Explore the intricacies of process hierarchy in business management, as key insights reveal the balance between functional and end-to-end structures and the challenges of assigning ownership.
A new blog post of Caspar Jans was published on Feb 28, 2025 with the original title:
S04E02: The Process Hierarchy and Politics
Overview:
This post discusses the importance of establishing a process hierarchy for effective business process management. It outlines two essential structures: a functional hierarchy and an end-to-end hierarchy, while addressing challenges related to process ownership.
Core content:
- The need for a dual hierarchy in business processes: a functionally decomposed hierarchy and an end-to-end hierarchy.
- The functional hierarchy begins at highest-level domains, like Finance and HR, and is broken down into individual processes.
- The end-to-end hierarchy connects processes that span across functions, making them difficult to fit in a functional structure.
- Process ownership can be politically sensitive, particularly in determining who influences end-to-end processes.
- Variations in processes across countries and products require careful differentiation in the process hierarchy.
Learnings:
- Understanding the importance of both functional and end-to-end hierarchies can enhance governance in process management.
- Learn how to navigate the complexities of assigning process ownership within cross-functional processes.
- Identify the best practices for differentiating processes based on geographic or product line variations.
- Recognize that while initial structures may be straightforward, actual implementation will vary and require flexible approaches.
- Gain insights from multiple client discussions to appreciate diverse approaches to the same issue in process hierarchy.
The original content was published in English.
