Process Cafe

The great 'Outside-In' debate.

Adam Deane has started an interesting debate over at his blog on the subject of outside-in.

His comment - and one I tend to align with - is that outside-in is a nebulous concept and one which is very difficult to pin down in real life. He states that he has been unable to identify examples of where Outside-in has specifically benefited an organisation. The companies often noted as being OI exemplars (Best Buy, Apple, Southwest airlines) are also ones that benefit from having a good underlying product. Therefore is this a case where OI has given them the edge or where the edge has been there already and OI has piggy-backed into it?

My personal example - and one which I stated In the comments to Adam's post - is Ryanair. They are deemed to have successfully emulated good customer outcomes through OI, and yet they have the worst service of any airline I have ever flown. Craig, The Process Ninja, comments that customer outcomes and customer service are not the same thing, and maybe this is where my understanding falls down. But is it just the case then, that OI is merely any BPM practice which looks at the customer when creating processes?

Regardless of this I would recommend you head over to Adam's blog, have a read of the entry and decide for yourself whether OI is a genuine BPM discipline, or just a different way of looking at something that's already there. Make sure, too, to read The Process Ninja's rebuttal.

I'm really, really on the fence about OI. If I look at something like Six Sigma (or 8 Omega) I can see a strict methodology and something that I can put my hands on and say 'This is ....(fill in the blanks)". But if I try to do the same for Outside-In I can't. The Process Ninja himself states that "Whilst I agree that outside-in is a philosophy, it is more than that and I understand Adam's frustration in not being able to get a hold of "a methodology". In the deep recesses of my mind I can't help but think that OI is a generic term given to any company that happens to be doing well.

The other thing I can't seem to get over is that there doesn't seem to be any comment in the blog from anyone who is an OI guru. There are one or two comments from people who have done the training course, but nothing from the people who create and propagate this 'approach'. I would really like to get some impartial advice on this rather than comments which just tell me I'm wrong. The last thing we need is The Zealots coming into this with their "I'm right and you're wrong" approach.

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The TSA and their process

(DISCLAIMER: Whilst I used to be a very regular traveler both in Europe and the US, it is now almost 3 years since I took a flight anywhere so have not had to subject myself personally to any of the upgraded electronic security reviews. I have, in my time, been subject to the 'removal of belt, shoes and jacket' review as well as the 'open laptop and start it up', and the 'No liquids to be brought on board' review)

There is a lot of discontent brewing across the US - and possibly the rest of the world - in relation to the TSA scanners which use new-fangled technology to see through people's clothes.

The issue as far as I see it is this: The scanners were sold to the public on the promise that a) there would be no way of aligning the scanned images with any individual and b) None of the images would be saved.

It now transpires that both of these statements are untrue. There are stories of TSA agents radioing in to the person doing the scan that "There's a hottie' coming through", and saved copies of scans have been obtained through freedom of information act requests and released on the internet. Naturally this is causing a lot of people a lot of consternation. Allied with this is the fact that whilst it is allowable to refuse to go through a scanner when asked, any person refusing to do so is then being subject to a fairly intimate physical 'frisk' which some say is akin to sexual assault.

But being the process person that I am I can't help thinking that maybe the issue is what I call 'if all you have is a hammer then every problem is a nail' syndrome.

Let me explain.

Security checks at airports have been around for many, many years. El-Al, the Israeli airline instituted them back in the 1970's to counter Palestinian hijack attempts and since then there have been no terrorist alerts on Israeli planes. Since September 11th US airlines have reacted to potential security threats by implementing a series of tougher and tougher checks on passengers prior to boarding. The aim of these has been two-fold a) They attempt to offer some protection against future terrorist attacks b) They offer re-assurance to the public that the authorities are attempting to combat terrorism in our skies.

However, a number of high profile 'misses' by the security checks have resulted in tighter and tighter standards being implemented at airports. We are now at the stage where - in many cases - the security checks prior to boarding the plane are taking longer than the flights themselves.

As a means of improving this the TSA implemented the full body scanners. These were meant to be attempts to speed up the security process by removing the need to individually check shoes, belts, underpants (!) etc. In theory the concept is sound. but in practice it has raised a whole new set of issues.

I am of the opinion that the TSA are viewing these scanners as 'the tool that will help the process go quicker'. This is akin to saying "I have Microsoft's Excel package on my PC therefore that's what I am going to use to run my accounting system". It isn't necessarily, the right tool for the job although it will do the job. If all you have is a hammer then every problem is a nail

The TSA have fallen into the trap of thinking that the tool they have is the right one for the job when in fact it is just a tool. There need to be processes around the tool to ensure it is appropriately implemented and managed.

