Question: What are some of the ways that EA is evolving and what changes are EA tool vendors implementing to support those changes?

Answer: In my last blog post, I talked about demonstrating the value of enterprise architecture to the business and the increasing expectation and demand for EA to demonstrate business value. The focus on value is a big part of EA’s evolution. I believe this is a result of both the desire to see a return on the EA investment, which many companies have already made, and the need to identify new ways to drive adaptability into the organization in order to remain competitive.

In this post, I am going to discuss  one of the ways EA tool vendors are  supporting organizations in this evolution through an increased focus on leveraging the information captured about the enterprise to drive more informed decisions. Leading EA tool vendors are increasing their capabilities around the use of the data to support better presentation of the analysis, investment options, and organizational impacts to decision makers throughout the organization. To enable these key stakeholders, architects need to support multiple points of view, different levels of detail and a diverse set of information. This data also needs to be presented to users in a format that can be easily understood and linked back to the objectives that drive each functional area.

For too many organizations, the manipulation of the data remains a highly manual process where strategy, organizational, and process models are rebuilt in spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides and documents. This not only wastes the time of highly skilled analysts, but also creates a maintenance nightmare as requests for additional information, refinements in the assumptions, or other alternatives are requested by business users, which inevitably starts the cycle of manual data manipulation again.

I believe the better approach is to drive the presentation of the information directly from the underlying enterprise data – supporting a combination of information from the architecture teams with relevant data from other systems. Graphical displays and drill-down capabilities deliver better clarity into the information to support more informed decisions. Changing an assumption, resource allocation, business process, or goal in one central location can cascade through all the dependencies and immediately be reflected across the enterprise model or compared to other iterations of the project – without the hassles and headaches of manual rework.

If you’re not working from a central repository, and your current EA toolset doesn’t include the ability to translate your enterprise information and business models into information that can be consumed the business users, you should be demanding more. Unlocking information to enable better decisions is one of the ways that EA delivers value back to the business.

In my next post, I’ll be discussing another trend in EA and EA tool evolution – where analysts fit within the organization and what impact that has on what you need from EA tools.

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Question: Where do you think this market is going? Do you see other tools coming into play?

Answer: If EA initiatives are successful, you can think of their output as a road map for where to focus resources and energy to close the gaps between your organization’s strategy and its ability to execute toward those strategic goals. The natural extension to EA is to take those initiatives and operationalize them. In other words, take the EA concepts and turn them into project plans that organizational leaders drive into their teams. For some, these initiatives may require organizational change, reallocation of resources, or business process improvements and system integration through tools like business process management (BPM).

An organization that learns to leverage the synergy between EA and BPM will be able to more effectively prioritize projects based on this higher level context for change and therefore, identify which projects have the greatest ability to help the organization execute against its strategy. BPM projects funded without the strategic context EA provides may have an incremental impact to the business. However, this approach fails to provide  executives with the perspective they need to make more informed decisions about where investments should be made based on  their relative impact against strategic goals.

Even with BPM’s extraordinary ROI, some projects have significantly more value than others. As I have yet to meet a company with unlimited resources, enabling your company to make decisions that focus the resources you have on the projects that have the greatest impact to your goals is extremely valuable. Companies who combine EA and BPM technologies are in a better position to close the gap between strategy and execution by focusing on initiatives that matter and seeing to their rapid operationalization.  If you’re still not convinced, I encourage you to read Gartner’s recent report, “Make EA and BPM Work Together to Deliver Business Value.”

Where do you think this market is going? Feel free to leave comments below and we’ll discuss!

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Question: What sort of value do organizations achieve from Enterprise Architecture?

Answer: Almost every article, blog post, seminar, and book about enterprise architecture (EA) includes some mention of the need for enterprise architects to demonstrate move value to the business.  The truth is that few architects get much practical, actionable advice on how to do that. Many business leaders don’t really understand the value of various frameworks and taxonomies and have a difficult time understanding the attention to detail that architects focus on when developing their modeling methodologies. Not only do business leaders not understand, but many are unwilling to take the time to learn. I’ve seen business mangers glaze over when architects start talking about something as simple as their modeling assumptions.

