Transcript Are There Requirements for BPS? Some questions about the

Are There Requirements
for BPS?
Some questions about the value of
Business Process Support
Ian Alexander
REBPS Workshop,
Austria, June 2003
Why Support Business Processes?
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It’s expensive (a whole industry, in fact)
What does it consist of ?
What do people get for their money ?
Is it worth it ?
What does it consist of ?
• Business asks for improvement
• BPS industry responds with analysis, modelling … with a
view to automated support …with a view to improvement:
1) Interviews, observations, workshops, and AS-IS Model making
… BPM (a whole belief system)
2) Optimisation by Analysis and creative modification
(suggested AS-SHOULD-BE re-engineerings)
… BPR (another bandwagon)
3) Identify what to Support, and build whatever ‘improved’ support
mechanisms are needed (… BPI projects & their Requirements)
4) Provide that Support using the new mechanisms (… BPS), and
operating and maintaining them
What do people get
for their BPS money ?
• Claim is the Blairite ‘joined-up thinking’
– counters the risk of ‘silo-ism’ by departments
– this is either empty propaganda ...
– … or it means that defensive silo walls are
breached, end-to-end process thinking takes over,
and is successfully put into practice throughout
the organisation
– local optimisation doesn’t make much sense
Why is it hard to make
Business Processes Better?
• Harder to do than to say!
• Real BPR is limited or prevented by
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perceived threat to careers & jobs (often justified)
limits of individual knowledge & competence,
fear of change & the unknown,
power politics,
trades union power & labour agreements,
personal rivalries,
empire-building
• Isn’t that enough?
What does it Cost ?
1) BPM
– initial elicitation & modelling
2) BPR
– second phase of modelling
3) BPI
– software development,
– computers, networks
4) BPS
– parallel running/trials,
– maintenance,
– operations,
– helpdesk,
– user & maintenance training,
– hardware spares/repairs
one-off costs
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recurring costs
Is BPS worth its salt ?
• A simple (and narrow view) – yes, iff cost/benefit
ratio is acceptable
• But risk is a large part of the equation:
– risk of BPM * BPR * BPI * BPS (failing somewhere
along the chain) is large
– risk of just doing smaller, simpler, projects (less cosmic,
less end-to-end) is much less
• So is change
– businesses evolve rapidly (with competition and changing
regulatory environment - trade rules, laws)
– the longer you take on BPM, the bigger the risk that your
BPI will be out of date – so, more BPM is worse
Instead of BPM - BPR - BPI - BPS
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Smaller, faster, cheaper, less risky projects
Local knowledge, local optimisation
Ability to react to changes, in time
Less culture shock, less resistance
Iteration – shorter projects, each building on
the success of the last one
• No need to assume that things are fixed and
can be modelled in great detail – they aren’t
and they can’t
• No guarantee of optimal solutions - that’s life