Process maturity should be foundational to applying, sustaining and continuously leveraging off Lean Six Sigma. So said Tony Gardiner, organisational process development manager at Nedbank, in his keynote at the ITWeb BPM Summit and Awards held at Montecasino, in Fourways, last week.
Based on a business process maturity model, Gardiner discussed the various levels of BPM maturity that an organisation should strive to achieve. “To achieve maturity growth the organisation needs to change the way it does things,” he advised.
At the lowest level of BPM maturity, explained Gardiner, organisations focus on simply becoming a managed organisation; which it achieves through work unit management. At this level organisations need to overcome inconsistent management, including defects, overruns and ad hoc methods, he added.
To achieve work unit management, organisations need to reduce rework and repeatable practices, as a disciplined work unit management system must successfully stabilise work and control commitments, advised Gardiner.
Companies are considered to be at the next level of BPM maturity if they have achieved business line maturity. Gardiner explained that at this level, organisations need to achieve affective business processes and strong productivity growth.
Becoming a predictable organisation is what companies should strive for to reach the next level, according to Gardiner. Organisations need to achieve predictable results and be able to manage processes and results quantitatively, in order to exploit the benefits of the standardisation achieved in the previous level, Gardiner continued.
Time for change
At the top level of the BPM maturity model companies are considered to be innovative organisations. Companies have achieved this level only if they have achieved capable processes through perpetual innovation and managed change. At this level, noted Gardiner, companies need to implement continuous proactive improvements to achieve business targets.
Gardiner stated that the biggest driver of successful BPM maturity is organisational culture. “Transforming organisational culture will provide a roadmap to achieving an agile environment.”
He added that employees are the biggest hindrance to change, as they see change as a threat to their authority and job security. As such, advised Gardiner, the organisation must drive an overall organisational culture transformation to overcome individual resistance.
“Culture shapes attitudes and behaviours, and aligns people to improvement activity and improvement maturity,” concluded Gardiner.
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