The most successful companies embrace architecture as a way to instill a discipline that drives the translation of business strategy and vision into the enterprise to facilitate the change needed to reach the broader business goals. Architecture also defines the path for an organization to evolve as it implements those the necessary changes. In today’s hyper-competitive global economy organizations cannot depend on a few “individuals” to instinctively make the right decisions to manage and execute this type of large-scale change. Especially when companies are focusing on objectives like improving customer experience and consistency across all channels of communication, the focus on individual contributions can actually impede the success of the broader goal.

To expand on this point, take a minute to read a recent blog post by HP’s Terry White, which cites research by Dana Gartner, president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research. Among other important things it suggests that to fully realize the value of architecture, “there’s a cultural shift that takes place in an organization, when it commits to doing business in a new way, and that cultural shift starts with abandoning a culture of heroes and accepting a culture of discipline.” Organizations have to strive for a higher level of maturity and embrace a new culture of discipline before they can fully realize the value of architecture.

This is not to say that organizations with less maturity don’t derive value from EA. Organizations  have demonstrated millions of dollars in savings with architectural initiatives focused on Application Portfolio Management, IT management, compliance and improving the effectiveness of key processes.  So my answer to this question is the value that organizations can achieve from EA initiatives depends on the business problem you are asking your architecture team to solve. Companies who view EA as an essential discipline for business transformation derive significantly more value than companies who take a more narrow view.

In fact, many of our customers who have taken the time to connect with the business teams have also seen an increase in their penetration and acceptance by the organization. However, keep in mind that this requires constant coaching. Realization of a deeper value of transformation can be accelerated when architects become more skilled at identifying key business leaders that understand the value of leveraging best practices, standardization, process optimization, or other capabilities enabled by good architecture. I recently had a conversation with one of our larger customers, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, who told me that he needed to have 150 conversations with key business leaders to open the door to another 150 conversations that he needed to have to drive the kind of value his team was able to deliver.

What do you think? Stay tuned for our next question in this series and feel free to let us know what questions you’d like answered.

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KMWorld recognizes OpenText Metastorm for demonstrating clearly identifiable technology breakthroughs that service a full spectrum of constituencies, especially customers, while seamlessly integrating into enterprise-wide environments. This year there were over 800 products assessed by KMWorld’s judging panel, which included editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators, vendors, line-of-business managers and users.

We believe this award continues to symbolize our deep commitment to developing industry-leading EA, BPA and BPM software and solutions that transform the way organizations do business. We are honored to again be listed as a Trend-Setting Product of 2011. Stay tuned – we have some great product announcements around the corner!

Want to learn more about the OpenText Metastorm business transformation platform? Check out our solution page, full of white papers, case studies and solution sheets, or get a free trial of Metastorm ProVision or Metastorm M3!

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This makes Metastorm M3 the only enterprise-class business planning & modeling solution offered on the Azure Marketplace. M3 offers the most popular modeling types from Metastorm’s Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Management (BPM) software and delivers them anywhere, anytime in a secure, easy to use environment – enabling real-time collaboration, annotation and recording capabilities in the cloud.

With a $0 investment in new software or infrastructure, both business and IT staff of any experience level can get involved in the design process and collaborate across different departments. For greater business improvements, you’ll want to take modeling even further and identify relationships between key business and process components of your organization.  So anything that your teams build in M3 can be uploaded into Metastorm ProVision as part of a larger EA or business transformation project or exported into Metastorm BPM for automation.

This certification as part of the Windows Azure Marketplace is the latest in OpenText Metastorm’s credentials. As a Gold Certified Partner in the Microsoft Partner Network, OpenText Metastorm leverages Microsoft Silverlight for its user interface, and offers integration with the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Workflow Foundation and Microsoft Visual Studio. For additional information, check out M3 here in the Windows Azure Marketplace.

