Whiteboards are probably one of the most effective tools to sketch your ideas or to brainstorm with your colleagues. Often, whiteboards are combined with post-it notes to visualise ideas of different people. Whiteboards and post-it notes are also used in many business process management efforts, for example to define the initial process design or to extract process knowledge from process participants. It is also a great tool to come up with improvement ideas. In sum, whiteboards and post-it notes are usually used before process modelling.
ARIS Express is a tool meant for BPM entry users. We hope to bring BPM to the masses by providing an easy to use tool with a simplified modelling method. In the latest ARIS Express 2.0 release (upgrade instructions), we added a new model type called Whiteboard. Basically, it is your virtual whiteboard providing post-it notes ;-)
A whiteboard in ARIS Express allows you to structure your BPM effort. For example, you can define the main activities of a business process as so called stages. Each stage can be further refined with additional details like:
- contained activities
- goals of the stage
- relevant KPIs to measure the success of the stage
- details
Attached to this post I added a whiteboard outlining the overall product development process. In literature, this process has several stages such as product innovation and introduction. I further defined the main activities of the innovation stage, which includes activities such as generating ideas and assessing them. I also added some KPIs and goals so that you get an idea how a whiteboard model could be used.
It will be interesting to see how people use this model. I think in some way it is similar to a process landscape (value-added chain diagram), which you could also use to structure your project into stages and activities. The whiteboard has some advantages, because you can also define KPIs and goals.
Do you think whiteboard models are useful to collect BPM knowledge? Please share with us your usage of whiteboard models!
