Post: Underrated and Underutilized: Here’s The Answer!
Underrated and Underutilized: Here’s The Answer!
I have long considered the most underrated and underutilized resource that most companies have to be their own staff! There is so much operational information often offered by staff that needs to be considered, alongside management’s perspective and other operational evidence like that uncovered by Process Mining.
Let’s have a look at three different perspectives and what they contribute to Business Architecture…
What I Get From Management Interviews
When I run Process Landscape workshops with management from a top-down viewpoint, I get a strategic view and we annotate problems and opportunities to People, Process and Technology perspectives. This view is slightly abstract because it doesn’t come from operations but management. I often find a good swag of problems and opportunities come out at this level though, and we get a complete view of the specified scope, which is vitally important and which we don’t tend to get from operational staff.
Operational Interview Goodies!
When I then interview staff and create business conversation diagrams, workflow diagrams, business process diagrams and application integration diagrams we get a view that tends to be anchored in actual operational practices. I find we get lots of problems annotated here and some opportunities.
It’s amazing how, on occasion, management can look at the operational view and say “That’s not how it happens!” when it clearly does! That’s an indicator that more discussion is needed to bring a meeting of minds and a common understanding.
An Agreed Baseline?
Now we’re talking about a ‘baseline’ process that can be recognized as the way things actually happen according to both management and operational staff.
Management will always have their say in what needs to happen. That’s natural. Staff can however be unaware of management intent, goals and measures, KPIs etc., and feel somewhat disconnected from the management viewpoint because their view is not shared at all or shared poorly.
Don't Ignore This!
. What’s often wasted or ignored is the opinion of operational staff who can tell us very clearly where blockages, complexities and ambiguities exist. These operational perspectives are very valuable and should not be ignored!
There is also a new kid on the block that we can listen to: DATA! Process Mining is the discipline of examining operational data to gather facts about processes. Good process mining software helps us pick up information about statii, timing, conditions, approvals and denials and of course operational data.
Three Viewpoints
So we have three viewpoints:
1. Management
2. Operational Staff
3. Operational Data
Being able to examine an organization from these three perspectives is really very valuable:
- Management perspective of larger chunks of value chain, departmental and basic application information
- Operational Staff perspective of workflows, applications and roles.
- The Process Mining perspective which gives us more detailed facts about performance, problems and opportunities.
All this information could be collected in documents and people would need to read and remember the facts, associations and assertions, but there’s a better way: Enterprise Business Architecture.
My approach can deal with:
1. Who is involved (PEOPLE)
2. How it happens (PROCESS)
3. What data is used (INFORMATION)
4. Where this all happens (LOCATION)
5. When things happen (customer events, supplier events, partner events, calendar events, delays, reminders etc.) (EVENTS)
These perspectives are all intertwined within the (pure) BUSINESS dimension, and they also relate to applications in the TECHNOLOGY dimension.
How on earth do we correlate all this? I have managed in time past (after a lot of thinking) to represent it reasonably well in Visio, but Visio is basically a drawing tool and I create hyperlinks within the Visio file between diagrams. It’s pretty basic, and frankly very lacking.
What’s needed is an enterprise modelling tool!
ENTER ADONIS
The Process Expert is the Australian partner for ADONIS, which is the top-rated process modelling and improvement tool by Garner Group. ADONIS captures several kinds of diagrams to represent the business and application/technology dimensions. Each diagram is part of the overall model and its components can be related to other artefacts (or ‘objects’).
I use ADONIS for live prices modeling when in workshops.
1.With management I lay out the organization, process architecture and application architecture.
2. With operational staff I last out the detailed roles, workshops and application integrations
3. With IT, using Process Mining we gain further insights to process and integration problems and confirm personal process designs, including process statii.
Sharing The Love
The results of my modeling can be navigated using the ADONIS online ‘reader’ portal which allows commenting, much like in Word or Teams. This means the entire organization or parts of it can be given access to view some or all models, delineated by departments, parts of the value chain, process areas or applications. The ability for staff to navigate through aspects of the business model, possibly following roles to processes to applications to data, with problems and opportunities/initiatives attached as pertinent is an absolute game changer. Using my methods and ADONIS, managers and staff can all see aspects of the same enterprise business model.
Conversation can be facilitated and stored in the actual business model repository and plans for process improvement can be represented in the model too. In fact, there is a workflow for versioning business process diagrams, moving them basically from draft to approved to published.
ADONIS Services
The Process Expert can help set up your organization with ADONIS, train staff and mentor staff at part of a pilot project. I can also provide ongoing support, backed by BOC Group (the owners of ADONIS).
The Process Expert is a silver partner for ADONIS and currently the only partner in Australia as BOC are refreshing and enhancing their partner program. Whilst management and operations are my main focus, Process Mining is becoming more important and better facilitated. The Process Expert’s ADONIS instance has Process Mining activated and we will be offering process mining as another viewpoint . I hope to be able to offer process mining with the results going into the ADONIS model.
Let me say it again: having your business model (including People, Process and Technology) all in one place with strategic and management perspectives, operational staff perspectives and process mining results all correlated together is a very, very powerful thing. When a model is well developed, it can effectively become a Digital Twin.
A Framework & A Process
Having a framework is one thing. Having a process is another.
Digital Twin
The Process Expert offers a Digital Twin service where we dive into an operational area and create a detailed model that represents everything that happens, how and my whom. Digital Twins are an excellent resource and if there is enough information in them, simulations can be run to see if proposed changes save money, save elapsed time, save effort, boost quality etc.
Does This Stir Your Interest?
The disciplines and the ADONIS platform are things that very few managers get their head into without help. If this article stirs your interest, you should visit my website to read more and contact me to talk about how you can best start to look at a much better way of doing business analysis and process modelling. I am happy to arrange a trial instance of ADONIS (the full version, not the readily available community version), to hold your hand as you get going and to answer basic questions. I am then available to help you adopt the platform and can train your staff in Business Architecture, Business Process Modeling and how to do it well using ADONIS. Further to that, I can also assist in setting up your first improvement initiatives within ADONIS.
CALL ME on 0483 891 835 to arrange a brief demonstration of the ADONIS platform, to arrange a trial instance of your own or to engage my assistance in transforming the power, productivity and usefulness of your Business Analysis team.
Steve Barnes
The Process Expert
0483 891 835
www.theprocess.expert
P.S. What we haven’t mentioned here, deliberately, is AI (artificial intelligence). So much is currently happening with AI! ADONIS have made AI available in their process modelling environment as a productivity aid that works on pattern recognition. I also use AI to summarise interviews and keep an interview log that I query on occasion using AI. It is a favulous tool and The Process Expert is on to it, but it is moving so fast! You can count on me to know what the possibilities are for you, and you can rest assured The Process Expert uses AI as part of our everyday work.
