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Business Process Improvement (BPI) using BPMN Diagramming

  • Course Length:
    3 days
  • Public Pricing:
    No public classes currently scheduled.
  • Public Pricing: View the Public Class Schedule for this class and select Register to see pricing.
  • Onsite Pricing:
    We offer discount pricing for onsite groups. Please contact us to discuss your specific course requirements, group size, and available training dates.

Every business is searching for better ways of getting work done. Improving efficiency, decreasing costs, increasing productivity and customer service are goals that are universal. The best way to identify process improvements is to: 1) study the current procedures, 2) find the core or essential work being done, and 3) re-design the way this essential work is accomplished. This course teaches an approach to these three steps that is very structured and has proven successful in thousands of organizations.

Process improvements may include procedural changes, software changes, organizational changes, personnel changes, etc. When the analyst understands the core business processes they can suggest alternative solutions which meet core business needs while improving the way that work gets done. Management can then evaluate each alternative for its potential improvement and the cost of implementation.

BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) is quickly becoming the standard modeling notation for presenting process models. It is a structured approach to representing business processes in an easy to review format that can be read and understood by business stakeholders along with technical stakeholders. This common “language” makes business process re-design much easier to develop and communicate.

Students will learn to:

  • Start a BPI project with clear objectives and an agreed upon goal.
  • Define key terms used by the business domain to improve communications within the business.
  • Identify and document complex business process steps in an easy to review diagram using industry standard notation.
  • Schedule and conduct discovery/elicitation sessions to learn about current business processes.
  • Ask detailed questions to get a complete understanding of business procedures, business rules, information use and events that impact the business process.
  • Identify the most important business component: Essential Processes.
  • Decompose complex processes into lower level tasks and sub-processes.
  • Conduct a formal review of a process model to assure accuracy.
  • Identify areas for process improvement by reviewing AS IS models.
  • Develop process re-design strategies and present them for approval.

Intended Audience

This course will be beneficial to any person, in any size organization, hoping to improve their business processes. The techniques presented can be used without any sophisticated software to quickly identify areas for improvement and fix broken processes.

Prerequisites

None.

Introduction to Business Process Improvement

  • Discuss the definition of business process improvement.
  • Formulate strong project objectives and goals.
  • Learn the importance of the glossary to process modeling.

1 hour

AS IS Workflow Analysis

  • Utilize workflow analysis to understand the current business process (AS IS).
    • Discuss key terms in process modeling and their subtle differences (process, sub-process, function, activity, essential process, task, procedure).
  • Learn to create detailed Business Process Diagrams (BPD) using BPMN workflow modeling.
    • Identify and define process participants using Pools and Lanes.
    • Learn the key BPMN symbols and their usage (tasks, connections, events, gateways).
    • Discover and analyze tasks in the business domain.
    • Identify events within the business process including delays, communications, and triggers.
    • Decompose complex processes into sub-processes and create related diagrams.
    • Use data artifacts to collect and analyze information currently used by the business.
    • Collect metrics or measurements for business tasks to use for process improvement prioritization.
  • Learn to capture business rules during analysis and document them in a useful fashion.
  • Learn to review a business process model looking for process improvement opportunities.
  • Learn an approach to managing your workload on a large business process modeling project.
  • Workshop: Create an AS IS Business Process Model for the course case study and present it to the class.

5 hours

Essential Business Process Modeling

  • Learn to identify essential business processes. An essential business process is a core requirement of the business area necessary to re-design the process for improvement. Each process must be clearly defined, consistently named, and completely described.
  • Learn to extract essential processes from detailed user descriptions and the AS IS process models.
  • Learn to identify redundant and reusable processes.
  • Use an interviewing template to document business narratives for each essential process.

3 hours

Process Analysis

  • Learn to organize essential business processes in a process outline or decomposition diagram.
  • Learn to decompose business processes into sub-processes and tasks.
  • Workshop: Identify and present essential processes for the class case study.

3 hours

Conducting a Requirements Review

  • The best way to verify that business process models are correct is to conduct a formal review. Learn how to conduct a requirements review: Who should participate? What are the required steps to ensure success? How is a session conducted? What are the common challenges?
  • Workshop: Review a business process model (a case study will be provided or students may bring a project to class for review).

1-2 hours

TO BE Workflow Analysis

  • Review BPMN AS IS Models and transition to a TO BE Model.
    • Identify areas for improvement from the AS IS Models.
      • Review current process metrics.
      • Examine handoffs and communications between process participants.
    • Prioritize areas for improvement.
    • Brainstorm on TO BE alternatives.
    • Create TO BE models with a re-design or the business procedures supporting the essential processes.
  • Use Root Cause Analysis to find the true reason for each problem.
  • Involve all stakeholders in developing alternative solutions and evaluating each one.
  • Perform gap analysis to analyze gaps between the AS IS Process and the recommended TO BE Process.
  • Workshop: Create a TO BE Business Process Model for the course case study and present it to the class.

5 hours

Elicitation Techniques

  • Learn to use and determine the appropriate elicitation techniques for gathering process information:
    • One-on-one interviews
    • Requirements workshops
    • Surveys
    • Brainstorming
    • Document analysis
    • Focus Group
    • Job shadowing/observation
    • Competitive analysis
    • Interface analysis
    • Prototyping
    • Reverse engineering

2-3 hours

Business Process Improvement (BPI) using BPMN Diagramming
Course Length: 3 days
N/A

Currently we do not have any public classes scheduled for this course.