Life, Processes and Everything
It must take a long time to make a Universe. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, you might think it takes a long time to powerwash the front drive, but that’s just *peanuts* to making a Universe. Douglas managed it with his Hitchhiker Universe, and its now difficult to imagine there was a time when we did not know that Vogon poetry was among the worst in the Universe, that the way to travel vast interstellar distances is by using an infinite improbability drive, and that the answer to the untimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42.
Tolkien brought us Middle Earth, which is one of the most celebrated mythical lands, and in Dune Frank Herbert introduced us to Arrakis. The reason I mention Dune is not only the strength of the Novels, but the tagline - ‘He who controlls the spice controls the Universe’. I always thought that a small change to that would give us ‘He who controls the process, controls the Company’.
Great companies are characterised as having great control of their processes. As I type this I can see one McDonalds process in action, with orders being taken, food being cooked and customers moving away with their completed order trays. All this is under complete control, with the manager checking turnaround times, and changing staff priorities where necessary to keep within target times.
Depending on where you get your reading material, a company can have as few as three core processes. Understanding and improving these will deliver significant returns for the company by focusing effort in the key areas, and spending time understanding exactly what products and services are being provided. This is what we look to do with our Clients and Partners, we look to engage in a series of ‘Process Discovery‘ sessions, and then drill down to the core processes.
Moreover, because these processes can be extremely complex, and span many parts of the organization, its often important to focus on a single area, and look to deliver a quantifiable Return on Investment in that area, before embarking on a whole series of process iniatives. Singularity has an Agile Delivery Model which is tailored to do exactly this - work with the client to identify a key area of process improvement, and then agree how this can be delivered by adopting an Agile model and incremental delivery.
I’ll end by returning to Douglas Adams, and his Hitch Hiker ‘Trology in Five Parts’. For an unforgetable experience see if you can obtain a copy of the original radio recordings from the late 1970’s at the BBC. This is a fantastic example of radio comedy, and is a real testament to the writers and production teams. It easily stands the test of time, and in my opinion may even have improved with the passing of 30 years. I wonder if I will be able to say the same in 30 years time?
About the author: Manus Savage is the Partner Manager at Singularity, a leading BPM vendor (www.singularity.co.uk).
Tags: Agile, BPM, Process, Process-Analysis, Process-Delivery