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The TCM solutions deal with optimization of business processes that involve content. In fact, at least half of all business processes involve content: a received fax, scanned paper, or submitted form. The Metastorm acquisition will allow OpenText to significantly raise the bar when it comes to managing content-related processes. I am not talking just about the technology but also about market presence, reputation, number of R&D engineers as well as expertise in sales and marketing.

Many business processes that customers optimize using Metastorm software do not involve content. This market is very interesting for OpenText as well. According to Gartner, the BPM market grew by 15% in 2009. Obviously, that represents a great growth opportunity for OpenText, no matter if the solutions are content-centric or process-centric. And Metastorm is a leader in BPM according to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites.

On top of that, Metastorm adds two other product areas to OpenText’s portfolio: business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA). Metastorm is a leader both areas – according to their respective Magic Quadrants. Just the fact that each of the areas has a Magic Quadrant suggests that these are separate, albeit very related, substantial markets and technologies – which when combined with BPM allow organizations to define strategy, analyze change and automate business processes to make better decisions. And given that Metastorm is a leader in three different spaces, the company and its solutions are a very compelling addition to the OpenText portfolio.  You can read insights from one of my colleagues on the synergies he sees with Metastorm ProVision here.

A particularly interesting trend emerged in the last year or two – Case Management. Case management is a powerful way of organizing all the case-related documentation and process optimization capabilities involved in managing a case. A case can be anything from lawsuits to government grant proposals to insurance claims. And while OpenText already has had a case management offering for a couple of years, this is an area of focus today and it is likely that some of the BPM, BPA or EA capabilities from Metastorm will find their way into OpenText’s case management offering. Note: this is my take at the acquisition and not an official OpenText roadmap. Read the press release and listen to the included podcast if you want the official information.

The press release discussed how Metastorm adds to OpenText’s portfolio in the Microsoft ecosystem. The ecosystem value proposition is a big part of OpenText’s strategy – the company partners with Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP and offers solutions for customers in all three of these ecosystems. And since Metastorm’s software is very friendly to the Microsoft stack and it does have existing integration with SharePoint, it is a natural fit. SharePoint is not used for process optimization today – Metastorm is a key partner of Microsoft for this purpose. This now becomes a natural addition to the portfolio of solutions we can offer to customers with significant investments in Microsoft technologies.

OpenText builds software and acquires companies to solve customer problems that relate to content. This is what we do and how we stay ahead of the curve. With all the assets and talent that Metastorm brings, this is a particularly exciting acquisition that opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

____________________

Lubor Ptacek joined OpenText in 2008 and as Vice President of Product Marketing he is responsible for all product marketing activities for the entire suite of OpenText enterprise content management products. His responsibilities range from messaging and market intelligence to analyst and public relations. With 20 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, Lubor has worked in a variety of positions in marketing, product marketing, and product management.  Prior to joining OpenText, Lubor held various roles at EMC, Documentum, Vignette, and Novell. Currently, he also serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM).

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When I asked the attendees to describe their ability to handle major and ongoing changes within their organization in a poll, 63% of participants indicated that it was “slow, painful and expensive” and 31% said that efforts were “disjointed and siloed.”  Meaning only 6% of the 83 participants who responded believed that their organization “could be an industry model for business transformation.”

I’m not surprised.  Often, organizations struggle to manage change because they lack a consistent approach to business transformations.  Determining the end goal of a transformation (whether it be upgrading to a new technology, seeking operational efficiency, or staying ahead of competitor innovation) is one thing, but trying to figure out a successful, cost effective way to roll out the transformation takes deep insight into the day in and day out activities and processes within the organization.  

What organizations need to do is figure out how to communicate and collaborate across the enterprise so they can break down the obstacles to change. One way to achieve this is to align the organizational structures against a framework that enables organizations to prioritize and manage transformation initiatives – while also providing visibility into key organizational practices and providing vehicles to help people in cross-functional roles communicate and work together more effectively.      

