Kickoff 2010 was hosted by Lombardi February 22nd-26th.  Kickoff is an annual, company-wide conference in Austin, Texas that has been a wonderful tradition at Lombardi since 2004.  This year, not only did we have all world-wide Lombardians come to downtown Austin, but we also had a large number of IBMers attend.  This week-long conference was definitely valuable for the successful integration of Lombardi into the IBM family – we were able to meet, enjoy each other’s company and learn about one another throughout the different meetings and events.

It all started Monday evening at the Austin Music Hall with an interesting presentation by Phil Gilbert at the Opening Reception.  This was followed by the 2010 Lombardi Science Fair, an event that has been at Lombardi for 5 years now and is something we hope IBM will continue well into the future.

Phil's presentation during Science Fair

Science Fair Passport and Program

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In case you missed it, we published an article in the latest issue of Workforce Management that might be of interest. The article is entitled “A Simple Approach to Documenting your HR Process” and it is filled with statistics and tips for getting your HR processes documented and streamlined.

A recent study by Staffing.com revealed that 70% of applicants and 28% of hiring managers are dissatisfied with how their hiring processes work; and that is just one of the many critical processes in your company. Effective documentation of your HR processes can lead to impressive savings and a large reduction in your company’s overhead.

Optimizing your HR processes is critical for saving time, avoiding errors and reducing company overhead. The absolute best way to save time and money is through process documentation. If you are interested in finding out how to quickly document and streamline your key processes, there is a simple next step. Just click the link below to download the full white paper.

Get the White Paper: A Simple Approach to Documenting Your HR Process

Ready to start documenting your processes now? To effectively document your processes, you will need the right tool. Click here for a free trial of Lombardi Blueprint, the easiest process documentation tool on the market.

Yesterday, Phil Gilbert spoke about the human aspects of BPM as an invited guest on the well-known Internet talk radio show, CIO Talk Radio.

It’s obvious BPM has come of age when mainstream media programs are starting to weigh-in on the topic.

The hour-long show featured ‘HIM: Handling the Human Side of BPM,’ and focused on whether the new Human Interaction Management (HIM) framework  is necessary given that BPM already addresses most of the same issues and is a mature discipline. 

In addtion to Phil, the other invited guests were Clay Richardson (senior analyst at Forrester) and Howard Smith (BPM author and CTO of CSC’s European Group).

If you are interested in hearing how BPM can help your organization,  or if you need a better way to explain its benefits to your executives, you should listen to the replay. You can access the replay here (not required to register).

Information Age magazine in the UK recently published an interesting article about how social software is changing the way companies design and execute business processes.

The author, Pete Swabey, points to the dramatic events of late as proof that collaboration software and online social networks are rewiring the fabric of society.

Here at Lombardi we agree, and have spent a lot of time and effort looking at ways to further expand the role of BPM to more people through social technologies. They are manifested in Lombardi Blueprint and Teamworks in many ways. You can learn how each incorporates social capabilities here and here respectively. 

The article also interviewed both Phil Gilbert (Lombardi’s President), and Aviva’s CIO, Toby Redshaw. It is a very good article – I encourage you to read it here

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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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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BPM project durations are usually measured in weeks-to-months – not months-to-years. With this velocity, you can’t afford to get stuck in the rut of traditional “define & design” techniques based on multiple rounds of 1-on-1 analysis meetings. In fact, I’d go so far as to label this as rework which increases a project’s cycle time!

I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the workshop format, where not only speed, but also quality, visibility and buy-in are greatly enhanced compared to the 1-on-1 approach. You could say it’s a way of applying process improvement methods to the way we carry out process improvement itself (or “PI²” as I like to call it).

In a previous blog, I shared some secrets of success for the “2 x 6 workshop“. One of the critical success factors is utilizing a facilitator – “an impartial, objective analyst to run the session, keep it crisp and in-focus”. Let’s dive into that a bit more. Why do we need the facilitator role, how does it add value to the process of process improvement, and how can it be done well?

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Getting started with BPM makes many people nervous, and for good reason.  Change can bring uncertainty and fear – and hence often generates resistance.  In response to this type of internal skepticism and unrest, I frequently recommend conducting a 2×6 workshop when initially analyzing your processes to engage and excite the people who live the processes every day.

But before I tell how to run a 2×6 workshop, I would like to put it in context:

BPM is first and foremost a discipline to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and agility of a business, from a process viewpoint, to deliver real business value.  That being said, you have to do a certain amount of rewiring PEOPLE and your organization before you can start worrying about the software.

To really drive BPM in your organization, you need strategies in place to make the shift a bit easier for your workers to consume.  People don’t want change to be forced upon them.  But if you present them with an opportunity to help drive that change, then they can become fully invested as participants who help shape their own future.  So when you begin your initiative and need to take stock of where you are, you do some process analysis.  How do you get started?

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The best description of “executive level buy-in” that I know of is only 7 letters long:

F-U-N-D-I-N-G

Maybe that doesn’t help you as much as you had hoped, so I’ll provide some additional color around this one.  Funding is the absolute bottom-line when we talk about executive buy-in to a BPM initiative.  But funding has to reflect the iterative approach, which means that the project isn’t over when the process is deployed.  The project is really just getting started.

Funding has to map back to the methodology required to do the project right.  It has to reflect all three phases of a proper BPM methodology.  We’ve discussed this methodology on Process People before, and if you haven’t seen some of those posts, I recommend that you read one first!

In reality, executive buy-in also means you have to have an executive who’s willing to get up on a podium and endorse the process improvement program organization-wide.  It means that the executive has to be willing to commit funding in every manner necessary – money, people, time and so on.

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