Let me be perfectly clear about this before I go any further: I think that security checks at airports are a vital and necessary part of flying. The events of 9/11 (and multiple hijacks prior to that) have illustrated that this is the case. Where I differ with official opinion is in how these checks are performed.

Earlier on in this article I mentioned that El-Al have had stringent security checks in place for over 30 years. They do not involve full body scans, nor do they involve intimate physical body searches. But they have been successful in eliminating any type of terrorist attack on Israeli planes since they were instituted. Yes, the security checks take some time. Yes they do, often, involve racial profiling. But they also use old-fashioned method such as existing metal detectors, face-to-face questioning and baggage scans prior to loading.

If one of the most security concious (and successful) airlines in the world doesn't use body scanners, why should any other?

Let's look at this from a process point of view (which is what El Al have done). Airlines want to identify and eliminate any potential threat as early as possible. This is done through intelligence prior to booking, research once passenger names are known, vigilance and questioning at the airport and surveillance on-board. The whole task of frisking passengers for dangerous articles is only a minor part of this. So why is it taking on such significance?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most US airlines follow this process at the moment anyway? At the end of the day the objective is to stop someone either hijacking a plane or setting a bomb off on board. Identifying potential hijackers prior to boarding is preferable to identifying them on board. Cockpit doors are now reinforced and locked. Sky Marshalls now board all (?) planes in the US. Since 9/11 there has not been a single terrorist attack on a plane. Of course there have been several attempts (The shoe bomber and the underpants bomber, for example) But these have all been stopped by passengers and none of them have been caught by the airport security checks.

Whichever way you look at it the process is broken.

Thoughts and comments below please.

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The Curious Case of the iPhone process

In an earlier post I talked about my day in London and the process issues I had with agencies.

A little later on in the day I went to buy an iPhone at the Apple store in White City, West London. I wondered into the store. It was quite empty. I played with the iPhones for a while and then went to the counter. There was a sign saying 'Queue for your iPhones here'. I queued. I waited about 6 minutes for a free station. Then I asked for an iPhone. I was asked if I had a reservation? I said 'No'. I was told I couldn't get an iPhone without a reservation. But I was also told I could make a reservation using one of their machines. I did and was able to make a reservation for about 45 minutes time.

But it got me thinking of the process behind this.

Apple have obviously decided they want to manage the flow of iPhones.So in order to do this they have restricted sales of iPhones to people who have a reservation. Is this to manage demand? Maybe. But having made the reservation there was obviously sufficient stock to allow me to pick one up within the hour therefore it wasn't a demand issue. In fact if they had enough stock in - which they obviously did - they could allocate a proportion out to those who had reservations and still keep a 'slush' stock on hand for walk ins like me.

My thought on the whole reservation issue was this "If I'm on-line making a reservation for an iPhone, why wouldn't I just go to the on-line Apple store and order one for home delivery?".

To me the whole 'reserving an iPhone' process seems flawed. Your thoughts?

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Is process scaleable?

Wednesday this week was a day of process frustrations for me.

Let me explain.

I went into London with one aim: To re-register with two agencies who assist in getting acting jobs for me. (For those who don't know, I am an actor as well as a Business Process consultant). The concept is very straightforward - in each agency you fill in a form, sign a document, and have your measurements and pictures taken.

The first agency I went to was ill-prepared for the day. Even though they had booked appointments from 9am, they were not even ready to start until 9.30. Then they had people unsure about which order they had to be processed in. The process itself was unclear in terms of who did which part in which sequence. Photos were being taken randomly before people had been fully processed and it was generally a shambles. I was in there for well over 1 hour.

Contrast that with the later appointment at a different agency. On arrival a row of chairs was ready, each one equipped with a clipboard, pen and appropriate forms. Names were noted for the record and people were processed in arrival sequence. Each person was taken to a measuring station, then to a computer screen, then to a photo studio. I was in there for about 15 minutes.

Fundamentally the process each of these agencies was using was identical, but the implementation of the process was seriously flawed. Actually, on reflection I think the first agency was not using a process. They were just running things on and ad-hoc basis.

It got me thinking about scalability of processes. Agency 1 was a smaller than Agency 2 by quite a margin. The number of people they were processing was considerably less. So, in fact, their process should have been slicker and easier to manage than Agency 2's. But is this in fact the case? Could I have taken the process flow from agency 2 and dropped it into agency 1 without an issue?

Was the process scaleable?

