Explore the intricacies of process hierarchy in business management with insights on functional and end-to-end structures from a recent discussion highlighting common challenges and diverse client perspectives.
A new podcast episode of Caspar Jans was published on Feb 28, 2025 with the original title:
S04E02: Process Hierarchy and Politics
Overview:
In this episode, Caspar Jans explores the process hierarchy in business management, emphasizing the importance of maintaining both a functionally decomposed hierarchy and an end-to-end hierarchy to effectively govern and manage processes across different client interactions.
Core content:
- The process hierarchy is crucial for ordering business processes to facilitate governance, management, and updates.
- Maintaining both functional and end-to-end hierarchies helps to address cross-functional processes effectively.
- A clear functional hierarchy decomposes domains like Purchasing and Finance into detailed business processes.
- Assigning ownership to end-to-end processes can be politically sensitive within organizations.
- Meetings revealed that while discussions were similar, outcomes varied based on client-specific needs.
Learnings:
- Understanding the difference between functional and end-to-end process hierarchies is key to effective BPM.
- End-to-end processes often require careful consideration for ownership and responsibilities across functions.
- Common challenges include addressing variations in processes executed differently in different regions or product lines.
- Engaging in multiple discussions on the same topic can yield different solutions tailored to specific contexts.
- Effective process management starts with a foundational understanding of hierarchy and ownership dynamics.
The original content was published in English.
