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Processes

Operational worksheet — four tabs

Maps the organisation's processes, with the organisation around them, and shows where they get stuck. The worksheet records enough to make a well-founded improvement choice; you add detail where the analysis calls for it.

Three concepts, the same meaning everywhere​

  • Process — coherent work with a recognisable result and an owner who can be approached. The process is the unit the analysis runs on.
  • Chain — processes that together deliver a recognisable end result. A chain is not mandatory: a process without a chain is not a gap.
  • Activity — a concrete activity within a process. Activities are an explanation and not a precondition: a process can be analysed without a complete series of actions.

Primary, governing and supporting are classifications of a process, not levels. Every process has the same card and the same form.

What it contains​

The Inventory tab has four parts:

  • Business processes — the processes and chains. A process answers four questions: what does it deliver, who can be approached (the owner is a department, and the person is that department's responsible manager), how does it contribute to the strategy (via the strategic themes, each with its goal), and what needs attention (the issues and the KPIs). Optionally you record the volume or frequency and the degree of automation; empty stays empty until you choose. A process also shows which information domains and AI applications from IT it touches. A KPI has a name, what it measures, a current value (Now) and a Norm, and is attached to a process or to a chain. A value that is not known appears as "unknown".
  • Line organisation — the departments, the organisation chart and the business units. You draw the organisation chart here with the drawing tool, or you upload an image; People reads it from here. For a department you tick whether it is the IT department. A chain is held to account at a business unit.
  • Change organisation — the value teams: teams that are jointly responsible for a defined result, around a product, a customer area, a chain or a service. A team can belong to several chains and has a mandate, a contact point, someone who sets the priorities, departments involved and a status: Existing team or Still to be set up.
  • Governance — the governing work in one place: the steering model (functional and hierarchical can go together), the coordination aspects and the governing processes. For a governing process you record what is decided or adjusted, who decides, at what rhythm, and which decision or result it delivers.

The other tabs are Issues, Analysis and Improvement actions. You attach an issue to a process, to the hand-over between two processes, or to a chain as a whole; a department or a value team can also be the subject.

What you do yourself​

You record the processes and chains, link them to the organisation and to the strategy, and review the issues: you accept or reject a proposal, and you mark a resolved issue as addressed or deliberately ignored.

What the AI does​

  • Processes: extract from the dossier and generate. For a governing process the proposal fills in the four decision questions, as far as the dossier supports them. The AI proposes a chain only if the dossier or the canvas supports it. Per process you can have the fields filled from the dossier; that too is a proposal, and Save accepts it.
  • Departments: extract from the dossier and generate.
  • Business units: extract from the dossier.
  • Steering model: improve the explanation.
  • Change organisation: generate and improve the change approach; extract the value teams from the dossier or generate them.
  • Issues: extract from the dossier, or generate from dossier, canvas and domain knowledge, and link to a process, a department, a value team, a chain or a hand-over between processes. The AI keeps proposals that say the same as an existing issue out of the list as far as possible, and proposes merging duplicate issues; the originals are kept.
  • Analysis: cluster issues into themes, with the hand-over and the chain as context; with one button you turn individual issues into clusters of their own.
  • Improvement actions: proposals per theme, with verified source references, have an extra action generated, and have the title and explanation rewritten to a set instruction (for example more concise), shown next to your own text.

Every proposal stays a proposal, with its origin, until you accept it. Every AI button shows a counter and the usual duration.

The strategic framework​

The Strategic framework button opens a side panel next to the worksheet with the strategic themes and the principles that apply to this worksheet, each theme with its goal. This keeps the framework in view while you take inventory and formulate improvement actions. Which themes belong to a worksheet, you set at the theme on Strategy; the panel shows what was chosen there.

What it delivers​

A process overview with issues, clusters and improvement actions that flow on to the Change portfolio.

The worksheet report shows everything on this worksheet, empty fields included, without judgement: the departments and the business units, the processes (with owner department, contribution to the strategy, KPIs with Now and Norm, actions, hand-overs and issues, and for a governing process the four decision questions), the chains with their processes and KPIs, the governance and the value teams. The management summary describes which processes the organisation has, how the line is organised, where the value is created and how it is steered; a proposal that has not yet been accepted is not included. The findings and advice are the third document of this worksheet.

There is also a One-pager: one A4 page that reads like a business text (how processes and organisation are set up, where it chafes and what we do about it and why), without counts and with the sector, the type of transformation and the size of the project as context. A text of your own that you saved, you restore with Restore my text. See Reporting.