Maintaining process scenarios derived from separate business processes

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Stephen Klineberg on June 2, 2010

I am interested to understand how other companies using ARIS have managed scenarios when they have modelled their value chain processes from a functional perspective.

How do you keep the scenarios in synch with the base business processes that comprise it?

Is it worthwhile to capture what scenario(s) an individual process step is part of? Is it then possible to report on what steps the scenario comprises, in the correct sequence?

PROCESS: A collection of activities that has one or more inputs and generates one or more results that represent value to the customer. Processes are functionally decomposed in the Woolworths Process Framework into 4 levels.

SCENARIO: A particular pathway or route through a process or a series of processes. Eg. different products or departments (Perishables vs Hardgoods) may have a different path through a process; Replenished vs seasonal lines. A scenario may be comprised of functions that are contained in many separate models

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Sergei Real-Picture on June 6, 2010

Hi. Your message has several questions to be answered to, but I reckon the major question you would like to get is:

How do you keep the scenarios in synch with the base business processes that comprise it?

The funny thing that the answer to your quesion resides in the basic of BPM and continious improvement.

D - Design - sure, thanks for the process modelling tools, we can design processes.
M - Manager - no problem. ARIS Business server (not to mention others for political correctness resons)
A - Analyse. Yes, we can analyse them (semantic check, reports and common sense) and this is not a rocket sceince anymore.
I - Implement - to some degree it belongs to the category of miracles in now days but exists (like a Santa Claus). This is a tricky point - depends on what do we mean by that and I will dig deeper there.
C - control. This is easy if you have subject to control and feedback mechanism to initiate change management.

I am pretty sure that we will not fall into disagreements on these 5 steps which are necessary to KEEP SCENARIOUS IN SYNC WITH BUSINESS PROCESSES

So, as I see, I (implement) components of the process model cycle requires further formal definition.

First, what do we mean by PROCESS MODEL IMPLEMENTATION - do not mix with Process Implementation. In my oppinion it is - management of the model and model life cycle support and differs from PROCESS IMPLEMENTATION, which is implementation of the sequence of business activities.

I think that all principles of the DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT can be applied for the PROCESS MODEL MANAGEMENT, including procedures to REVISE, APPROVE, ARCHIVE and CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP. If you do not have these processes defined and implemented - you do not have PROCESS MODEL IMPLEMENTATION and you do not support process model LIFE CYCLE and sooner or later your processes will be out of sync with business.

The support of the process model LIFE CYCLE actually keeps model in SYNC with business. If you will look deeper, you will find that PMLC (process model life cycle) has many processes, including very important mechanisms such as search/location, feedback/annotation, change management/storage and others.

Unfortunately you can't rely on that it will happen by itself. If you have mechanism to fire model change by changes in business environment - PMLC can be implemented. To achieve that there should be a system of collecting of changes in place as well as some sort of discussion forum established, where change identifier can rise a flag and start discussion "PROCESS MODEL NOT IN SYNC WITH BUSINESS". If the BUSINESS PROCESS PARTICIPANTS have mechanism to feedback on the corresponding BUSINESS PROCESS MODEL - this is where you can start activities to keep your processes in sync.

Unfortunately this type of solution doesn't exist as a boxed product. ARIS Business Architect can be used to some degree to achive this goal, however I see that it such solution should be architected and constructed inside organisation and incorporated into corporate environent not to forget about culture.

If such solution will be constructed and implemented inside organisation it will represent organisation know-how and will be to some degree confidential due to it's competitive nature. The principles of such system can be discussed but the actual implementation - will be hidden from the outside world.

I would like to point out here that any system which suppose to kepp processes in sync with business should have ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE engine build-in because on large number of models (I am talking about tens of thousands) there is no way such processes could be supported by simple click-and-view systems such as Portal or ARIS BUSINESS PUBLISHER. If system has target to reflect life of the business - it should be driven by ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (rule baed-event driven) engines with LOGIC INFERENCE and SELF LEARNING functionality.

I think that this is a framework of the PMLC systems which could help you with your answer.

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Maintaining process scenarios derived from separate business processes

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