Today, Metastorm announced a new Business Transformation Practices Framework that is designed to do just that.  The framework helps organizations eliminate the competing practices and communication barriers that prevent change and help them prioritize and manage transformation initiatives to achieve consistent and repeatable processes across current and future transformation activities.  The framework is complementary to and integrated with the Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® software – ensuring that multiple, business transformation initiatives can be tracked, monitored,  implemented and fine-tuned through business architecture and business process adjustments on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like more information about the Business Transformation Practices Framework, you can contact me or go to www.metastorm.com/transform to read white papers, download solution sheets and register for upcoming business transformation webinars. An onDemand video of The Power of Business Transformation webinar from last week is also available here. 

I also encourage you to join me for my next webinar – How to Manage Industry-Specific Change Using a Business Transformation Practices Framework – on Tuesday, March 15^th at 11:00 am EST, register here.

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Over the years we’ve seen law firms try to dig themselves out of the seemingly endless cycle of redundant, paper intensive processes.  At one point in time, implementing processes – however manual – with multiple data entry points was meant to drive improvements and lower risk when gathering and reviewing critical new client information.  However, given the significant technology advances and growing demand for firms to offer best-in-class services, these manual processes have become outdated, confusing and frustrating, and they diminish business productivity as well as negatively impacting customer and employee satisfaction. 

Compiling, reviewing and processing new clients against the existing client database can be cumbersome.  Each individual client or new business requires extensive procedures to determine the conflict of interest, generate billing, and receive department approval—all before a new client is even taken on.  Investing in a robust business process management (BPM) suite is a smart, effective way for law firms to smoothly streamline and manage the end-to-end business process, while capturing the complete and accurate client matter, related party, and billing data for a potential client or business – information which is then automatically packaged and presented to the attorneys for approval via email, web or mobile device.  Data accuracy is improved, risk is reduced and attorneys waste little time on administrative tasks so that they can maximize billing hours.  BPM software equates to process improvement and increased revenues for the firm from the moment the first process goes live.

In ILTA’s 2010 Technology Survey, 464 firms representing over 80,000 attorneys and nearly 180,000 total end users were asked if and what they use to automate their business processes.  Of the responses, 27% of firms with 350-690 employees and 39% of firms with 700 employees or more indicated that they leverage Metastorm to help analyze, streamline and automate their business workflows.

Over 190 law firms globally, including six of the 10 largest firms in the world and over 30% of the AmLaw 200 rely on Metastorm’s Enterprise portfolio suite to model, analyze and improve the firm’s business processes to reduce overhead, improve the range and quality of services, and optimize resources, all while cutting cost without losing strategic advantage.  Law firms deploy Metastorm’s legal solutions to standardize process and automate manual operations to ensure complete consistency and accuracy, accelerate new client matter intake and conflict-of-interest review, maintain regulatory compliance and automate audit trail capture.   

Metastorm understands that in the legal sector time is money, and we have spent countless hours developing and perfecting the right software solutions to meet your industry needs. Investing in business process management software now will enable your firm to rapidly and effectively take on new clients in a way that is easy to manage while also addressing back office processes for increased productivity, faster customer response and improved profitability.  

If you’re interested in learning how your firm can benefit from Metastorm’s software solutions visit our legal solutions page, where you can download an overview of Metastorm’s legal services, learn about Metastorm’s Client Matter Inception Process Pod, and read customer success stories.

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In this video from the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video testimonial series, released earlier this week, Cindy Bivians, senior manager of corporate risk control from a Fortune 100 energy company, shares insights into how they deployed Metastorm ProVision to achieve optimal business solutions.  Bivians discusses how they are using Metastorm ProVision to model, visualize and improve gaps across the enterprise. By implementing Metastorm ProVision, the organization was able to establish transparency across integrated processes within their Corporate Risk Controls sector.  In doing this, they were able to identify missing items and areas that needed improvement and documented results – including a repeatable savings of 65 hours of time from one group process.  Since then, they have deployed Metastorm ProVision into all other areas of their organizational structure, and expect to see a dramatic change in hours saved in 2011. 

