The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence the Better
Business Analysis Podcast with Hindwin Walsh Today on the
Better Business Analysis podcast we are going to be talking about
one of the bread and butter. In this case, the bread site of
business analysis is one of the two main fundamental tools and
techniques that I think distinguish you between whether
or not you're a BA or whether or not you might be in another
field. In that area is process
modeling. Now, process modeling can be a
boring topic for a lot of people.
I hope to make it exciting or as educational and informative as I
can, and we'll start there by talking about what is, what is a
process and I I This is a constant conversation I always
have with BA teams who may get a little bit confused about what
is processed. And I think it would be good for
us to just start not look at a definition but just think about
the world and the fact that we are performing tasks and
activities every day, right? Everything we do in action, we
do even you know the the actions that are natural in terms of
physics, they're all processes. So all the things we do at the
general sense and how we interact with things and how we
think. I want you to take that broad
view in terms of in terms of process and specifically as
business analysts with we're looking at business processes,
we're looking at the processes within the organization.
We're looking at processes in terms of interactions with
systems and and other technology.
We're looking at processes in terms of those which are at the
top end of the business, the business model, the
organizational capabilities that are required for the business.
And we're looking at what you might standardly think of when
when I say process, the business process, the both the model and
you know and the maps there. And finally, there's of course
one of the most important processes which aren't discussed
much when we talk about process modeling internally at a
business, which is the customer journey, the process in which
the customer, our end customer go through.
So when I talk about processes here, I'm talking about all of
those aspects. And so if you think about the
customer journey and you think of the process between that in
terms of the organization fulfilling a service, the
service design process and then the business model required to
support that. Then the highest level
capabilities required to support the business model.
Then the processes within each area of the business and then
the tasks required to execute on that process.
And then there's system processes of course and then
there's data probably under that.
That's a lot of different layers.
And what we use to describe those layers is a hierarchy.
Because there is a hierarchy, there's usually a lot less at
the top and there's usually a lot more exponential kind of
growth down below. And you can and you can
visualize that like a triangle. OK.
And when you talk about business hierarchy, various different
organizations have divided up the hierarchy into different
sections. And we usually refer to those
sections as levels. And they're usually given a
number from zero, you know, down to four or five or six.
And you depending on where you go, If you go to, say, some of
the organizations that are closely along with BPMM, there
will be a process model. In education learning, you learn
around process models. And also there's a great website
which we'll talk about more of throughout the episode, which is
called the APQC model, which also has its own definition of
what these levels are. And I don't want you to get too
too caught up on these levels. All I'll say is that there's
slight differences in terms of where they draw the line or how
many levels they are, but they've really divided this
pyramid up in terms of talking about the information you need
and the level of level of abstraction in which that level
talks about. OK and and and I'm going to just
talk about four levels today because this is the model that I
subscribe to and that means that I would choose the right
definition of those levels for the organization or come along
with one. So as Bas don't please don't get
into debates necessarily on different views of that as long
as you know the logic of the the competing model makes sense.
What we'll we'll start with is what is level 0 and and this is
where the numbering can can change depending on which which
definition you look at. So #0 process 0 should be the
highest level process in which your business, your organization
operates in. And you could argue that that is
the business model itself. So it is taking inputs, which is
usually investment time. For example, it is doing
something and it's outputting something.
And so if you think of that as just one rectangle box with a
couple of arrows in, a couple of arrows out and your business
model being the middle part, the black box, which we'll talk
about a lot today, then that is the highest level process.
And that can be depicted as a simple box or as a business
model canvas for example, or as a lean canvas depending on kind
of where you've started your business and how mature it is.
And so that defines the highest level reason for existence.
Below that you then get into what can be referred to as
capabilities. So level one being the
capabilities needed to support your business or your type of
business. Your business will have some
unique attributes which we talk about as UVP, unique value
proposition and it will have some attributes that are
requires but aren't necessarily unique to your business and more
of the generic business type processes.
So you have a series of those. The APQC model defines templated
capability levels which it suggests are common across
business or at least very similar across industries
depending on what you do. And you know these are things
like managing financial resources and so that is there
everything to do with accounts payable, receivable accounts.
