Do you know “lean”? It’s hot, you know. My guess would be that with the GFC there is less money to go around, even for BPM efforts. Don’t think that because BPM projects got put on a -money saving- diet they are now lean. No it is about good old BPI: Business Process Improvement. Doing things right. Streamline and reduce cost. Get your organisation “lean”.
In my opinion “Lean BPM” is really a new name for BPI. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with that. It is just a little confusing. Lean itself is based on flow and quality. Or as Mark Graban put’s it: Lean is about improving processes, identifying customer value and providing it more effectively — better quality and lower cost. You can read all about in his blog.
So why should we be paying attention to Lean BPM? Or even better: Why should we be doing Lean BPM? Well, I can imagine the following scenario. You are in an organisation that could really use some efficiency improvements. Staff is overworked. Resources (read money) are scarce. Customers are about to go elsewhere. So what do you do as the person in charge? Well, guess what! Take a look at Lean BPM…
Pick out the process where most of the value comes from for the organisation. Good chance that also quite a bit of value goes to waste through inefficiencies. Simplified: I think it is safe to assume to 80% of the business value comes from 20% of its processes. So focus on those 20%. Pick the process with the most waste (an important word in lean!).
Now do a good case of business process improvement on this process while focusing on the features that add value. Again, 80% of the value in the process probably comes from only 20% of the activities of the process. Focus on where it hurts. Don’t go for perfection (i.e. 100%). Be pragmatic. Use time boxing or some other methodology to keep things moving and last but not least: Get all stakeholders in the process involved. And I don’t mean from behind their desks. Put them in a room and do some modeling or prototyping to get everyone on the same wavelength.
Excuse me? You are already working this way? You prove my point: Lean BPM is just a new name for what many process owners/managers/facilitators have been doing for years. But again, that doesn’t mean you should ignore Lean BPM. On the contrary, Lean BPM is good practice when times are tough and process improvements need to be made!
Whenever I here people talking about Lean I have to quote Peter Drucker: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”.
Couldn’t agree more Craig. It’s great getting a response a year later. It’s also a great incentive to get back into the habit of blogging… Thanks to the Ninja!