Implementing Metastorm ProVision enables businesses to thoroughly understand the intricate relationships that exist between business strategy and business process and identify areas for improvement.  Want to learn more about how customers are leveraging Metastorm Enterprise software?  Check out our customer page where you can watch the complete Metastorm Customers Speak Out series and read over 100 customer success stories.

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Organizations worldwide rely on Metastorm software to meet the evolving demands of their dynamic business processes.  At Metastorm, we take great pride in our ability to consistently deliver services and solutions that meet customer needs in business process management, enterprise and business architecture, and business process analysis.  Metastorm’s integrated software portfolio, in combination with our on premise SaaS and Cloud-based options, enables organizations to define strategy, analyze change, and automate and improve key business processes—with clear visibility across the enterprise to optimize results. 

We continue to offer the Metastorm Customers Speak Out series because we, too, are inspired when we learn about the success our software enables.  We strive to deliver the best software, tools and support to help organizations optimize the use of their resources to achieve lower costs, faster time to market, better governance, greater agility and overall improved business performance. 

The 38 episodes of the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video series can be viewed on our customer testimonial page or on the MetastormMedia YouTube channel.  The customer interviews are also available on iTunes, by subscribing to the Metastorm iTunes Podcast series.  More than 100 customer case studies can be viewed and downloaded on the Metastorm customer success page. 

We hope that you gain valuable insights from the lessons learned and experiences of our customer base and can apply those to your own business improvement efforts.  And as always, Metastorm stands ready to help.

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Operating on the Microsoft Windows Azure ™ platform, Metastorm M3 provides users with complete benefits of a private or public cloud, including scalability, performance, security, and elasticity.  Metastorm M3 is designed to be modeling for the masses, offering 11 different modeling types—goal, organization, capability, system, process/workflow, activity, rule, project, requirement, location and deliverable— from the Metastorm Enterprise software suite.  Additionally, Metastorm M3 provides 23 modeling objects and viewpoints, going beyond a traditional process model, to give users more comprehensive and holistic business improvements. 

Metastorm M3 empowers businesses by offering a cloud-based environment through which an unlimited number of users can easily improve their organizations using enterprise modeling and collaboration.  Business and IT users are given a rich, social environment in the Cloud where they are able to utilize social networking tools such as chat, whiteboard, model annotation, sharing, recording, and playback to design and implement business practices.  A distinguishing feature of Metastorm M3 is that it offers secure, cloud-based collaborative enterprise modeling for anyone, anywhere.  Metastorm M3 is an excellent tool for mass deployment because it offers built-in modeling guides and real-time help, requiring no prior knowledge of or training in enterprise modeling and no IT setup.  Additionally, its location in the Cloud allows users to gain unlimited access, opening a broader, global collaboration for businesses to achieve the most optimal results.

Metastorm M3 is designed to be used alone or with the Metastorm Enterprise software suite.  Any input, information and data captured in the Cloud is compatible with Metastorm’s enterprise architecture, business process analysis, business process management and integration products to ensure ongoing, shared visibility and the ability to incorporate user input enterprise-wide process improvements.

“Metastorm M3 is designed to go above and beyond any other tool available today to give our customers a distinct edge over their competition,” said Greg Carter, executive vice president of development and CTO of Metastorm.  “Leveraging our years of best practice experience in modeling, architecture strategy and process improvement, we have compiled a rich set of modeling and collaboration tools to empower users on a global scale to participate in business architecture and process definition activities that were once limited to a specific department or skill level.”

What to know more about Metastorm M3?  Check out the social media version of the press release here, complete with screenshots and other related materials.