Is process scaleable in general? Can a process which deals with 30 people/widgets/forms per hour be upscaled to deal with 3000 people/widgets/forms per hour without obvious detriment? (Obviously this assumes that it is physically possible to process the appropriate number of items in the given time).

Your thoughts?

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Why Change?

I work with an organisation that - amongst other things - sells tickets to theatre shows.

The woman who runs the box office is a woman 'of a certain age' who has - over the years - developed a slick, well run method of handling ticket sales. She uses Excel to track individual seats and has a colour-coding system to identify who has ordered, who has paid and who will pick tickets up on the door.

For her it works well.

However it is inefficient, slow, complex and - with all the best will in the world - outdated.

A short while ago we attempted to automate some of the process using standard web applications. This was met with a stony wall of rejection. Her comment? "If it works why do we have to change it?"

That's a cry I hear time and time again across the process world. "If it works why do we have to change it?"

And the cry is a valid one. If a process or system has been developed over the years to be optimised for a particular method of doing things, why should a review seek to change or modify that process?

The short answer is it shouldn't. However the fact that a process is running well in a single way does not mean it is running the best way. Take, for example, the insurance company example I quoted on an earlier post. They had a superfluous step in their process which had arisen as a result of factors that had changed since the process had been developed. The same for the laundry service. If you had asked them if they were following the best process they would, undoubtedly have said yes. But they weren't.

The other factor which links into this is almost certainly an aversion to change. Studies have shown that bad change management is one of the key factors surrounding project failure. In the case of changing a 'tried and tested' process this is even more critical. Especially if the process has been customised by the people who perform it to make their life easier.

In every instance where you are reviewing the process look at it from the point of view of 'just because it is running and well integrated at the moment does not mean it is efficient and cannot be improved'

People won't like the fact that they may have to change (and they may attempt to slide back to the old way of doing things at a later date), but your process will be much improved as a result

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
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The $64m question about BPM.

I have a very simple thing for you to consider today. If you could reply with your thoughts in the comments (or alternatively tweet them to my Twitter account) I would appreciate it.

"What is the one thing you would do to increase BPM take-up in organisations?"

My suggestion: Take it out of IT and make it a business project.

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Friday Review 17th September 2010

Here are some of the links posted over on the Process Cafe Espresso Shots this week¹

What is Ideal Customer service? - Forrester's thoughts on Customer Service

The Rise of a New Career: The BPM Professional - Some thoughts by Connie Moore from Forrester about what the new BPM professional looks like

BPM is a cultural issue, not a technical one - So BPM is a cultural issue not a technical one? I agree to a certain extent. But how does this explain a lot of the BPM implementations that have struggled with the technology?

BPMN 2010 Keynote - Keith Swenson's thoughts and comments from the BPMN 2010 keynote speech. Always worth reading

¹ The Process Cafe Espresso Shots is a place for linking to process related articles written by other people that don't merit a full post on the Process Cafe but are still worth your time reading. Sort of an espresso shot of 'The Process Cafe'-eine.

Bowling and BPM - All style, no skill

I went to the local bowling alley this weekend to celebrate a birthday with a couple of friends (not my birthday, don't worry you haven't missed anything). This alley is quite small (20 lanes) and only half the lanes were being used.

Those lanes that were being used were populated by a rather motley group of folks from an uncertain demographic - although our group was by far the oldest.

What I found interesting to watch was the different styles and approaches to bowling.

I think it's safe to say that most people were trying their best to throw the ball down the lane and hit the pins at the end. But within that criteria there were a number of diverse methods of doing this.

So what has this got to do with BPM?

As I was watching the various people attempting to put up a good score with their different styles it occurred to me that there are great parallels with the folks who are attempting to implement BPM in their organisations:

Obviously some of the above statements are generalisations. But it did strike me as significant that something like ten pin bowling would have a number of parallels in the BPM world. Can any of my readers say with any authority that they don't agree with at least some of the classes I have mentioned above?

More to the point can they recognise themselves (or their clients) in any of the classes I have listed?

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
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Why so few women in BPM?

I wrote recently about some of my favourite BPM bloggers. One of the comments I mentioned within there was the fact that only 2 females made the list.

It got me thinking: "Why is BPM a male dominated domain?"

In reality it shouldn't actually be so. There is nothing specifically masculine about BPM as a concept. In fact I've worked on projects with lots of females who were particularly well suited to the role and were able to grasp the concepts much easier than some of the males in the group (as with a lot of things....).

