nicely illustrates the viewpoint:

“I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.”

Now don’t get me wrong.  I have a lot of respect for FWT’s pioneering efforts in the field of business theory and as a management consultant.

But now, BPM, a Three-Letter-Acronym, has killed him dead.

How did BPM inflict this fatal blow?

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I recently attended a Lean Six Sigma conference. It’s always interesting to hear evangelists from various industries in different countries sharing their experiences with improving efficiency, effectiveness, and moving towards a culture of high performance and continuous improvement.

It never fails to surprise me how dogmatic many are about their particular flavor of methodology. Within the Lean Six Sigma camp there are Six Sigma purists who will partake of no Lean. There are Lean gurus who speak not of Six Sigma. Then there are the fusionistas, who happily take the best bits of both. (Personally, I’m willing to utilize any tools that get results within a structured framework.) Some proudly advertise their allegiance, while others refuse to be pigeonholed and embrace a more neutral term such as Process Improvement or Operational Excellence. As a pragmatist I tend towards the latter – in my experience, for every person out there in a position of influence who is pro a “Big M” methodology, there will be another who is equally (or more!) anti that same methodology. So why provoke resistance to change over a mere label? Well, that’s just my two cents!

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I’d like to share with you a little set-piece that I often use with clients as a learning aid.  I call it (rather unimaginatively!) my “Google Maps exercise” and it makes some very neat points with regards to process decomposition and modeling best practices.

A common challenge I encounter is that people get bogged down with figuring out the level of detail they should go to. This isn’t because of the lack of a definitive standard for process levels – I think the root cause of the difficulty is simply that process modeling is not an exact science.  In fact, much of it is quite subjective.

So, the exercise usually goes something like this…

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Like all enterprise software solutions, the person implementing a BPM strategy must contend with a chasm between the business and IT. The two speak different languages, have different priorities and tend to justify results in a different light.

So which side do you approach first?

There’s a tendency for enterprise software to gravitate to IT. And why not?  IT gets it, right? They understand the technology and the inherent benefits it brings to the table. And IT is constantly justifying new software, hardware and services through the annual budget reviews. So it seems natural for anyone wishing to see a BPM solution deployed to look at IT first.

I believe this is a mistake.

Despite conventional thinking, the right place to begin conveying the benefits of a BPM deployment is on the business side of the house. That’s because BPM has to be looked at not for the technology, features and specs, but for its ability to change and improve the business.

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Yesterday SearchCIO and Accenture published a new webcast with Bob Shallow, who is the Director of Global Product Development Processes, Systems and Operations at NACCO Material Handling Group, a $2.8 billion dollar company that engineers and manufactures Hyster and Yale Material Handling Equipment (lift trucks, aftermarket parts, etc.).

NACCO is also a Lombardi customer, and you can read more about them here.

In the webcast Bob talks about what exactly has been accomplished using BPM at NACCO, demonstrating an architectural step-through of how their processes have changed, with a particular focus on ROI. It’s exciting that so many Lombardi customers like NACCO are passionate about their BPM successes and want to share their best practices.

You’ll need to register on the SearchCIO site to view the webcast.

Do not be alarmed. This post is not an instruction manual on the finer points of BPMN. For those of you who wish to indulge, this should provide you with many hours of entertainment.

Rather, I want to reflect upon a few thoughts about process modeling, and share some practical hints.

And whilst Blueprint is my favorite modeling tool in existence, the following comments are equally applicable whether you’re using sticky notes, a white board, or the back of an envelope. (I’ve also seen bits of string used quite creatively!)

Process modeling is a process in itself. Therefore, like any other process, we can aim to improve its efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. So instead of approaching modeling in an ad-hoc manner, how can we make it more repeatable, reduce the cycle time, raise quality and customer satisfaction?

