Business Process Improvement - Skip defining current state?!?
Many of us have been there before - The project Kick-Off. Leaders who stand on ceremony and extoll their vision of how awesome the business will be after Go-Live. Stakeholders and partners who are inspired with the hopes that ALL those old operational problems will be fixed and the work itself will operate smoothly. The project team that must meet that most important and unmovable deadline. I've played many roles on project teams including PM, OCM, BA and functional SME and am often asked why do projects need to spend so much time in analyzing the current state?
The plan to meet deadlines includes the project team understanding the business Current State (sometimes called As-Is), designing the Future State (also known as To-Be), implementing the change and finally the business adopting the change.
Whether the business is building a new product, rolling out a technology or business process change there will be many voices for the primary focus of To-Be rather than As-Is. There is often the belief that stakeholders already know the As-Is and that time in this phase is not time well spent.
I've even had project sponsors ask for this phase to be removed from a project schedule! There's nothing wrong with excited stakeholders wanting to focus their energy on the design of their future To-Be, but short-cutting the As-Is phase is a missed opportunity for really improving the chances of project success. Real success of a project should be measured by its outcomes rather than meeting its schedule. Here are some reasons on why the Current State (As-Is) phase can greatly improve project outcomes.
As-Is or Should-Be?
When working with business teams I often find gaps in what leadership thinks is As-Is state and what the practitioners or workers are actually doing in their day-to-day operations. This gap is what I term as the Should-Be state from the leadership or management perspective.
The Should-Be state is how management believe workers perform their day-to-day tasks. As-Is is how workers actually perform.
The root causes for these gaps can be numerous and deserve attention to be fully understood. The adage that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is appropriate here. My colleagues and I often note the common root causes for this non-compliance as:
- Workers not being trained/mentored at go-live or as they were on-boarded into the business
- Workers just not wanting to follow the process
- Incompatible technology or incorrect data requiring the process being subverted for business operations
- New business groups (mergers or new business opportunities) not on-boarded correctly into the enterprise
- Business maturity and change just outpacing the process
Some of these causes were likely drivers for the project in the first place, but there are likely big cultural clues to be discovered on how to drive better adoption of the change.
What are the current metrics?
Metrics discovered during Current State fall into several categories.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) - whether these are internal or customer facing KPIs these will be the benchmark for defining the realistic Future State targets for the project.
Process pathways and divergence metrics can give guide posts to the team for prioritization of highest value targets in the future state
Process Activity timings provide benchmarks and present clear opportunities for the future state
Project roles
Learning the business roles during the current state provides the opportunity to begin the change management activities on the right foot. Bringing stakeholders too late into the process means the project team is missing the opportunity to identify the real champions, super users and resistors.
Enterprise Business Process
Depending on the project scope, the Current State phase is the best time to clearly identify how key business process integrate with each other, how they are owned, governed and what are the supporting policies and standards.
Easy wins
Time spent during the Current State whereby cross functional teams are interviewed often reveal easy fixes or changes that can me made outside of the project. Examples include:
- Remedial/Expanded training
- Master Data fixes
- Business Process Communications
Technology
The Current State is the final opportunity for the project team to baseline the inventory of ALL the current solutions in place including applications and data integrations. Projects need to ensure owners of application and the data is well understood.
Allen Miko is a Senior Partner at Chrysylys responsible for the planning and delivery of business improvement initiatives.
Retired
6 年I totally agree that there is, often times, a big gap between what happens operationally on a day-to-day basis and what "Management" thinks is happening. Consequently, if you are part of a transformation project to improve working practices and/or implement a new IT system, many critical business issues can be missed -? leading to to a less than successful implementation. For me, the first step is to define in great detail what the end state will be and must be rooted in the Organisations business plan. This gives everyone a vision of what the "To Be" will look like. You'd hope this is a collaborative effort; however at the end of the day the Senior Management Team set the direction of the company and need to be very clear on what the critical business issues are and, hugely important, what the impact is to the business measured in terms of lost revenue earning opportunities, unnecessary costs and/or poor customer experience if these issues aren't addressed.? Defining the "As Is" is about looking for good working practices that can be pulled into the "new world" as well as discarding practices that have been in place for many years (often caused by inadequate IT systems) and have become the "way we do things around here". This means in-depth analysis with the practitioners to model exact what they do now and, no surprise, you? may find a multitude of different processes for what seems like the same task. Hand-in-hand with this work is asking the question "If you had a completely blank page and unlimited budget" what would great look like to you?"? So I guess I'm saying that the "As Is" model is important BUT if you find that the working practices and/or supporting IT systems are so far away from what the "To Be" is then concentrate on the "To Be" and, as part of that work, define what "great" looks like in detail. So much detail, in fact, that you could write User Acceptance Tests (linked to the overall business plan) and use the "To Be" model? as documentation for any IT procurement exercise. Finally, we are talking about implementing change and always, always be very aware of the need to help practitioners through this. However much people complain about the "As Is" they need to be given confidence and support to change to the "To Be" and this is not an IT issue; not a Project issue but an organisational issue that needs specialist help. Never underestimate the "pull" of the "As Is" and many transformation projects are challenged because teams are nervous and anxious about their ability to work well in the new world.?
New challenge accepted
6 年I am in absolute disagreement. If you do process improvement As-Is processes might be helpful if not documented well. If taken as base for implementing a new IT system a certain disruption is helpful if not required to make people think in new ways. Key element is to not loose the competitive advantage in certain processes. The things to know about As-Is are in things like Master Data...and organization in da much as is required for a successful conversion. From that perspective I strongly believe that in many cases there is no bigger waste of time and money than dealing with As-Is processes.
Happens all too often. If we don’t spend time here, we end up implementing what we’ve got, scratching our heads later because results aren’t as expected!
Business process management eliminates obstacles, enabling the effective realization of products and services.
6 年Great post! The problem is that many BPM platforms make it difficult to maintain business process definitions over time. On the other hand, Symbio BPM was designed with this in mind from day one https://www.symbioworld.com/en/
Highly Motivated Project Manager and Business Analyst | who identifies, simplifies, and automates your challenging business processes | Certified Project Manager and Six Sigma Lean Green Belt | Veteran US Marine Corps
6 年Yes, the difference between the "Should Be" and the "As -Is" can be dramatic. Often times, the?"As -Is" processes have not been documented, compounding the problem.??