Throughout my years of blogging and following BPM I have only really come across two well known female BPM bloggers and they are Sandy Kemsley and Connie Moore. Both of them have deep industry experience. Sandy is an independant and Connie is currently with Foresster Group. Add to that list Elise Olding who is a well respected Gartner analyst who has only recently moved into the blogging sphere, and you can see that the field is very small indeed.

Why is this?

Is it because there are - in fact - a huge number of talented female BPM practitioners who choose to work below the radar and not publicise themselves?

Or is it that BPM does not attract a large female following and is predominantly a male discipline?

It can't be the blogging itself because there are literally thousands and thousands of really good female bloggers out there. It can't be the BPM because - as I mentioned earlier - there are many females involved in the practice of BPM itself.

So what is it - any thoughts...?

Do you know of good, female BPM bloggers I should be following? Let me know in the comments.

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10 BPM Blogs you should be following

One of the things I like about my role as a BPM blogger is the fact that I get to link up with (and to) so many excellent BPM bloggers in the field. Some of these are specific industry bloggers, some are general Architecture/BPM bloggers, and some are vendor specific.

What I wanted to do today was to give you a list of the folks I read on a regular basis to make sure you are linking in to the best

Bruce Silver: Bruce is the daddy of BPMN, has been in the business for years and knows BPMN like the back of his hand (he should do - he helped write it)
Jim Sinur: He's been with Global360 and Gartner and he is the industry analyst for the BPM sector. His writing is often formal and rigid, but that doesn't take away from the value of his contents.
Theo Priestley: He's the Process Maverick, always ready to try and upset the applecart when it comes to BPM. When he talks it pays to listen to what he's saying
Adam Deane: Witty, sometimes caustic, but always on the money. Posts quite regularly. Always worth a read, especially his weekly roundup of the best BPM quotes.
Sandy Kemsley: One of only two women on the list (which is a discussion point in itself). She attends and presents a lot at BPM conferences around the world and always has some useful insight into the latest movements in the BPM market. Her blog is 'Column 2'
The Process Ninja: He's Australian based and blogs about real-life applications of process. I look forward to his posts.
Connie Moore: The Forrester analyst for BPM and the other woman on the list. Finger on the pulse, covers the industry and the general BPM environment.
Bouncing Thoughts - Jaisundar from Stanford on BPM, CRM and CPM.
Thomas Olbrich. A German who blogs in English and German and who wrote my favourite BPM blog entry ever.
Ashish Bhagwat - Posts on BPM at The Eclectic Zone

Now remember this is just my list. You probably have your own. That's fine. But if you add these guys to your RSS reader you're guaranteed to be kept in the loop

Enjoy!

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What tools should be in a BA's toolbox for BPM?

There is a great little discussion going on in the BPM Nexus forum at the moment.

The topic is 'What tools should be in a BA's toolbox for BPM?'

Instinctively (As a BA and process analyst myself) I replied "As I've said many times before both in forums and my blog 'If all you have is a hammer then every problem is a nail'. By this I mean that trying to solve your problems through the use of tools alone is inappropriate unless you have the right tools."

The discussion itself has actually moved on a little since then with the introduction of a clarifying statement which basically says that 'Most tools that are currently out on the market are too expensive for a consultant to use themselves (i.e. without being part of a large project)'. I'm not sure I agree with that completely, knowing, for example, that there are consultants out there who have complimentary licenses for some BPM tools as a result of work they have performed with vendors.

It is true to say, though, that as a single consultant with your own company it can sometimes be difficult to get any traction with some of the larger vendors (and there are examples in the forum which illustrate that).

It would be interesting to get the thoughts of some of the readers of this blog on two questions:

1) Are there any tools you absolutely must have as a BA for BPM?
2) Do these tools come easily to you or is it a struggle to get any sort of interest with the vendors?

Either reply in the comments section below or - if you are not already a member, go to the BPM Nexus, join up (It's free of charge) and add your comment to the forum

Here's hoping for a good discussion.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
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Is there a single point of failure in your process?

I'm a big fan of shows like 'Air Crash Investigation' on the National Geographic channel. As the show dissects the reasons behind some of the biggest and most famous plane crashes that have occurred since man started to fly, one thing that always seems to crop up is that an accident is usually never the result of a single thing.

The worst crash in aviation history between two 747's in Tenerife in 1974 was a result of pilot impatience coupled with bad weather and unclear communication between the pilot and co-pilot.

When a small commuter plane crashed on take-off in Charlotte, North Carolina it was a result of inaccurate maintenance coupled with outdated weight computation methods.

