There are certain recommendations for business process management and automation, which you can use to guide yourself through the BPM implementation. As far as you give enough attention to each of the steps described below, your project must work out well.

So, which are the main steps of a BPMS implementation project?

• Examination and planning
• Process design and description
• Development
• Analysis of results

As you can see, development is just an element of implementing the process approach, and, in fact, one of the least important ones. If you do not prepare well for the implementation, the development will be quite random. Including, the whole project risks becoming rather pointless. Equally, if you forget to analyze the results, the project will be meaningless from the point of view of business and market.

Lets take a closer look at each step of the BPMS implementation.

Examination and Planning

Objectives

This is the first step to take, and here are the main things you should do:

• Define processes involved in the implementation project
• Determine a set of metrics for each process
• Identify current process metrics
• Set business goals of each process (KPIs or quality values)
• Formulate definition of business processes

In an implementation project, you must focus first on the business process itself. Processes make up the project areas but not vice versa. You can distinguish processes that belong to a certain department or a responsible employee. For examination and future alignment, processes must be thoroughly described. To describe a process well you need to examine it first.

Technical issues

• Describe the workflow;
• Define all the external and internal events of a process that might have an impact on it;
• Capture how the process is linked to other existing or scheduled processes;
• Document all the points of technical integration;
• Discuss technical information with the process owner and stakeholders; consider their extra requirements and comments.

Project plan issues

• Determine a detailed plan of process implementation;
• Evaluate possible risks.

Architecture issues

• Work out how the process integrates with the architecture of the system;
• Complete the architecture with corresponding links and points of integration;
• Show the modifications that were made to the architecture to the stakeholders.

Business issues

• Determine the process KPIs;
• Document the KPIs at project start.

Results

Hence, you will have a list of processes to implement, as well as a detailed description of AS-IS processes and their current KPIs; and an aggregate project plan.

Design and description of processes

Objectives

At this step, you need to structure the defined processes as TO-BE processes. Don’t forget to take into account all the extra requirements and metrics scheduled for improvement. After that, prepare the final implementation specification.

Key points

• First, turn each process into an artifact which describes the workflow in a certain notation. It must also include actual KPIs and a list of improvements that will lead to business goals. All the processes brought together form the TO-BE structure.
• Don´t forget to prepare technical requirements for the implementation, containing architectural requirements. This document will be the main guide for technical experts.
• You should also form a set of system’s contact points (internal and external) and integration points. Specify business artifacts such as documents and data objects. Link them to the processes.
• Another thing to do is to specify business artifacts such as documents and data objects. Then you should link them to the processes.
• Finally, prepare documentation step by step. Discuss each item with stakeholders and process owners until everything is approved.

Results

As a result, you will get a set of documents for development, usually in the form of technical requirements or project charter.

Development

At this stage, you turn the detailed description of the system into an application. Usually, there are no specific requirements here, apart from the customer’s non-standard role model.

Analysis

You can start analysis both before and after the project is completed. That is, either during operational testing or during production. Implementation of a BPM system does not bring immediate results. Accomplishing planned values might take several months or years.

That is why you must prepare certain tools to analyze the project results and perform the following steps:

• Carry out operational testing and receive users’ approval. Without their support, the system will never work;
• Document the new system so that it can be used and developed in the future;
• Provide tools for automatic or semi-automatic monitoring of KPIs defined at the first step.

Conclusion

All things considered, this approach allows you to align existing business processes with a BPM system, you wish to implement. Furthermore, it can deliver better outcome if compared to classic project management tactics. By completing all the main steps described in this article you can achieve outstanding results in BPM implementation.

Follow