I always use accounts as an example because people generally
understand that and it really says that it provides a series
of of of processes and lower level tasks which need to be
completed within that area and they're generic and they say
that you know every business will do a variation of these
things. We'll go into deep about how
that can be useful for us as Bas in a minute, but let's just say
that's the highest level kind of organizational capability boxes
we might have. And so you'd look tend to have a
tendency to have maybe somewhere between 5 and 15, not too many
of these boxes. If we take an example of a
cupcake store, it will have processes around marketing, it
will have process around sales. It will have processing around
producing the physical good. The manufacturing side will have
processes around our financial side, HR, strategic planning for
example. And there will, you'll find
there will probably be around 10 to 13 of those processes.
And when you think about selling cupcakes through a shop, I guess
the shop, the cupcake, the customer experience and the
serving of the customer are three really important elements
that you would most likely be unique to you and not
necessarily replicated by every other cupcake store unless you
are a franchise restaurant. So those processes there we've
just talked about maybe critical processes for you.
So at the highest level, we may have a cupcake cafe, if you
like, which has got some inputs, investment people, resources.
We produce cupcakes and we sell them and maybe coffee and tea
and then the output is ideally profit.
And that's our business model. Below that we have these
processes or organizational capabilities we talked about,
which are effectively groups of processes if you're looking at
from the bottom up. So that's level one and then we
get to level 2 and it's usually at this level.
And this is again where the different definitions come into
play. But I like to think about this
as the we're starting to actually look at a flow here.
We're starting to look at a process flow that may happen
within one of those capabilities.
Obviously they join together but you're adding sequence at this
point and still this might be there may need to be this is a
level 2 and you may need to do a Level 3 version of this process
to get down to the task level however or activity level.
But at this point we're really talking about doing a series of
flows and so. So one approach could be just a
very straight line process for how we, for example, we were
looking at the delivery of physical goods, in this case the
cupcakes and manufacturing cupcakes would be another way of
saying that. Then it could be, you know the
beginning of the process could be we've taken an order and then
it could be all the steps for making maybe you've already done
some prep. So it might be take cupcake,
apply icing, apply design, provide that back to the server
to deliver to the customer and that's really very, very high
level. And then you then would go down
to another level of abstraction and that was just a straight
flow where you might go into a bit more of what we would
consider process. The word we use business process
is really this level where we say you know the fundamental,
what steps in terms of manufacturing cupcake which
would be a lower level sub process.
So again that could be Baker takes cupcake, Baker applies,
looks at order, form takes icing from the icing area applies
icing you know moves to tray and so forth.
And so these are the kind of what activities and and there I
dipped into a little bit of a how and and that was probably
not 100% correct, but you're really getting to where you are
associating an actor or a person or a stakeholder.
You know we are in the process, they are, they're a back office
person in this case. So we know that this is the
manufacturing side and it's where they are doing an
activity. So that's usually represented by
a or should be represented by a BPMM process map model that
you're drawing and that's accurate and that can be read.
And this was cupcakes, but it was a computerized system.
It was very important that we use the notation language that's
common. So another BA could pick it up
or a computer could read it. And so once you've got down to
the series of steps there, we really know now.
So if we look at our cupcake model, we know that we've got
this cupcake business at our level zero kind of process.
We know the kind of process groups.
We know the general sequence, then we know the process steps
involved and below that we get into the how we get into
procedure task level. So this is where you are
associating the activity, what you are doing with the tools in
which you use all the systems that you interface with.
And so that could be the oven in this case, it could be the pulse
system, it could literally be the tools we use.
And and the reason why that's different and also important is
that that level, that lower level procedure level which is
how level changes quite often. So that you usually find that
these this process level was the most open to change and it will
evolve and it's usually where the interface was system changes
evolve and this is how people experience kind of it at this
level and that changes often. But whereas the general ability
to manufacture and to bake and to design A cupcake doesn't
particularly change even if you get a new blender or you you
know get a new piping tool for icing.