To me, process modeling is fundamentally an exercise in communication. A model may be generated in order to share information between members of a project team about the way the process currently works. Or to share information between the project team and the stakeholders. Or with vendors. Or between a business expert and a business analyst. Or a business analyst and a developer. In all of these instances, the process modeling is not meant to be an end in itself, but a means to identify, verify, and inform interested parties about the way the process is, could or should be.

If we accept the model as an abstraction of reality, a visual representation of various process attributes, then the question arises not so much as to whether a process model is right or wrong, but, like a conversation between two people – is it effective or ineffective? Does it convey useful meaning to the intended audience, or not? A meaningful communication forms a sound basis for action – but a confusing, misleading or ambiguous one cannot be expected to yield a high quality outcome. Garbage in, garbage out.

How then, to create effective, clear, useful communication about a process?

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There’s a great piece up on Forbes right now, titled “The ABC’s of BPM.”

The article is part of the very well-informed “JargonSpy” series, whose goal is to educate the publication’s audience about the business value behind some of the technology world’s more opaque acronyms (let’s be honest, BPM isn’t exactly swimming in sex appeal is it?)

The author is Dan Woods, who is also the CTO at Evolved Media and the author of the book Process First: The Evolution of the Business Process Expert.

In the article, Dan talks in depth about the coming of age of the process expert, especially vis-à-vis the translation task that is “needed constantly between the business as it defines the process and the IT staff as it communicates what functionality is needed.”

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In today’s economic environment, it is as important as ever to be able to provide hard metrics as proof of a successful BPM project.  This is not to mention that in general, metrics are the icing on the cake when making a case for further, organization-wide process initiatives (and to executives in particular).  Today, I want to dive further into that topic and discuss some of the common metrics businesses use, as well as the tangibility issues inherent to each.  The more familiar you are with presenting the value of a BPM project, the more likely you will be able to get executive buy-in.

Efficiency - How quick can we get it done?

Reducing the cycle time on a process, whether it is a new hire process or loan origination, provides value.  You can quantify the amount of time it took before the project and quantify how long each cycle takes after the process improvements.  Efficiency has a high tangibility factor, it’s measurable, and therefore remains the strongest, or most useful selling point when trying to achieve buy-in from other units in the organization.

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I want to talk a little bit about what is, in my mind, the most interesting part of having exposure to BPM initiatives across a wide range of industries.

This is in fact one of the great advantages that we at Lombardi have as a pure-play solution provider, and it’s something we’re going to continue to capitalize on, especially from a services perspective.  It’s also one of the things that I love most about my job – the opportunity to solve process problems in an array of different verticals, taking and sharing best practices and key learnings among them.

BPM folk love to talk about agility. And it is less and less a secret that BPM is one very important way that organizations can future-proof themselves against the inevitable. In today’s case, for example, it’s rising fuel prices, the mortgage meltdown, and unstable capital markets, each of which is having a unique effect on our customers.

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Ed.: This is the fourth and last post in a series of Q+A sessions focusing specifically on playback session best practices, with our in-house expert, Kris Komassa. See our previous coverage here.

Anyone besides the BPM team, subject matter experts, and business managers that you’ve had involved in a playback session? Who do you usually suggest be present?

It varies.  I’ve had CIOs CEOs, end users, it runs the gamut.  Ultimately, you want to have a true cross-section of the organization present.

I always like to have my core project team and IT staff involved of course, but again when it comes to the playback, a diversity of roles and perspectives is important. For example, one bank we work with has a very diverse set of processes, so within their playbacks I have had a bank teller, a bank CSR person, a bank loan officer, a bank loan manager, an executive approver and then the core project team on top of that.

For me if you follow that process from a linear prospective, you need to have someone who can weigh in on every part of the process.  I like to have people in the room to say “yes” or “no” each step of the way — and in that sense you need to think long and hard and do your best to anticipate the questions that are going to be asked at every stage. You learn over time, of course, too, and I’m always happy to talk in greater depth about specific industries or situations, just leave a note in the comments.

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