The Future of Business Process Design

Transcription

1 Strategic Planning, K. Harris, D. Flint Research Note 3 October 2003 The Re-emergence of Business Process Design Business process analysis and design will be an imperative for organizations to exploit the processing capabilities of business process fusion, real-time management and other sophisticated application software. Core Topic Application Development: Managing Application Development Key Issue Which development processes are appropriate for ensuring on-time delivery of both opportunistic and systematic applications? Strategic Planning Assumptions By 2006, business process design will be considered a critical skill for designing endto-end and business process fusion applications (0.7 probability). By 2005, HR recruiters will expect business process analysts to be competent in describing patterns of knowledge work (0.7 probability). Business process analysis and design are regaining importance after previously playing critical roles in the early 1990s in business process re-engineering. The business process reengineering movement applied engineering concepts to individual processes and, in some instances, the whole enterprise. Many enterprises set out to re-engineer and to gain new efficiency and effectiveness many did not succeed. In general, those that failed used business process re-engineering techniques to justify eliminating people from their processes or, more often, cited process re-engineering as a cloak for simply downsizing without changing processes. Although they lowered costs, they created efficiencies that were only short-lived. Some enterprises simply took the wrong approach to re-engineering, such as not choosing their most-critical processes, undertaking re-engineering as part of a large software project or buying software before re-engineering their processes. Another shortcoming of business process re-engineering was that the analysis failed to recognize the value of knowledge workers, such as managers, analysts and support personnel. These employees appeared to be noncritical to core business processes because their direct alignment with processes was difficult to define, their contributions were not achieved through systematic work tasks and their results often were not measurable using traditional methods. However, these people often had the knowledge and analytical skills that were most critical to the efficient, effective functioning of the "whole system" (interlinked people, processes and technology) and particularly to its continued integrity and adaptability. When these people were removed, their accumulated knowledge was lost and their longterm flexibility reduced (see "The Knowledge Workplace" and "Biological Models for the Real-Time Enterprise"). The Future of Business Process Design Gartner Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Any new emphasis on business process analysis and business process design (BPA/BPD) can cause concerns that the enterprise is about to experience another round of re-engineering with all of its negative connotations. Business process reengineering is being reinvented and may undergo a renaissance; however, the value of BPA/BPD is independent of re-engineering old or new. In fact, BPA/BPD is not, and never was, exclusive to business process re-engineering. Thus, renewed interest in process design is not linked to a resurgence of interest in reengineering. BPA/BPD's value is in making business processes more transparent and business process linkages more visible and manageable. These enduring characteristics will make BPA/BPD a necessity as enterprises cope with customer, industry and competitive demands to infuse more speed, quality and knowledge into critical business processes. These collective demands are fueling new management concepts, such as business process fusion, real-time management and extended enterprise technical architectures (see "New Applications Emerge Business Process Fusion," "The Gartner Definition of Real-Time Enterprise" and "Enterprise Architecture Special Report: Overview"). These new management concepts require that enterprises understand and make visible what they do today and how they expect to transform their processes tomorrow. Also, because of emerging regulations and increasing customer pressures, the visibility into business processes will need to increase over time. Thus, BPA/BPD will be an ongoing requirement. Beyond the expectation of increased visibility into business processes, other key changes will cause enterprises to expand their use of BPA/BPD. These will be the subject of upcoming research. 1. Organizations will recognize more fully the role of knowledge work and workers. Knowledge work and its contributions to value creation are more understood now than a decade ago. In most instances, knowledge work is not structured, sequential or repeatable. Instead, knowledge work is about enabling knowledge workers to connect to the people, information resources and analytical or other tools that they require to do their jobs. The knowledge worker determines the process, such as what actions to take and the order in which they are performed. These processes are "designed" just in time. Thus, BPA/BPD in knowledge work is about understanding how people work which knowledge is critical, how and with whom they collaborate, and how and when they make decisions (see 3 October

