Discover insights on structuring process hierarchies in business management as the author explores functional and end-to-end processes, addressing common challenges with ownership assignment and process variation.
A new blog post of Caspar Jans was published on Feb 28, 2025 with the original title:
Process Hierarchy and Politics
Overview:
In this post, the author shares insights on establishing a process hierarchy for effective business process management. Highlighting the importance of maintaining both functional and end-to-end hierarchies, the author underscores the political challenges of ownership assignment within organizations.
Core content:
- The author discusses the importance of having a fully functional hierarchy and an end-to-end hierarchy to manage business processes effectively.
- Functional hierarchies should begin with high-level domains like Marketing and IT, decomposing into individual processes.
- End-to-end processes cross functional borders, creating complexity in assigning ownership and requiring careful management.
- Different conclusions can emerge in discussions, despite similar starting points on the same topic across multiple client meetings.
Learnings:
- Effective process management requires understanding the structure and interrelation of functional and end-to-end hierarchies.
- Ownership assignment in end-to-end processes can be politically sensitive; identifying impactful processes is key.
- Challenges such as varying process executions across countries or product lines require flexible hierarchy adjustments.
- Expect variations in conclusions from discussions, even if the foundational topics remain consistent across meetings.
The original content was published in English.