The crash of an Avianca plane into Long Island after it ran out of fuel was a result of one of the pilots not having good English coupled with the second pilot not clarifying the emergency nature of the fuel.

With all these accidents any one of the issues in isolation could have been dealt with, but add them all together and you get to a situation where an accident is bound to occur

This got me thinking about processes and single points of failure.

Will a process on the whole fail as a result of a failure at one point in the process? Sometimes the answer is 'Yes' (In my last post about the use of procedures by NASA, missing a single step in a procedure could quite easily jepoardise the whole shuttle flight), but in many situations a single failure will not be catastrophic. An earlier post I wrote referred to bad process design in airline web-sites. In the example quoted, a bug meant that addresses with punctuation in them (such as the period in 'St. Leonards' would be rejected) but this could be bypassed by removing the offending punctuation and the booking could continue. But remove the punctuation, omit an expiry date on a credit card payment and put an incorrect email in the relevant fields and the booking is doomed to failure.

How many of your processes have a single point of failure? Should they have one, or more than one? Or none?

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NASA is process based: Is that good or bad?

Did you know that every single step in the life of a Space Shuttle is run through documented procedures? That's right, from running the countdown clock to how to repack the parachutes that stop the Solid Rocket Boosters from crashing into the Atlantic Ocean fast enough to destroy themselves, everything is procedure based.

This means that everything can be guaranteed to be identical every time something happens.

Of course there is a downside to this. We all know that there have been two massive Space Shuttle disasters neither of which was a result of a procedure issue but both of which resulted in procedure changes. After the Challenger disaster in the 80's the procedure for Solid Rocket Booster assembly was changed to add an extra O-Ring between the sections. After the re-entry disintegration over Texas the lift-off procedure was changed to ensure that ALL footage of the lift-off was reviewed during the mission to identify potential damage to heat shielding from falling debris.

So if one of the most procedure driven organisations in the world is forced to modify their process and procedure as a result of issues and incidents, does this make you think that you should be looking at things like that too?

How many procedures does your company have? When was the last time they were reviewed? How often do you check that they are all followed exactly? Do you allow shortcuts?

Watch the footage of the Challenger exploding over Florida in 1983 and ask yourself if this could have been prevented through a procedural change.

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The Tao of On-line Processes Part 2

Hold the presses! We have a winner.

Those of you who follow this blog will probably have read my thoughts on the on-line booking practices of certain airlines and how they are not customer focused, or indeed well designed.

I think we have found the creme de la creme of bad airline web sites.

It's Jet2.com.

Normally I wouldn't have found this myself but I was alerted to the site by my father as he tried to book a flight recently.

Intrinsically there are a number of issues with the site:

The booking process is convoluted and frustrating
The pricing is inaccurate and unclear
The web site is badly designed.

The problems

From a process point of view the booking appears relatively straightforward, with the site giving you a running total of how much the flight is going to cost. But looking deeper into the site there are a couple of interesting items that would frustrate anyone, not to mention a process designer.

For example, the first page allows you to choose your destination and dates (in an entry box surrounded by banner style adds and red highlighted 'price deals').

The second page will then allow you to select the specific flights on the dates you selected (plus a day either side). As with most budget airlines of the day the prices are displayed for each leg. Thus, my flight out to Spain cost £19.99 but the return cost £39.99.

The third page is basically a page to enter your name. It has a slew of 'DONT FORGET' messages, none of which assist with the booking process itself (DONT FORGET: All passenger names need to match their passports and must be written in full, not initials - we don't need your middle name). At this point the system has automatically allocated you an 'on-line check-in' option and added £8 to your fare. It has also sneakily selected that you will be checking in a bag and added £35 to the fare to pay for that. Clicking 'Continue' at the bottom takes you to the fourth page.

We are already at four pages so far and 6 clicks (after entering the travel dates, destinations and names) and the flight which was priced at £59.98 (£19.99 + £39.99) has now increased in cost to £129.46. It appears that there was an additional £35.50 in Taxes and Charges which were not included in the 'price' of the fares.

So.. page 4. This is where you get the display asking you to click where in the plane you would like to sit. The seats are colour-coded and each colour equates to a different price per seat. (Standard seats: £3.99, Extra leg-room seats £8.99). If you try to bypass this page by not selecting seats it adds a warning that needs to be clicked through to tell you that you haven't reserved a seat (That's two more clicks for those keeping count)

At page 5 we find ourselves with a 'confirmation of flight details'. This displays the original flight details I selected back on page 2 along with my name, number of bags and seat number (if applicable). At the right of the screen (as has been appearing on every page) is a running total of the amount currently accumulated for the booking. Careful review of this reveals that the price has now ballooned to £152.19 thanks to the inclusion of a premium meal and travel insurance. Scrolling further down page 5 reveals that these options have been automatically selected for you and you now have to deselect these (two more clicks), and click the 'Continue' button.