3 "What Are Knowledge Workers? What Makes Them Tick?" and "The Knowledge Worker Investment Paradox"). Action: Recruit analysts who are skilled in recognizing, describing and enhancing these knowledge work connections. 2. Organizations will more fully understand the roles and importance of human, technical and process networks. Data and information travel across many networks in the enterprise and its extended environment. These networks are important to connecting many enterprise assets and entities people (employees, customers and partners), data, processes and decisions. The value of these various networks, and the practices and technology for enabling them, is becoming well-understood. BPA/BPD must be applied to enable the right combination of networks and to take the full advantage of each (see "Changing the View of ROI to VOI Value on Investment"). Action: Ensure that business process analysis covers human, electronic and interenterprise networks. 3. Emerging technical architectures will acknowledge business processes as an architectural layer. Architectures are transforming from being closed, monolithic and merely Webaware to being "open," componentized and Web-based (see Figure 1 and "Defining Architecture for IT: A Framework of Frameworks"). As this overhaul proceeds, enterprises must embrace a broader, more-inclusive view of enterprise architecture by starting from the top of the emerging architectural model and moving down: Understand the requirements of participating in the business relationship grid that is, the technological "nervous system" of a community of enterprises Define the fundamental enterprise and multienterprise business processes that must be executed, and categorize their styles Determine the best reference models or patterns of IT solutions for each style Define the building components or bricks of technological capability 3 October

4 Figure 1 Enterprise Architecture in 2008 Applications Components Business Relationship Grid Organization Business Processes, Styles Patterns Bricks Source: Gartner Research (October 2003) Each level of the architecture has a series of appropriate needs, principles, processes, guidelines and standards that are necessary to gain architectural consistency and its corresponding benefits. As business processes are integrated into the models, application development projects will address BPA/BPD prior to addressing technology solution design. Action: Employ new business process models and styles, but within the context of a greater enterprise-defined architecture. 4. Major applications will include integrated support for knowledge management and knowledge work. To support the work done by knowledge workers in business processes, application vendors will integrate support for data and documents with support for transactional, analytical and collaborative processing. This will require new approaches to analysis, design and implementation, although many of the initial efforts may falter or fail (see "Process Design Starts Successful Business Applications"). Action: Evaluate these essential application extensions critically. 5. Organizations that purchase vendor products to provide application software will have access to prepackaged 3 October

5 business models (industry-specific and function-specific models) as an alternative to in-house developed models. Enterprise resource planning and other large vendors will provide standard process models as key deliverables with applications software. Thus, organizations will be able to purchase much of the expertise normally required for BPA/BPD. For these organizations, the shift in activities to adopt BPA/BPD will include evaluating prospective vendors for their suitability for the enterprise architecture and evaluating process models against the organization's vision for its work environment and processes. This trend will extend past business applications (most enterprise resource planning vendors deliver some form of process model today) into infrastructure and workplace applications (see "BMC Positions Itself for Business Service Management"). Action: When selecting major software packages, consider vendors that provide documented process models and software that supports your vision and value discipline. 6. Sophisticated technologies will enable more-complex BPA/BPD. Emerging technologies will enhance organizations' vision into and control of business processes, including: Next-generation portals and their infrastructure will allow process design and execution alignment with roles, as well as personalization and delivery of relevant content or decision data to individuals or groups (see "Get Ready for Fourth-Generation Portal Technology"). Business process management will enable infrastructure to create agile applications. It also will provide the modeling and management framework to define the scope of applications, their interfaces to systems, and metrics to assess their relevance (see "BPM: A Key Ingredient in Business Process Fusion"). Action: If your BPA/BPD skills and experience focus only on traditional high-level models, begin training your analysts and designers to exploit newer, more-sophisticated approaches to enabling business processes. Finally, for BPA/BPD to be successful, organizations should look at their past efforts in this area and the lessons learned. For example, a review of business process re-engineering results can provide valuable best and worst practices on what to do and howtodoit. Bottom Line: Business process analysis and design capabilities are inherent to future architectures and applications. By 2006, business process design will be considered a critical skill for designing end-to-end and business process fusion applications 3 October

6 (0.7 probability). By 2005, HR recruiters will expect business process analysts to be competent in describing patterns of knowledge work (0.7 probability). Finally, by 2005, powerhouse vendors will provide business process models as primary components of their application software products. Prepare for significant changes in development skills and methodologies, as well as your approach to evaluating software vendors. Build awareness of the impact of these changes in your organization, and adjust your planning to accommodate them. 3 October