the insiders guide to bpm - step 3

The Insiders’ Guide to

BPM7 Steps to Process Mastery

By Terry Schurter Step 3 – Improve Personal Productivity

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM by Terry Schurter - www.tschurter.com 2

The Insiders’ Guide to BPM: Step 3

Improve Personal Productivity

To improve personal productivity, we must first understand what the productivity challenges are in the current process design.

Those productivity challenges are tasks in the process that for one reason or another, force Participants to:

• work harder than necessary• engage in unnecessary interactions• perform work outside of the process design• juggle multiple competing tasks• have specialized knowledge to complete a task that is not a

specialized task

Improving Personal Productivity




The Task Analysis provides some perspective on the challenges faced by process Participants. From it we can see:

1) The Tasks each person is expected to perform2) How many different objects they must interact with3) What kind of actions we are expecting them to perform

From this perspective, we can get a sense for some of the challenges Participants face in achieving new levels of personal productivity.

However, more is needed. In this step we seek to identify those challenges that are not obvious just from the Task Analysis.

One Perspective – the Task Analysis




Challenges to Personal Productivity - Examplesdocument legibility Difficulty in accurately reading information on one or more documents

exception-handling Extra work based on exceptions to the "normal," or planned work

duplicate data entry Entering the same data more than once (including across Tasks)searching (detective

work)Spending time finding ANYTHING needed to complete a Task (physical or digital)

complex forms/documents Dealing with complex forms or documents that are non-intuitive

complex business rulesBusiness rules that are difficult to understand or apply to real world scenarios

missing document A required document that is missing

inaccurate data Data, physical or electronic, that is needed but is not accurate

incomplete data Data, physical or electronic, that is needed but is not available

swivel-chair movement Movement of a Participant between objects (systems, documents, et. al.)

complex user interfaceA system interface that is difficult to successfully navigate to a desired conclusion

technical system issues System or equipment issues that result in work outage or additional workpulled away for other

work Competing priorities that shift focus in a random or unplanned manner

frequent changesChanges to systems, rules, procedures or work instructions that occur frequently




Whether you use the examples provided on the previous slide, others you define yourself, or any combination thereof the important thing is that Challenges are identified…

And they must be assessed for each Task.

Identifying Challenges to Personal Productivity

There’s something magically about the number 3. Where one or two is not enough, three is just right. Where four or more is too much, three is just right.

Therefore, in Step 3 we look to identify a maximum of 3 challenges to each Task in the Task Analysis.

The Rule of 3




This is not complicated, but it is easy perform incorrectly. We are not looking to find 3 challenges for each Task, we are looking for up to a maximum of 3 very real challenges that stand out to process Participants. Therefore:

1) Some (perhaps many) Tasks will have no challenges2) Few (perhaps no) Tasks will have 3 Challenges3) If we don’t know what the real challenges are – do not make

them up or speculate!

So how do we know what productivity challenges really exist in a process?

Caution – Know How To Do This Properly




1. Think about what you know, you may already have much of the information that you need.

2. Observe Participants performing their Tasks. Observation will often bring obvious challenges to the forefront.

3. Ask the Participants about their challenges. Be a good interviewer and lead them to uncover their biggest pain-points.

4. Research process to uncover patterns behind rework, inconsistencies, or quality issues – all clear signs of challenges.

Regardless of how you identify productivity challenges, the next step is to build those into our process picture.

Know, Observe, Ask, Research




From Step 2 - The Agile Style Task Analysis…

ParticipantAction(the task being performed)

Primary Object(the object of the

Action)

Work Object Type

1 As an Underwriter I review the application Document

Challenge 1 Challenge 2 Challenge 3

legibility Inaccuracy

…we add Challenges (Step 3)




From Step 2 - Assessing Process Improvement

# Tasks

# Hands-off (each time

work changes hands)

# Participant

s

# Objects(unique

)

# Challenges

B

1

2

nBaseline – Total for each category before improvement

# Tasks – Total number of Tasks Eliminated

# Hand-offs – Total number of Hand-offs Eliminated

# Participants – Total number of Participant (roles) Eliminated

# Objects – Total number of different objects Eliminated

# Challenges – Total number of challenges Eliminated (defined in Step 3)

Baseline

Improvement

1

Improvement

2

Improvement

nChallenges from Step 3 go here in

the Step 2 Assessment




From Step 2 - Calculating Net Gain

Tasks

Hands-off (each time

work changes hands)

Participants

Objects(unique

)Challenges

B 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

1

2

nTasks – Percent Improvement (Tasks Eliminated/Baseline Tasks)*100

Hand-offs – Percent Improvement (Hand-offs Eliminated/Baseline Hand-offs)*100

Participants – Percent Improvement (Participants Eliminated/Baseline

Participants)*100

Objects – Percent Improvement (Objects Eliminated/Baseline Objects)*100

Challenges – Percent Improvement (Challenges Eliminated/Baseline

Challenges)*100

Baseline

Improvement

1

Improvement

2

Improvement

n

Step 3 Challenges go here




In Step 3 we have:1) Identified any real personal productivity challenges by Task2) Included Challenges in our Process Assessment3) Calculated the Net Gain4) Resulting in a clear understanding of how well we have addressed

productivity challenges in our improvements

Note – as before, the improvement approach outlined in The Insiders’ Guide will eliminate Tasks, Participants, Interactions, object and Challenges. Step 3 adds Challenges into the practice.

*If we feel we have not met the challenges of personality productivity, what do we do? This can be an important motivator to go back to improvements and innovate on new ways that additional challenges can be eliminated.

Improving Personal Productivity - Summary




http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-BPM-Process-Mastery/dp/0929652096

Would you like to learn more about Mastering BPM?

http://acuitystudio.com/human-centric-process-analysis-and-improvement/

http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-BPM-Process-Mastery/dp/0929652096

http://acuitystudio.com/human-centric-process-analysis-and-improvement/