Business Process Management - Fundamental to success

When people work together, they usually follow a number of related actions or a process. Processes reduce uncertainty by making it clear who needs to do what, when, and with whom, and ensure that important actions are not forgotten.

Some of the great benefits of processes are:
• People involved don't have to think what to do next
• Output(s) are known in advance
• Process templates reduce planning time and effort
• Repeatability can be achieved
• Incremental continuous improvement can be achieved
• Training can be minimized

Most organizations use processes to capture know-how and simplify how work is done. Unfortunately the normal means of identifying, documenting and facilitating processes can be time consuming and take people away from productive work.

When documenting processes (sometimes called workflows), the greatest challenge is remembering and explaining what was or is to be done between people. Invariably processes are simplified to reduce complexity, but this simplification often obscures many important actions that need to occur between people.

Most organizations have evolved their processes (both formal and informal) to a point where they work productively. If they don't work they are quickly replaced by a process that does work. Consequently the ideal solution is to capture existing processes to create a template, and then see how to improve on that process. This will stop an organization going backwards while processes are refined.

There is an urgent need for a fast simple means to record, template, and apply processes. The optimal solution would be able to map and template processes (including tasks, actions and people) as they are being used for productive work. Then templated processes need to be easily improved, so they can be pasted, the next time the process is used.

A most important issue is that each process needs to be presented from each contributor's perspective. In this way, everyone can see the context of the process (bigger picture), where they fit into the process, and what they need to do, when, and with whom. During implementation, each contributor needs real-time feedback on progress and any changes to the process that affect them.

TASKey has developed and validated a simple distributed management method and web software to record, improve and template processes. The process is automatically recorded as people do work. Recording includes the action/ToDo level of detail and interactions between people that are missed by other methods.

When a process template is pasted, it automatically populates each relevant contributor's ToDo list with the actions they need to do. Progress is automatically reported and Gantt charts updated on the basis of actions completed. Relevant contributors are automatically kept informed by email of any changes to the process or team membership.

This method of recording, improving and templating processes provides a robust means of continuous improvement with little management effort. With relevant process information being provided to web browsers (including mobile/cell phones), process contributors can read and update information from anywhere at any time.

Perhaps the best feature of TASKey's distributed management method and web software is that thousands of people implementing thousands of processes can be easily managed concurrently. Plus every contributor knows what is happening and what they need to do.

By,
Dr Neil Miller