(For those keeping count, that's now 10 clicks over and above the entry of pertinent details and we are on page 6)

But wait: It won't let us go through to page 6 because it is flagging up that we don't have travel insurance. Despite the fact that I have specifically chosen to exclude travel insurance it is reminding me that I should have some and requiring another click to continue (11 clicks and 7 pages)

Now comes the page I REALLY like. 'The Checkout page'. Our running total at the right is back down to £129.46 and I can now give the booking my address details. Like many web sites this one has a 'postcode look-up facility'. You enter your postcode (zipcode) into the box and click the button and it will preload your address into the relevant fields. You also select your method of payment and complete the details. At this point another amount is added to your total as 'A booking fee of 3.5% (minimum charge of 4.99GBP/ 7EUR/ 10CHF/ 180CZK/ 30PLN) will be applied to all card payments except for Solo and Visa Electron which are free. For bookings made using PayPal the booking fee is 3.49GBP/ 5.00EUR. Payment made by credit card or PayPal incur an additional fee of 2.25% or 1.5% respectively.' So now if I book with my American Express card I will find myself with another £8.01 added to the amount bringing it to the grand total of £137.47 (Remember this is for flights that were advertised on page 2 at £19.99 and £39.99).

But wait! Now that I have entered my post code, retrieved my address, filled in my credit card details and pressed enter the system is throwing up an invalid address error. How can it be invalid? I've used the system's own postcode retrieval routine! The details retrieved are, indeed, my home address. So how is this an error? I try again. Same thing. I enter the address manually. Same error. At this point it appeared that I would have to ring the airline to find the answer.

The Customer Service line for this airline costs 50p per minute to call and after wading through the Interactive Voice Response the quickest I could get through to a live person was 2 minutes (So the cost of my air fare has now increased by at least another £1). Recounting the troubles I had encountered to the lady at the other end of the line she was able to come up with an instantaneous response. It appears that there is a bug on the website which will not accept any punctuation in the address. So anyone who lives in St. Mary's Road, or Chapel-en-Le-Frith is in trouble. The system will invalidate all fields in the address which have the punctuation and not allow the address to be recorded. Having checked the website help page this is not detailed anywhere. So basically a pretty fundamental error like that - which is already known to the airline - is not detailed anywhere on the web-site leading to either loss of business for the airline as disgruntled folks decide to book with other airlines or to the customer being gouged for extra costs in having to contact the customer services desk.

Summary
Another long post again, I'm afraid, but in this case I think the summary will be quite quick

Airlines should look at their web-sites from a customer point of view rather than an increased revenue point of view. As a potential customer I will be more likely to spend money (and provide repeat business) to an airline that offers good service rather than one that makes the experience fraught and complicated.

As with most processes, this applies equally to yours too.

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Humans : Your process's greatest failure point

How many times have you written an email to someone and promised to attach a document/photo/link etc. and then sent it without adding the attachment? This is usually followed a few moments later by an apologising email saying “Once again... this time with attachment”

What about the opposite? Have you ever been sent something confidential or sensitive and - whilst forwarding the email to someone else - omitted to remove the confidential attachments? It happens more often than you would expect.

What about back in the days of snail mail when you would write a letter saying “I’m enclosing a cheque in full settlement of the outstanding bill" - and then not included the payment? On the subject of cheques have you ever written a cheque to send to someone and then forgotten to sign it?

These are all basic examples of processes where the crucial human element has failed. Each failure has caused an issue which - though usually easily remedied - has delayed the process and built up ill will in your customers.

Humans are your most crucial failure point in a process. When ever you are designing processes (or systems to support processes) you should ensure you try and minimise the ability of the human to cause a failure. Google Mail now, for example, can scan your email and look for the words such as ‘attached’ which might indicate that an attachment is expected. If you send the mail without an attachment it will warn you. But how many other email systems have that functionality?

What about building checks and balances into your process, splitting steps so that - in the case of the missing cheque in the envelope - you have one person write the mail and another person stuff the envelope? It is something that is done all the time in the financial world under the banner of ‘Segregation of duties’, but outside that world is it so widely adopted?

The downside to this, of course, is that it removes a level of agilty or - even worse - adds a level of overhead and therefore cost. The decision that has to be made is one of risk analysis - are we more comfortable having a process which has the potential to go wrong then have a slower process which has a much lower potential to fail? If the downside to the failure is lower than the downside to increasing your process overhead then the answer should be ‘yes’.

