Within the past few days, I have had several conversations about process maturity. Many organizations have modeled their processes and are now asking themselves, where do we go from here? How do we get to the next level?
In my experience, modeling processes is only the basis for managing processes. – And that is where the real work starts. Here are my three recommendations how to continue:
Recommendation 1: Assign and train process management roles
To manage your processes, it is necessary to clarify roles and responsibilities. Therefore, it makes sense to introduce roles such as Process Owner, Process Architect, and Process Manager. The Process Owner is accountable for process design, improvement, and overall coordination. The Process Architect takes over the operational responsibility to design and improve processes. The Process Manager takes over the operational responsibility to coordinate inter-organizational unit process execution of the respective process instance. So, for each process, these roles should be assigned, and the people should be trained to perform these roles. What exactly these roles are supposed to do, I explain with the next recommendation.
Recommendation 2: Establish a process of process management
To manage and improve your processes in a structured way, I recommend setting up a process of process management. As a minimum, this process describes how the process management roles define a process strategy, design/improve, and model a process, implement a process, and steer and improve process execution.
Recommendation 3: Provide a management platform for process strategy review
To get everything going, I recommend setting up a regular top management meeting to provide a platform for reviewing the various process strategies. At this meeting, the Process Owners can introduce their process strategies as well as the status quo of their process improvement activities and process operations to get strategic input and support from the top management (i.e., Process Domain Owners). This will keep the wheel running and will bring your process to the next level!
To get an idea of how a process management role concept and a process of process management can look like, feel free to check out the New Process Role Concept as well as the New Process Life Cycle in the New Process Toolbox. – And if you have questions, please feel free to contact me!
Have a great day!
Mirko
