A recent article in the Harvard Business Review caught my eye – the article, The Process Audit, was authored by Michael Hammer.

 

Hammer is probably best known for co-authoring the book Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution which sparked the ‘business reengineering’ boom of the 1990’s.

 

What struck me as interesting was that Hammer identifies a set of process ‘enablers’ and organisational ‘capabilities’ that are essential for sustained business processes performance - in any organisation and for any process.

 

From a software process improvement perspective, what intrigued me was that these enablers and capabilities also provide a very succinct checklist for assessing the ability of any organisation to successfully conduct – and sustain – an initiative aimed at improving software development.

 

As identified by Hammer:

“All change projects are tough to pull off, but process-based change is particularly difficult.  Contrary to widespread assumptions, designing new business processes involves more than rearranging work flows – who does what tasks, in what locations, and in what sequence.  To make new processes work, companies must redefine jobs more broadly, increase training to support those jobs and enable decision making by frontline personnel, and redirect reward systems to focus on processes as well as outcomes.  As if that weren’t enough, enterprises also have to reshape organisational cultures to emphasize teamwork, personal accountability, and the customer’s importance; redefine roles and responsibilities so that managers oversee process instead of activities and develop people rather than supervise them; and realign information systems so they help cross-functional processes work smoothly rather than simply support departments.”

Process Enablers

Hammer asserts that, based on his research, there are five key enablers that are essential for any process to have the potential to deliver high performance.  The enablers are mutually independent – if any are missing, the others will prove ineffective.

  • A process must have a well-specified design – otherwise, the people performing it won’t know what to do or when.
  • The people who execute the process, the performers, must have appropriate skills and knowledge – otherwise they won’t be able to implement the desing.
  • There has to be an owner, a senior executive who has responsibility and authority to ensure that the process delivers results – otherwise, it will fall between the cracks.
  • The company must align its infrastructure, such as information technologies and HR systems, to support the process – otherwise, they will impede its performance.
  • Finally, the company must develop the right metrics to assess the performance of the process over time – otherwise it won’t deliver the right results.

Organisational Capabilities

Hammer also asserts that an organisation needs  a number of key capabilities to be in place to institutionalise the process enablers and sustain the performance of its processes.  Hammer believes that executives may be able to force some enablers into place, even if these organisational capabilities aren’t present, but this will only achieve limited success and the performance of the processes won’t endure.

 

The stronger these organisational enablers are, the better the process performance:

  • Leadership - a company’s senior executives must be committed to the business process approach.  Redesigning processes requires extensive organisational change that often provokes resistance down the line.  This can sink efforts that don’t have the backing of senior executives.
  • Culture - only organisations whose cultures value customers, teamwork, personal accountability, and a willingness to change will find it possible to move forward with process-led change projects.  Business processes, which cut across functions, must be operated by people with those values.
  • Process Expertise - businesses must have some people with skills in, and knowledge of, process redesign; this is not work for amateurs or improvisers.
  • Governance - enterprises must be sure to have ways of governing projects and change initiatives if they don’t want chaos and conflict to bog them down.

Although the article is aimed at enterprise-level process initiatives, from personal experience, I would recommend that any organisation contemplating a process change initiative – in particular a software process improvement initiative – consider and address the above enablers and capabilities as part of the initiative.