Mac McConnell posted a blog post
Taking a ‘Proof of Concept’ Approach for Nimble Business in a ‘Big Change’ World
For decades, continuous improvement has served as a model for fine-tuning companies’ processes. This approach has benefitted organizations through applied discipline (such as the Business Process Management or BPM approach), helping to refine work roles and helping to streamline responses to predictable situations. But “tinkering for efficiency” has run its course. The pace of change is increasing, and BPM practices aren’t evolving at the same pace. There is a push now for organizations to be much more nimble and highly proactive to anticipate – and respond to – changing demands. BPM can play a role in this new paradigm – if organizations fully adopt a “proof of concept” approach to solving their process improvement challenges.Gartner has taken a lead role in the discussion of BPM’s evolving future. The firm has described the need to institute a “BPM Shift” to align with an overall business transformation agenda that it calls “Big Change.”Gartner analyst Elise Olding says Big Change involves “significantly altering ongoing operations in a high-risk environment characterized by elevated volatility, ambiguity, disparity/diversity and novelty/scope.” That pretty much summarizes the challenges businesses face these days, coping with radical shifts in globalization, geopolitical relationships, workforce trends, mobile usage, social media implementations and customer demands. Things are certainly changing, and changing very fast.In this article, Golding introduces Gartner’s BPM Shift by saying “BPM practices as we know them won’t cut it in the future.”We agree. Using only an incremental change approach, companies are still bound to old practices, and they can’t move quickly enough to adapt to changing conditions. It may have taken months, if not years, to set up a current rigid, enterprise-wide platform that governs the way a company does business. Today, if it takes too long to change an already existing implementation, companies will find themselves unable to react to a pressing business opportunity.What companies need to implement are flexible process improvement systems that allow them to start small if they want to, then replicate and accelerate, and – most critically – change processes on the fly when they need to. This is the “Proof of Concept” approach.Imagine a situation where you’re the head of a line of business that needs to develop a process quickly to manage a roll-out of materials associated with a product launch. The launch is in three months. You need a way to exchange information and materials with different groups of customers, partners, prospects, internal stakeholders, and so on. Tweaking your ossified backbone process system isn’t feasible, nor is it enough. You can rely with fingers crossed on your old routine, or you can try out a new process, using an open standards set of tools, on a “Proof of Concept” basis. If the process works exactly as you want, you implement it and upgrade. If it doesn’t, you change it quickly and try again fast.Here’s another situation: your company needs to implement more and more flexible processes on an ongoing basis. Think of an insurance company that’s been processing claims for weather-related damage the same way for 100 years. They’ve used past statistics to write new policies. But old models are failing with the onset of more severe storms and rising sea levels. Insurance companies need to have processes in place that can incorporate both the changing statistics and the changing needs of their customers.Changing the way process improvement is implemented won’t get accomplished just by changing tools. It has to involve a change of mindset. Organizations, by nature, are risk averse. They’re reluctant to make major changes in their IT systems and they’re reluctant to shake up work patterns because both of these moves can disrupt organizations. But, with big shifts going on in the world of business, they’re going to have to make bold moves to keep up.Forward-thinking companies are already moving to this more flexible, nimble model. The rise in the use of SaaS applications reflects companies’ willingness to start changing their processes – to dial resources up and down as needed. But SaaS applications still generate less than 1 percent of the world’s $4 trillion spend on IT infrastructure.How long will it take for today’s leading companies make significant moves to react to the big shifts going on in the market? That’s still to be seen. But we are now seeing that they are taking steps now. Here are three moves companies are taking to execute a “Proof of Concept” approach to process improvement.Download free software – Open source BPM is available for free, and complete platforms such as Bonita BPM are available to enable process application design and deployment.Do a pilot project – Application design with open source BPM is graphically-based and provides specific extensions to connect process applications to external information systems such as company databases and platforms such as CRM and ERP. This makes it straightforward to work up a pilot process application and test it thoroughly with internal stakeholders and even selected customers.Get results and tune as needed – Launching a tested process doesn’t mean you’re now stuck with it. As the environment (technical, physical and business opportunity) around the process changes, it’s possible to make changes in the deployed process “on the fly” to accommodate the new environment.Do it again – If the process itself becomes irrelevant or obsolete, stop tinkering, and start a new pilot.The pace of business climate change is accelerating, and companies must be more proactive to take advantage of challenges and opportunities as they arise. Those who don’t adapt face a difficult future at best. Radical business process change – “Big Change” – is called for. And now is the time to start.Mac McConnell is Vice President of Marketing at Bonitasoft.See More