Jim Sinur

There is always a balance between delivering timely benefits without sub-optimizing an end to end process. I have seen several organizations improve functional sub-processes at the expense of the overall organizational goals. I do not believe that organizations do this on purpose, but they can fall into it by accident. Let’s look at the upside of time boxing BPM efforts in fixed time processes in the order of 90 days or less.

Yes You Can:

We have seen great success in the development arena with time boxing efforts. This fixed date approach engenders creativity and an iterative bent. This is really appealing as the benefits can be tasted early and managers can easily recoup their initial investment with a few of these quick hit process projects. In the kind of economy we are living in, this is a very tempting approach. Benefits flow early and the project sponsors look like heroes. Success breeds success and a BPM program can take off early. Anybody want to say “no” to instant savings?

No You Can’t

What sometimes happens when this approach is taken is that sooner or later a project that implemented benefits may have to give them back to help the overall process. This can get pretty testy and sometimes there has to be a conversion may occur, if the time boxed efforts were done on various technological platforms.

Not only might it knock out strategic benefits, the conversion costs could wipe out a period of the savings. Why make false starts when you can do it right once?

I believe you can time box BPM as long as you keep corporate objectives in mind and stay way from situations that enable functional excellence at the expense of important outcomes like the cost of an “end to end” process or the customer experience.

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Category: BPM Business Process Improvement     Tags: BPM, Business Process Improvement

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