But make sure you do that calculation correctly.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

Friday review - 22nd July 2010

Here are some of the links posted over on the Process Cafe Espresso Shots this week¹

BPM and Dieting - Adam Deane with a short, sweet look at process design. And a dieting motivator.

Process Intelligence and Business Intelligence: Do They Share More than a Word? - Jim Sinur at Gartner is trying to start a conversation on this topic. Do you have any thoughts or comments?

¹ The Process Cafe Espresso Shots is a place for linking to process related articles written by other people that don't merit a full post on the Process Cafe but are still worth your time reading. Sort of an espresso shot of 'The Process Cafe'-eine.

More silo thinking (It's still bad for you)

One of the most popular posts on this blog is about Silo thinking and why it is bad for you.

In that post I discussed the concept of silo thinking, what it is, how it occurs, why it is bad and how to solve it. But I recently came across a very interesting example of silo thinking where the project put together to document the companies processes are themselves designing the processes in silo's.

Picture the situation. A financial organisation, globally known, well respected. It commissions a project to document the whole of its customer facing processes to enable it to better understand what is happening and to present a better view to the customer of the services it offers.

The project is outsourced (!) to a third party, Indian based company. They send a team of people to the UK headquarters of the financial institution (which we'll call JohnPeterCorp) and they set about documenting the processes in a modeling tool

But the first mistake they made is that rather than taking the processes as a Gestalt whole they have split them out into sub processes and have teams working on each one. So we have the team looking at Investment Pricing. We have the team looking at Asset Trading. We have the team looking at Month-End Reporting.

Can you see why this is a problem?

Now - after almost 6 months in the project the team have realised that all they have managed to do is take a bunch of Visio documents that JohnPeterCorp had done last year and drop them into an expensive modeling tool. They are effectively no further forward on their ability to better understand their processes than they were 6 months ago.

I was talking with the modeling lead recently and he told me that they were having modeling issues now because a lot of what they wanted to do involved linking the processes together which, if they had started looking at this from an overall process point-of-view would have been easy but - because they had siloed their processes - is becoming increasingly difficult.

The net result is a lot of work an effort has gone into this but very little actual progress has been made.

Why did this happen?
The question has to be asked about why something like this was able to happen. Surely the third party company were experienced in doing things like this? Durely the senior management of JohnPeterCorp knew exactly what they wanted and what they were going to do with it? Why did this happen?

The truth is that this was a case of the blind leading the partially sighted. I don't believe JohnPeterCorp really had any idea about what they wanted to do with the information they would get out of the project. They were looking at 'documenting things' to get a customer's eye view of this but they constrained themselves in the documentation by adding a codecil which specified that processes had to be linked up to an existing hierarchical view that they have traditionally been working on. Nobody questioned this. The third party company then made their best efforts to actually meet the brief passed by the customer, but nobody took the time to step back and understand why this was needed in the way it was needed. It is only now that the modeling issue have arisen that people are starting to look back at the original brief and wonder if they might have done this in a different way.

So this has turned into an interesting project where - in order to try and remove silos - the modelers have modeled the processes in silos and are now stuck trying to sort this issue out.

Take a look around some of the projects you are working on. Are you 'silo bound'?

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All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

The Tao of On-line Processes (or how Amazon have got it right)

I’ve just ordered a book from Amazon.

Yippeee! Roll out the bunting, let’s hold a parade. Comerford has ordered a book from Amazon!

OK. OK, before everyone gets too sarcastic let’s look at the statement at the head of this post from a process point of view.

“I’ve just ordered a book from Amazon”

To put this on more verbose language: I have searched a web site, identified and selected a suitable piece of writing, entered my name, address, payment and contact details, selected a delivery address, reviewed the final cost and placed the order.

How long did it take to do this?

From the time I decided which book I wanted to the time the order was confirmed took 11 seconds and three mouse clicks.

Think about that for a moment. Without the intervention of a single human (other than myself of course) I was able to place an order for something, give all my payment details, have those details accredited and reviewed, select a delivery address, identify a means and cost of shipping and confirm that everything was correct. In 11 seconds. With three mouse clicks.

A mere matter of a few years ago this would have been unlikely. When I was first using computers back in the 80’s this was impossible. Even quite recently the technology and process to enable this was only for the very committed web retailer. In fact there are still places on the web where something like this takes a lot longer and is far more stressful. What makes this even more special is that I could have done all of this in one click AND I could have done it all from my smart phone.

