International Process and Performance Institute

The recent IIRME Process Excellence Summit was a great event. Speakers were drawn from the local region and internationally with a number of compelling real world case studies and highly refined observational perspectives from industry experts.

I was very impressed with the caliber of speakers and the results produced in many of the case studies (no theory here folks, this was real results from life in the BPM trenches!). The EFQM presentation on their quality framework that is making such a big impact in Europe (and beyond) highlighted the focus of organizations as represented by event speakers where more and more we are addressing all of the stakeholders in our process approach-customers, the organization, employees and society in general.

If you were not able to attend this event, you missed a great opportunity to learn a lot about what others are doing, the results they are acheiving and the lessons they have learned. Oh, and the IIRME team did a great job of running the event leaving speakers and participants the freedom to engage in the learning experience, not in being distracted with "non value add" event details :)

For my opening presentation, I presented a simple model for Process Excellence but one that I think highlights the holistic nature of what process excellence is really all about. Much of what I covered was simple "not in our conversation" in preceding years, so I think it was a sign of the times in how we are maturing our approach to process excellence.

The model is presented here, and I'll cover it in quick overview to give you a sense for the perspective taken. But before I do, let me point out that without pre-event colloboration I found that my opening keynote was reinforced throughout the event by the other speakers and participants. I'll chalk that down to "synchronicity" as I certainly didn't influence the presentations of the other speakers-their presentations were prepared long before hearing my thoughts on the matter!

Focus - the focus of the process is an outcome, or better, a desired outcome. This is the strategic component of the process from which we can derive the organizational and/or process consumer's (customer, internal customer) KPIs. Focus often comes from an existing undesirable outcome however, regardless of why the outcome is identified it sets a stake in the ground for defining the process behind the outcome.

Alignment - if we know the outcome-actually, the desired outcome-then we can challenge the process behind the outcome to ensure that everything that is in the process (activities, workflow, rules, assumptions, data integration, automation, and so on) is aligned to achieving the outcome we desire. Alignment is a process improvement activity, and is essential to maximizing process value.

Relevancy - this is a new area for some of us, but it is growing in our awareness a critical aspect of process. Is our process relevant to ALL of the process participants? The PEOPLE who consume the outcome, do the work, conduct analysis, manage operations, make strategic decisions, and develop ongoing strategy? Is the information we provide directly pertinent to their needs and wants? Are interfaces intuitive to their purpose? Does the process make it easier for them to succeed? Relevance is a critical apsect of process; what effectively determines if a process is "functional"or "disfunctional." This is the "place" where work gets done, and relevance to process participants-in many ways-determines whether (or not) our preceding work yields real value (or not.)

Support - finally there is support, which inlcudes our use of technology to support process and when done sucessfully will directly support-and augment-the focus, alignment and revelancy of our processes. This is really where the "gap" between operations and technology exists that is talked about so often, and it (as with each aspect of the model) it is either done right or we subject the entire process plan to a level of risk that could preclude the creation of value from our process initiative.

I know its a very brief overview of the components of process excellence, but I think it helps us place our process intiatives into perspective. The opportunities to achieve significant gains from process practices remain the best place for us to improve our organizational success and I think this model helps us understand what we must do to achieve that success