BPM: "Band-Aids – Not a Cure for Corporate Ills"

The following is an excerpt from "The Insider's Guide to BPM: 7 Steps to Process Mastery," by Terry Schurter.

Band-Aids – Not a Cure for Corporate Ills

A band-aid process starts out as an under-performing process that needs to be improved. Band-aid processes are commonly placed under software control, often have complex process models, frequently embed many business rules in the process software and almost all are built from a command and control perspective. Sounds like a pretty heavy-duty band-aid?

The reason why we call these band-aid processes is that they focus on the symptom rather than the cause. With the band-aid applied, the process is likely to head right back into the poor performance category. There are two influences that guarantee that will happen.

Table of Contents

• Band Aids - page 1
• Netflix Processes - page 2
• Constantly On The Move - page 3

First, there is the matter of context that we began talking about in the previous chapter. Context includes all of the environmental, societal, and behavioral influences that affect how work gets done. There is no place that this is more obvious than in the trenches with the people doing the work in our processes. The people who perform the work are exposed to significant contextual influences from both internal and external sources. Internal management and infrastructure changes are biggies, but sometimes even small changes in human resource policies can have a profound effect. Changing shift times, overtime policies and documentation for things like sicktime approval (did you bring your doctor’s note, Johnny?) can have negative effects on process performance.

Meanwhile the world outside is changing at a rate like never before, imposing pressure on our processes that, for brittle over-engineered processes, causes them to strain and break. If you want to be a mechanical or aeronautical engineer, then go build bridges or rocket ships, not business processes. Processes that people interact with require a highly subjective engineering exercise that in turn requires a unique blend of cognitive science. In fact no one should be designing processes without having read the works of Donald Norman, a founder of the Institute for Cognitive Science.

In his book The Design of Everyday Things, Norman describes the psychology behind what he deems good and bad design, through case studies, and proposes design principles. He exalts the importance of design in our everyday lives, and the consequences of errors caused by bad design.

In this book, Norman uses the term “user-centered design” to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he deems secondary issues like aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, designing for error, explaining affordances and seven stages of action.

What should we use to help us place the dividing line between what will enable people to maintain productivity gains versus over-engineered processes that are likely to crack under pressure?

Related Knowledge Network Content

Previous Page Next Page