BPM.today

S03E04 Why are we still debating the value of process documentation?

Last time I checked we are living in 2024 and yet, after more than 3 decades of running, managing and optimising organisations, we still seem to be debating the value of process documentation. For me it’s crystal clear, but I meet so many people that do not understand intuitively and that makes me ask the question: where did this go off the tracks and how can we get it back on?

I found an interesting article by John Santic on rebuilding business processes like the six million dollar man and it outlines very nicely how the philosophy behind process management was basically invented too early and was ahead of its time. I did get me thinking, I mean, I have been in the BPM industry for a long time by now and I did have to ‘prove’ the value of process documentation time and time again, sometimes more successful than other times I might add. 

Over the course of the years I have used an analogy to make people understand the role process documentation plays in an organisation and why it is important to (a) have them and (b) maintain them. So, let’s go on a little journey and explain to you why process documentation is very much like construction drawings. 

You’ll have to bear with me on this one. For starters, I don’t think that there is any person who would question the need to have construction drawings (they are increasingly digital cad-cam models by the way) when you want to build an apartment building. That would be a fair assumption, right? Let’s see how far we can take this analogy. 

Phase 1: design

When you plan to build an apartment building you ask an architect to make the initial sketches and floor plans. They look very nice, but they are practically useless when it comes to the actual construction of the apartment building. They need to be converted into the construction drawings with different perspectives (the floor plan, the electrical plan, the piping plan etc). For me, the architect sketches are similar to process documentation in PowerPoint or Visio. Nice drawings, but essentially worthless when you need to build the organisation.

The different perspectives, by the way, can be compared to the different views you can take on your organisation: a process perspective, an application landscape perspective, a risk management perspective, a people (roles) perspective and many more. These organisation perspective might be mastered and maintained in different platforms but let’s all agree that the one place where they all come together is the business process. 

Phase 2: construction

During the physical construction of an apartment building, many parties have to be completely aligned on the specifications of what they need to deliver to the job site, in what quantity and when. In parallel, when you are developing your organisation, you need to be in full alignment on the strategic targets, the corresponding operating model and the translation of that into business processes, work instructions etc in order to be able to perform your core tasks. During this phase the construction drawings are used on a daily basis, and so should process documentation be during organisational development and changes. 

Another thing you might have experienced if you ever built your own house is that making changes to the design after construction has started is very, very costly. The reason for this is that it increases the risk of triggering an avalanche of follow on changes, that in turn drive up the cost of the built and drive down the profit margin for the construction company. The same applies to the organisation: at the moment that you make changes without thinking about, or being able to assess the impact of, the potential consequences, you might be in for a rollercoaster of subsequent changes that might render the business case for the first change obsolete. In other words, you need your process documentation to assess the potential impact for any given change request before you start designing and implementing a new solution. 

Phase 3: Operation

So, the building is complete and the first inhabitants move in and start to live in their shiny new apartments. Given the sky high energy prices, they all want to keep tabs on their energy usage, water usage and the overall climate in their apartment. The usual answer in 2024 is: there is an app for this, but you want to have single place where you keep track of all of this. So, you might introduce domotica (the automation of home appliances like curtains, shades, coffee machines etc) and extract the data from it (think about the daily generated kWh’s from your solar panels) into a single dashboard. 

The same applies to your organisation (again). You apply process mining to extract useful information about the operation of your business processes in order to render judgment on their performance. One of the things you can now do on top of that is to compare what you found in process mining, with how things should have been done based on the documented processes. In other words, process intelligence will enable you to be more in control, identify mishaps and risks quicker and respond to them in a more timely manner. 

Phase 4: Remodelling

We now fast forward one or two decades and the apartment building needs some structural renovation or remodelling. After the architect did his/her job, the first thing the construction company will ask for is: show me the construction drawings of the initial built (plus any subsequent change to the building) and we all find this a perfectly understandable and decent question. Then please somebody explain to me why, in the case of an organisational remodelling or renovation, this particular question (show me the current and up to date process documentation) is not met with the same understanding? This really is beyond me…. 

The cherry on top of this analogy is governance 

In most countries apartment buildings are governed by a group of people (in the US this is called the Home Owner Association (HOA), in the Netherlands it’s called the VVE (Vereniging van Eigenaren)) that looks after the daily operation of the building and it’s planned maintenance. It also takes decisions on things that will cost the apartment owners money. 

In organisations, there should be something like a process governance board (or whatever name you seem fit), typically consisting out of the global process owners and mandated with looking after the state of things from a process management perspective. I can write a whole book on that subject, but for now it should suffice to mention that this governance board needs to ensure that the body of knowledge on their business processes stays in the best possible shape, to ensure that their own work is based on reality and not just on something that was written down years ago and never looked at again. 

This, by the way, also means that the leaders in an organisation need to be trained on the concepts of #BPM in order to understand the power and the subsequent responsibilities they have to keep their organisation firing at all cilinders.

Long story short, nobody on this planet questions the need to have construction drawings when you need to build an apartment building, but when we have conversations around building and managing your organisation , we constantly need to ‘prove’ the value of having process documentation. This makes absolute zero sense to me, like in zero degree Kelvin sense. 

Alright, rant is over, thanks for sitting this one out with me. See you next time,

Ciao, Caspar

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