If you’ve been reading the Process People blog, you might have noticed that we talk a lot about an iterative approach to deploying BPM. What we haven’t touched on as much is that the iterative approach is an element of the overarching methodology. Looking in on the methodology from the highest level you will get a view of a three-phased approach – which ultimately results in iteration. But we want to provide a big picture of how all of the different parts of our methodology tie together, and how each point of emphasis leads into or loops back to key areas of the other two phases.

I realize that in some organizations, “phase” is a four-letter word. With BPM it is a must… it is the foundational element that leads to continuous process improvement and ultimately maximum business benefit. But don’t just take our word for it, just look at the countless customers who have used this methodology and achieve enormous success because of it.

Definition Phase

The definition phase is probably the most critical portion of the entire BPM adoption lifecycle. This is where you set the expectations for the BPM project, define metrics to measure the project and create a framework so that the focus remains on delivering business value throughout all three phases.

In this phase organizations should:

• Take the broader initiative and narrow it to a specific departmental level
• Define the business milestones and associated metrics
• Develop the business case
• Ensure that there is a common thread throughout the whole project (Business value)
• Get the business to drive this phase

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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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Process People will be conducting a series of periodic interview sessions with Lombardi customers to provide useful insight into the BPM issues that they faced at their company, guidance for how to overcome obstacles, and to share the lessons learned during their process improvement journey. These real-world interviews will be posted regularly, so be sure and check back frequently. . .

In this Process People interview, we welcome Jeremy Kraybill, CIO for Boundless Network.

Process People: Describe in as much detail as possible the problem or need on a project level that first made you consider BPM and/or Lombardi as a viable solution.

Jeremy Kraybill: At Boundless Network, we were undergoing a business process re-engineering project at our business. We initially set out to document and analyze manual process changes that would reduce our company’s cash cycle and help us scale our back office. After the first couple weeks of the project, we realized that there were a whole set of business processes held in individuals’ heads that we could benefit from automating. Nobody at the company had previous BPM experience, but after looking at the first BPM vendor’s demo we knew that a BPM solution had great potential for our business pains. After a 3-month evaluation process we selected a BPM solution and have been very happy with the decision and how the implementations went.

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