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Metastorm Smart Business Workspace uses widgets and mashups to deliver a role-based user experience across the entire Metastorm Enterprise software platform as well as other applications.  This single, role-driven interface is designed to meet the needs all types of roles within an organization.  Metastorm Smart Business Workspace transforms the power of Metastorm’s enterprise software by adding a layer of highly personalized user experience, resulting in rapid information access and a more productive, agile work environment regardless of the user’s organizational role. Using Metastorm Smart Business Workspace allows individuals to develop their own personal space, catering to their unique needs.  The software takes into account the user’s job description, skill set, knowledge base, key responsibilities and personal preferences to go beyond traditional interfaces to support the preferences of the user in a single, actionable environment.   

Metastorm Smart Business Workspace provides libraries of widgets related to Metastorm’s enterprise software for enterprise and business architecture, business process analysis, business process management and integration, giving users the ability to easily mash up and integrate data and applications.  The Metastorm Widget Designer enables non-technical users to quickly and easily design and create rich, entirely new and unique widgets and applications that include built-in transaction support, governance and advanced external integration capabilities. 

Metastorm Smart Business Workspace is designed to increase and promote social collaboration within the workplace, taking advantage of popular social networking capabilities to deliver meaningful business results.

“Metastorm Smart Business Workspace will open up a whole new world of insight and productivity for business users and give organizations the mechanism they need to finally leverage social collaboration technologies in a productive way within the enterprise,” said Kevin Haugh, vice president of product marketing and management at Metastorm.   “By delivering role-based, actionable workspaces that can be personalized by each user, Metastorm Smart Business Workspace will make it easier for users to leverage critical information and powerful features of the Metastorm Enterprise software suite – from enterprise modeling to business process analysis to daily process execution and participation – and to make better, faster business decisions.”

Interested in learning more about Metastorm Smart Business Workspace? Check out the social media version of the press release here, complete with screenshots and other related materials.

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Many Process Analysts see themselves as “Process Engineers,” and they take the designation quite literally.  They like to staff the project with like-minded people, not those pesky line workers who say, “But that’s not how we do it.”  Shortly after project kick-off, the Analysts dive into as much process detail as possible, as rapidly as possible.  They generate thick notebooks of swimlane diagrams, waving them around as if they were Holy Writ. These Engineers preside over process work sessions which are jaw-droppingly boring, mistaking the nodding heads of dozing participants for some kind of agreement on issues.  They are invariably shocked and dismayed to find that their final output -say, a Requirements Definition document – is panned by project team and sponsor alike.

So, what are they doing wrong?

Frequently, they are not attending to the “People Stuff”.  Now, a thorough discussion of the People Stuff would take a good deal of time, and should really be the subject of its own training course.  I will just touch on a few key pieces of advice here:

