Working with Business Processes

Business processes matter. Above all else, they matter to the enterprise, because business processes are fundamentally how value is delivered, whether externally or internally. So, understanding how to work with business processes is a vital skill for a wide range of business and IT professionals – business analysts, process architects, application architects, functional area managers, and even corporate executives. But too often, the available courses and literature either float around in generalities and familiar case studies, or descend rapidly into technical details, arcane theories, or incomprehensible models. This workshop is different – in a practical way, it shows how to discover and scope a business process, clarify its context, assess it and establish initial improvement objectives, model its workflow with progressive detail, re-assess it in light of findings from modelling, and design a new process.

With initiatives like enterprise application implementation and e-commerce driving the redesign of business processes, these skills can make a real difference to a project’s success.

Everything is backed up with real-world examples, and clear, repeatable guidelines. Professionals around the world have benefited from this workshop and the methods it provides.

Participants will first learn exactly what a “business process” is, the key factors to consider when dealing with them, and the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them. On this foundation, the course moves on to specifying the scope and goals of a business process, modelling the current workflow, assessing it, and applying three critical process redesign techniques.

Objectives:
On workshop completion, participants will be able to:
– Identify a “true” business process, and specify its boundaries and goals
– Describe the key factors that differentiate process-oriented approaches from functionally-oriented (or organizationally-oriented) approaches
– Employ a variety of techniques to keep stakeholders involved, and promote “process orientation”
– Model process workflow at progressive levels of detail using Swimlane Diagrams
– Stop process modeling at the appropriate point, and move on to other techniques or phases
– Conduct a structured assessment of a business process
– Develop a process redesign while avoiding common (and serious!) pitfalls.

Key principles are illustrated throughout with workshop exercises and discussions. Business professionals with responsibility for improving their processes and business analysts needing solid techniques will both benefit from this workshop. The material complements the techniques covered in our Data Modelling workshops, which collectively provide the analyst with a powerful, integrated set of techniques.

Prerequisites:
None. However, business analysts who expect to do extensive workflow modelling will find that some understanding of information systems concepts may be helpful in establishing context.

Target Audience:
Business analysts who are responsible for requirements specification; process analysts involved in business process re-design or improvement; data management and business intelligence specialists who support business processes, business managers and content experts who will participate in process re-design or process-oriented application development efforts; process or application architects responsible for developing, coordinating, and promoting an enterprise-wide view of business processes.

Course Topics:

• Thinking in process terms – concepts, terminology, principles, and techniques
• A three-phase approach to completing a process-oriented project
• Framing the process – discovering a business process, and clarifying its purpose and scope
• Initial assessment of the “as-is” process and goal-setting for the “to-be” process
• Modelling process workflow – practical tips and techniques for using swimlane diagrams
• Controlling detail – three levels of workflow model
• When to stop modelling
• Applying workflow modelling to the as-is process – facilitating a workflow session
• Final assessment of the as-is process – a framework for assessment, relation to redesign
• Characterising the to-be process – generating creative improvements and assessing them
• Wrap-up – summary, tips, and resources.

At the top of this page you can download the PDF brochure of this workshop.