(One of the shows that was regularly on TV in primetime during my youth was Quantum Leap. (For those who don’t know about the show it concerned a scientist who was the victim of an experiment that went wrong and who was transported each week from one situation to the next and dropped into somebody else’s body. Each week he would have to work out where he was, who he was and why he was here. Oh, and it involved time travel) In Quantum Leap our hero, Sam, was helped by the computerised embodiment of a colleague of his who would appear visible only to Sam. This character would have a small, digital device in his hand that he could consult and it would relay information to him instantly. He could check historical records, charts, building layouts, TV clips everything. We all watched this and thought ‘Yeah right! Something like that in the palm of your hand. That’ll be the day’

And of course that day has come. Millions of people are now walking around with digital devices in their pocket that connect directly to the internet. Some of the higher end ones have applications that enable specific activities to be carried out such as reviewing video content or - here’s the link to the earlier thought about Amazon - purchasing items directly. We now look at this as being something which is commonplace and expected (indeed Finland this week mandated high speed broadband - an enabler of this technology - as a constitutional right).)

But none of this would be possible without the correct processes in place.

Let’s go back to Amazon and compare it to, say a cut price airline ticket.

The process needs to be as quick and as painless as possible. With Amazon One-click I can, literally, identify it and purchase it automatically by clicking the button next to the item. I can do this on the web and I can do this on my smart phone. Of course there is a piece of set-up to be done such as adding contact info and delivery details as well as payment details. But that was done for me several years ago.

With an unnamed ‘Budget airline’ - let’s call it Bryanair for convenience sake - for example, from the time I have selected the flights to the time I have confirmed is 6 minutes (Assuming I have already entered my contact and billing details. Payment details will still need to be entered). Furthermore I have had to make 4 clicks on the first page, click through one unnecessary reminder, bypass an unwanted advertising page for car rental and select payment type and click ‘Purchase now’ at the bottom of the page. I also know that if I was to make the Bryanair purchase I would then have additional information to enter due to the fact that I was theoretically booking a flight to Spain and they need additional passenger information for Spanish destinations.

So let’s look at this;
Amazon: Potential cost of goods £3279 (if I was to purchase, for example, the Canon EOS D1 camera body). Number of clicks 3. Time 11 seconds
Bryanair: Potential cost of goods £159. Number of clicks 8 (minimum). Time 6 minutes.

Who would look at these and suggest that Bryanair has sorted out their processes to the benefit of the customer? In fact who would look at many on-line retailers and say that they are customer focused? I purchase quite extensively from the web and - with the exception of Amazon and Tesco - I find the on-line purchasing to be generally user unfriendly.

It appears as if many companies have designed their processes around an existing bricks-and-mortar method of dealing with customers and have then transferred that directly to the web. Let’s take the example above of airline ticket buying. After selecting my flights and telling them I didn’t want insurance, how many bags I wanted to check in and whether I wanted to check in on-line or at the airport, I was confronted with a message asking me if I was sure I wanted to continue without insurance. This was despite the fact that in order to continue to this point I had to physically click a drop-down box on the screen and select ‘No insurance’ as an option. Surely if I have physically selected ‘No Insurance’ then reminding me about taking out insurance is just supposed to annoy me, right? Now had I not selected anything in that field it is possible that I had overlooked this option and would need reminding. But not when I have made a choice and indicated this already. This smacks of the ‘old’ way of doing things with an estate agent where they would ask you as part of their purchasing spiel whether insurance was wanted and then remind you later on in case you had changed your mind. Once this warning was dispatched on the airline site I was then confronted with a whole page unrelated to the airline that related to booking car hire. All the details were filled in already, but there was no choice of providers and the rates being quoted are - I know from experience - quite preposterous.

Amazon on the other hand have designed their purchasing process to be customer focused from the ground up. ‘One-click’ ordering takes the hassle out of buying things, preloading information makes the purchasing process simple and little items such as ‘Customers who bought items in your list also bought...’ are invaluable.

How good is your customer purchasing process?

How good are your other customer facing processes? Are the optimised for the medium they are using or are they electronic versions of old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar processes?

Could you do better?

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

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Friday Review 17th September 2010

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Bowling and BPM - All style, no skill

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Is there a single point of failure in your process?

NASA is process based: Is that good or bad?

The Tao of On-line Processes Part 2

Humans : Your process's greatest failure point

Friday review - 22nd July 2010

More silo thinking (It's still bad for you)

The Tao of On-line Processes (or how Amazon have got it right)

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