Week 8 - Redesign Process (1)

Reference

1.      ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/IL/resplng/scoping.pdf

2.      http://www.personal.psu.edu/auk3/teaching/portfolio/ist301/notes/Business_Process_Medhodology.pdf

Summary

In Lecture 8, the process redesign is discussed. There are 2 parts inside process redesign; they are i) Scoping the Process and ii) Modeling and Analysis with BPR software. I would mainly focus on only the first part, Scoping the Process, in this journal.

What is Scoping?

Scoping is used to determine what is important to investigate during the planning process. It involves identifying which concerns, actions, and impacts will be addressed in the Resource Plan.

Why is it important?

Scoping allows stakeholders and technical experts to put their limited financial and technical resources towards investigating the most critical issues in the planning area.

Activities involve in Scoping the Process

1.          Operationalize process performance targets

Goals are listed and prioritized in this step. For each of the goal, identify the related process    performance targets in concrete. Group the goals by type and flag critical measures.

2.          Define process boundaries

The boundaries are related to the starts, ends, customers, inputs, outputs, triggers, etc. It provides the BPR team where to collect the data for the modeling phase.

3.          Identify key process issues

It specifies what area of the current process need to be changed and provide the modeling team with an assessment of the current process and its supporting environment. Also, it establishes a shared understanding of what needs to be changed and guide redesign efforts.

4.          Understand best practices & define initial visions

The BPR team should know and familiarize the best practices for selected process. Defining and documenting the preliminary visions.

5.          Familiarize participants with BPR software

The BPR team should familiarize the concepts and skills with the BPR software they would use.

6.          Outline data collection plan & collect baseline data

There are many methods to collect data, such as, using existing documents and archival data, structured interview with groups, one-on-one structured interviews and questionnaires/forms/templates. The following are the steps to collect baseline data,

            i.          Identify key sources of data

            ii.         Select case categorization criteria

            iii.        Define types of data needed

            iv.        Define data collection methods

            v.         Start collecting baseline data

7.          Plan for modeling phase

After preparing all the process scoping reports, the final step is to gather all the data and develop a plan for modeling.

The final deliverable of scoping the process is a process scoping report. This report can be a guideline for the BPR design and implementation team to start the modeling phases. Hence, BPR can be done with clearly defined steps and schedules.

Moreover, it is helpful to define the scope first from a "process" perspective, clearly stating where the process begins and where it ends. A process perspective provides the best and most focused definition of what is changing and what is not changing. By scoping an enterprise process, firm can have quantitative measurement to evaluate the success of BPR in the company. Therefore, firm executive can evaluate the success of BPR by realistic process performance targets.