In my previous post I discussed why I hate processes and frameworks.  In all fairness, I don’t hate them for what they are, I do not see value in creating processes for the sake of having them.

The Facts…

Let me give you an example:  Company A has been notified that they need a Configuration and Change Management (CCM) process by their auditing company to have compliance with XYZ standard.  Company A is a software develoment firm and has had these processes in place, only not well documented.  Company A implements a full blown CCM software solution to track and approve all changes and deploys it out to the organization.  Within months the employees are overwhelmed by the complexity of the software, don’t understand the models and discouraged by having to manually perform work that should be done by the system.

Has This Happened To You?

Does this sound familiar?  This could be any process or project that becomes overly complex and actually HAMPERS productivity when it should have been speeding up the process and giving developers and staff more time to perform the work.  Not only does this have a negative effect on morale, it makes the business lose money.  Businesses are in business to generate revenue and not burn cash.  We all want profits and that is where good process design fits in.  For simplicity sake, ahem, we’ll use CCM as the process we are reviewing throughout this article.

How To Build A Process

A good process is the building block to any team or function.  Every team already has a process for how certain tasks are performed on a day-to-day basis.  Like a good house with a solid foundation, solid processes are the bedrock upon which your team or business is built.  Below are the seven steps required to build or enhance any new or existing business processes.

1.  Identify the current process
2.  Determine Best Practices
3.  Perform a gap analysis
4.  Draft the new process
5.  Organizational Review
6.  Implement new and improved process
7.  Review and adjust accordingly

Identify The Current Process

Your business already has a process for everything they do.  If they don’t, I’m surprised you’re still in business.  That would be constant chaos.  Everything your business does, from how the bathrooms are cleaned to how performance reviews are accomplished, is a process.  There’s a workflow, or series of steps, that leads from the beginning to the end.  Sit down and look at what the process currently is.  Talk to the business owners, team members and identify what is currently in place.  Document the process in it’s simplest, basic form and have the key players review it for accuracy.  You must know what the end goal should be and keep that in mind as you move forward.

Determine Best Practices

Chances are, everything you are trying to do has been done by someone else.  Not only has someone done it before you did, someone else probably did it better than that other guy did.  Over time, hundreds or thousands of companies have done the same thing and somewhere along the line somebody else developed a standard set of best practices.  Examples are ITIL, COBIT and SDLC.

Best Practices are your best friend.  There’s no point in recreating the wheel and spending money that doesn’t need spent.  Following best practices for your processes will put you in line, or ahead of competition and help your business grow on a solid foundation.  Look at your business process and compare it to the best practice for that process.  That leads us to the next step.

Perform A Gap Analysis

Now is your chance to create positive change.  Review your process and compare it to the best practice.  Go step-by-step through your process and see how it fits into industry best practices.  In some cases the best practice may not be the right fit for your business.  Not because it doesn’t work, but because it is too expensive or not the right fit for right now.  Leave your current process flexible enough to incorporate this and add improvements where possible.

Draft The New Process

Now that you have reviewed your process and brought it in-line with best practices, it is time to document your work.  Use whatever program you want but diagram it out.  Personally, I prefer to whiteboard my changes first and make any adjustments before I commit it to digital form.  Be sure to add supporting documentation, budgetary figures, sales examples, etc to your documentation.  Keep your diagram simple and your support information more complex.  People, particularly management, prefers to see something simple upfront with more detailed information available to support the new process.

Organizational Review

You are ready to hand the process over to the business to review.  First, the management team needs to be brought in and made aware of the new process.  Executive buy-in is the most important step in process change.  Without the management team on your side the rest of the business will not fall in line and support the new process.

Not only must management agree and support the change, but the team leaders and their teams must also accept the new process.  This may take days, weeks or months to accomplish through various meetings and presentations.  The people doing the work must believe in the process and embrace it as positive change.  Your job as the leader is to show that to them with concrete facts.

Implement The New And Improved Process

This is where the rubber meets the road.  Now that everyone has bought in to the new process it is time to implement it.  At this time you should have determined key milestones or key performance indicators for your process.  You must be able to quantify your new process in a tangible way, be that via revenue, saved time, etc.  Set a realistic goal and a stretch goal for your process improvement.  A good rule of thumb is to use a quarterly goal as a performance indicator if your process change is on track.

Review And Adjust Accordingly

Positive change happens with help and assistance.  You have put your new process change in place and have monitored your key performance indicators.  Quarter over quarter your improvements haven’t been as big as you anticipated.  It’s time to take a look at the process and make any adjustments.  What to adjust?  Get feedback from the team and see if there are any inefficiencies that have cropped up.  Use that feedback to make tweaks or adjustments to your process and continue to monitor it over time.

Where To Go From Here?

Process improvement is a continuous effort in any business.  The business climate changes, as do best practices and governmental/industry compliance.  It’s important to perform a review of your business processes and how it is impacting your team.  Setup a feedback loop with your team leaders and teams to keep in touch with what is working and what isn’t.  Positive change grows over time, time a snow flake turning into an avalanche.  Look at making small, gradual changes over time.  This will have the most impact on the business and help create momentum upon which your teams will grow.

Process Flow

Let me be frank.  I love process and change management but I hate process flows.  Confusing, eh?  Well, not really.  To be completely honest, a well-designed business process works wonders for an IT professional.  Not only do they show all of your inputs, outputs and decisions, but they also define responsibility.  Responsibility leads to accountability and I’m in favor of that.

Now, to what I hate about process flows.  I hate process flows that are forced into place against business or best practice.  Particularly processes that are implemented for the sake of having a process.  This is bureaucracy at its’ finest.

Every organization needs to identify frameworks that apply to them and validate which portions work for their business.  Most frameworks, including the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) are designed to be implemented in pieces that are customized.  They are not a one-size fits all solution.  Implement the pieces that apply to your business and look at implementing other pieces when your business needs it.

In many instances, organizations want to follow ITIL without any real knowledge of what that entails.  Thousands of dollars are spent implementing processes without an end goal in mind for the sake of “best practice.”  The end goal must be determined by the business before frameworks are put in place.  You get out of a system or process what you put into it.  One of the largest drivers of frameworks are governmental or industry compliance.  Many times I have seen compliance auditors push a process or improvement without guidance to the business.

Simply said, if you automate a BS process, you get BS at the speed of light.  This doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company.

In my next article I will discuss how to put a process in place that will be more easily accepted by the business and embraced by your teams.  Not only can your team flourish when following good, solid practices, but your productivity will increase, and not decrease, like I have seen.