1. Start working on the People Stuff during your very first discussion with the Project Sponsor.  That person has an agenda of his/her own (no, really!), you need to determine what it is, and whether it will be a barrier to success.  One of my best projects, years ago, was one that never even got started.  I determined in my initial meeting with the Sponsor that he was demanding a lot of time and money for automation which would be of minimal benefit to the organization.  I made the case for tabling the project (and I had to make the case multiple times, because he was politically influential).  I count it one of my great successes, because I actively promoted the good of the company over the pet project of one person.
2. Determine the stakeholders – ALL of them.  Any stakeholder whom you ignore will show up at the worst possible time in your project, count on it. And, a stakeholder who has been ignored can be a powerful antagonist to the success of the initiative.  A good way to identify the stakeholder is to use the ProVision Business Interaction Model. This modeler helps you to push your team through the task of identifying touch points and it provides a really useful visual for your scope-setting conference with the Sponsor.
3. Ask every stakeholder: “What does success look like to you?” Ask them to pretend that the new process has been implemented successfully, and has been operating perfectly for six months: “What are you seeing? What are the things you love about this new process?” These discussions will surface some objectives which no one has talked about yet.  If undiscovered, these desires would have been voiced only at the time of project ”go-live,” when it would be too late to address them. 
4. Push both the Sponsor and management to get some workers of all levels on the project team.  You really need the day-to-day experience of all levels in order to get clarity on what the process SHOULD do for them.  Managers will tend to define the process according to the documented policy, line workers will tell you how often they have to violate that policy just to meet the goals set by management. Your job is to surface the real process; identify the broken parts, and help your clients to design a better way of doing things. Bleasdale’s Third Axiom of Process Management:  Honor the REAL process. If it’s broken, fix it; but don’t pretend it’s working when it’s not.
5. Plan to do a lot of crowd control in your work sessions.  There is no free lunch for the Process Analyst:  you must prepare for the work session with forethought; spend a lot of time developing visuals which will elicit maximum understanding and engagement, generate a good agenda, and keep to it. Provide descriptive meeting notes and lists of “takeaways” for the team to work on for the next session.  Without these tools, your meeting will degenerate into a “venting session.”  All this preparation is very difficult, very time-consuming – and a big part of the “magic” which makes a project successful.  Incidentally, I strongly advise tag-teaming the work sessions, with at least two people working on facilitation and scribing.  It is virtually impossible for one person to facilitate AND take notes.  When the facilitator stops to document issues or questions, that lull in the action sucks all the energy out of the session.
6. Find out what individual team members like, and provide it.  If possible, get a small budget for refreshments. Keep in mind that the people staffing these projects are doing ‘extra’ work. Yes, they really have full-time jobs; and they must add these meetings, and your wearisome take-away assignments, to their already-crammed workload. This causes them to feel a bit entitled to a treat, now and then; and it is only fair for you to provide it.  If money is tight at my company, I pay for candy myself (customer service is my thing.). My clients are very appreciative of the fact that I care enough to learn their preferences, and the sugar keeps the energy level up for those long afternoon work sessions.
7. Perhaps the most important advice on the people stuff—Plan to work harder than the rest of the team. If you are running the process analysis portion of a project (or the whole initiative), you are the one who sets the tone for diligence, precision, and thoroughness. Your audience will care only as much as you do. So, you must be willing to set the standard for others to follow. And, from a pragmatic standpoint, you will not be able to hold other team members accountable unless you have demonstrated that you have gone above and beyond. 

 In trying to think of a way to synthesize it all, I remembered a conversation with a potential client a few years ago.  He wanted me to work with a group comprised of IT and Marketing folks, very cantankerous and opinionated.  He was concerned about the “volatility factor” on the team, and wanted reassurance that I could manage the personalities. He asked me, “Would you mind telling me your management style?”  I hadn’t had THAT discussion in years, and the question took me by surprise.  So I answered from the gut, but tentatively, “…I guess you’d call it:  “Mother Hen…” 

 Even as the words slipped out, I thought, “Oh, brother, this is a deal-killer for sure.”  But before I had even finished the thought, he blurted, “That’s eXACTly what we need!!!!”   

 That was an “Aha!” moment for me, as I came face-to-face with my own philosophy about The People Stuff, something I had never articulated before.  And, if you think about it, it’s really not a bad paradigm.  The mother hen clearly cares about her wayward charges, but she’s not going to be a pushover.  She constantly watches their progress, intervening when necessary to keep order.  She bothers them, and bothers them some more, until she achieves the desired result. She doesn’t harm them, but she doesn’t let them deviate from the chosen path either.

So, if you are your project’s Mother Hen, look at it this way: You may bruise ‘em a little bit – but you’ll keep ‘em all alive; you’ll all get where you are going; and you won’t inflict any lasting damage.  Not bad, as management styles go.

===========================

Pat Bleasdale is an AVP with Wilmington Trust, a financial services company in Delaware.  She is a veteran Business Process and IT professional, with extensive experience in management consulting.  She has been actively involved in process analysis and business transformation since the 1990s.  Her background spans multiple industries, in sectors as diverse as Financial Services and Manufacturing; and her clients have included Fortune 100 firms, as well as small and mid-sized companies.  In 2006, Pat joined Wilmington Trust as the Company’s Business Process Specialist, charged with developing and deploying a BPM framework, a process engineering methodology, and best practices throughout the organization. 