So that's the distinction there. The house step is the procedure
step. So that hierarchy we talked
about which is 0 down to four in this example is pretty much it
in terms of the hierarchy that's four levels.
Obviously we we start at 0, but but we've got those four levels
and so you've gone down from business model to organizational
capability down to kind of process map to process model and
then procedure in terms of the how.
So five, I guess if you talk about 0 as well.
Now what we have missed out there which is equally important
is what I would refer to as process Step -1.
It's not the sexiest name but it's the customer journey.
So this is the process the customer goes through to
interact with us or from their it's always written from their
perspective. So it's their the customer's
journey to acquire a cupcake, for example, buy a cupcake and
enjoy it. So that could be, you know,
learning about us online, visiting the store, putting in
an order, waiting to receive an order, receiving the cupcake,
eating the cupcake, posting a review.
So that's now customer journey. And that customer journey
usually will have our corresponding element in terms
of obviously it connects with our business model.
And if it doesn't, they're not a target customer.
We've got something fundamentally wrong there and it
will have a relationship, a mapping relationship with our
capabilities about where they interact.
And so in this case, it would be in terms of our managing
customer service, in terms of our marketing, our sales.
They don't really see the manufacturing side, which is why
it's back office. But they do experience our
customer service and our post sales processes which could be
you know, following them up with an e-mail or potentially the,
you know, the Baker coming out and asking them what they
thought of the cupcake. So that customer journey is
hugely important, very important when you haven't even
established a business yet, it's usually a place for opportunity
or for you to understand your customers and every VA needs to
understand service design and customer journey from the world
of you know design thinking of it something called a mystery as
in they we it's new and then equally from more structured
service design if it's something that you are changing a process
or making it better or it's much more straightforward.
And so that process is that -1 as I've talked about, but it
should always be there. And so then you can clearly see
from the top of the pyramid this kind of line above the pyramid
and then the process model from that from zero down to the
procedures and that that is your hierarchy and and here and you
will not necessarily especially if it's a company bigger than a
cupcake cafe, the idea of modeling all that stuff is too
much and would be wasteful. So what we need to do is first
understand where we are in a project or a change, what level
it's affecting and map that out. Just with really simple, simple
boxes. You don't necessarily need to
know the process steps, you just need to know the inputs and
outputs of these steps using techniques like an IDIF diagram.
Look that up if you don't know what that is and we talk about
it on our website. So you're effectively when you
start a change you should understand the scope and when we
have a process hierarchy or at least have an idea of what that
should be for our company, then we can start you know circling
where a change may be affected. And that could be driven from
the customer journey if it's customer driven or it could be
something internal or it could be both.
And if we did something internal then we can see what effect that
might have on the customer and it could actually have you know
cause and effect as with any change that we could model out.
So that's process hierarchy. When you RBA you generally are
playing in the middle, but where you're modeling a process for a
department or internally and you're you're finding out what
the activities are, that'll be a that, I'm sorry, your
stakeholder is going through. And that's generally using you
know tools like Visio, Mural where you are trying to map this
out and using post its is a great way of doing that and
moving things around until you get to a position where you kind
of understand what's going on and you understand the rules
that need to be applied throughout that process flow.
And then jumping to something like Visio and playing that back
to customers to get that right is kind of what you experience
and having a great template. Understanding the shapes of BPMM
is very important and we'll be putting out some free learning
around that very shortly. That's the kind of area that you
will find that you might start with or you'll really experience
them. And when we talk about process
improvement, we we're generally looking at that kind of level of
the hierarchy. However, those who are Better
Business analysts understand where they play within the
hierarchy tree and what the impact of that process has on
both anything below IT systems and anything anything above IT.
So that's this episode I've just talked about the process
hierarchy. We will have a specific episode
on BPM Process modeling and maybe a little bit more on IDIF
in the future, but hopefully that gives you an idea about
what process is. Every business is basically for
the the purpose that exists for as its business model, which is
a process in itself made-up of all these other connected
processes. So yeah, I hope you learned
something today and I'll see you in the next episode.