For the sake of this discussion, I will lump a Business Process Management [BPM] project into 4 categories – Analysis, Design, Construction and Implementation.
It has been my experience that the analysis and design categories usually take up about 75% of the project time. When expressing this opinion, most people will agree with me.
Simply put, analysis will uncover the current environment – the as-is picture while the design will paint the to-be picture.
The Analysis includes things like:
– Identify the problem process
– What are the steps of the process?
– What tasks are performed at each step?
– Who performs those tasks?
– What are the business rules?
– What steps don’t add value to the process?
– Where could we automate? [Have a computer perform the task]
The Design includes the documentation necessary for the construction phase of the project. It should be complete enough that a constructor can easily construct the solution. It is even better if there are photos [graphics] that describe what the users will see in the user interface.
If you complete a thorough analysis and put together a well thought out design document, the actual construction can happen very quickly.
A friend of mine has created an online course that helps you analyze your processes. It is called Human-Centric Process Analysis and Improvement. You should find it very helpful. Contact me to get the website information.
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