 Pat holds B.S., M.A., and PhD degrees.  In the 1980s, she coined what has become Bleasdale’s First Axiom of Process Management:  ‘Never automate a mess.’

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The lives of many organizations have similar, humble beginnings.

But in order to survive and thrive in their environments both the caterpillar and the business have to grow – and for both parties, growing is essentially an input, output scenario.

For the business to grow, it needs to collect resources – people, materials, technology, infrastructure, etc. in order to produce its deliverables or provide its services, which will ultimately enable it to generate profits and expand.

The caterpillar on the other hand, needs to consume food to provide its body with energy - this enables the caterpillar to utilize food resources to increase its size.

Undoubtedly both the caterpillar and the business need resources to grow. But just like the caterpillar in a much beloved and well known children’s book, a business can become fat as it consumes more resources than necessary – or even the wrong resources altogether. Imagine your organization eating through 5 million sheets of paper, 40 thousand dollars in fines from a compliance violation, 150 hours of employee productivity because of duplication of effort, and so on.

Luckily for the caterpillar, it instinctively builds a cocoon that transforms it into a beautiful butterfly – eliminating its excess bulk, and allowing it to soar to new levels of prosperity.

But what’s a business to do? For businesses, overconsumption and poor management is a major problem that can lead to significant losses. Being too fat can be fatal to an enterprise – causing it to waste the profits that it needs to survive and thrive, and to become so sluggish that it is unable to effectively compete in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, no organization can wrap itself up in a cocoon and triumphantly emerge months later as a new and improved version of its former self. But if it were possible, I think it’s a safe bet that many would retract for a brief period and allow such a change to happen.

But there are technologies that can act like a cocoon to facilitate business transformation – and, even better than a cocoon, these technologies enable organizations to realize real, measurable improvements without ever requiring them to pull away from the marketplace. This means organizations can serve their customers and drive results while transforming to be Leaner, more agile and competitive than ever before.

For example, with Metastorm Enterprise, Metastorm’s integrated software suite of Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA), organizations can achieve business transformation in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: SEE the breadth of the enterprise including goals, resources and key process relationships with Metastorm ProVision®.

Step 2: THINK through and analyze possible organizational changes and process improvements with Metastorm ProVision for BPA – ensuring that the right changes are made.

Step 3: DO the right things with Metastorm BPM® – and quickly and cost effectively realize desired changes and results.

With Metastorm’s “See. Think. Do” capabilities, organizations can identify time and resource wasters, test and implement improvements, and then execute new processes to metamorphose from fat and sluggish to harmonious, well-balanced and resource efficient – enabling them to soar above the competition and achieve unprecedented levels of success.

With Metastorm Enterprise, business transformation truly is elementary – after all, it’s as easy as counting to 3!

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The podcast, “The USAF, Six Sigma, and BPM,” discusses how the US Air Force utilized Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® to achieve a 200% increase in automation to gain more efficiency, productivity, and control.

According to Chaney, the project began when the Department of Defense (DoD) mandated that, in order for DoD organizations to continue receiving funding, their IT investments had to include an Enterprise Architecture (EA) tool.

As part of its new EA initiative, the US Air Force wanted to identify how its IT infrastructure was supporting its business processes, and how well the processes were performing in the supported environments. To meet the goals of an existing initiative, Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century (AFSO21), which aims to streamline processes and optimize resource consumption – the US Air Force also wanted to “Lean out” its business processes to do more with less.

Listen to this podcast and read this customer success story to learn how the team used Metastorm ProVision to see and analyze its processes, and to identify time wasters and other areas of inefficiency, how it subsequently used Metastorm BPM to execute the Leaner, more agile processes across the entire enterprise, and how it utilized the power of the Metastorm Enterprise software suite to realize greater efficiency, and meet the goals of AFSO21.

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