The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Hindwin Walsh Today on the Better Business Analysis podcast we are going to be talking about one of the bread and butter. In this case, the bread site of business analysis is one of the two main fundamental tools and techniques that I think distinguish you between whether or not you're a BA or whether or not you might be in another field. In that area is process
modeling. Now, process modeling can be a boring topic for a lot of people. I hope to make it exciting or as educational and informative as I can, and we'll start there by talking about what is, what is a process and I I This is a constant conversation I always have with BA teams who may get a little bit confused about what is processed. And I think it would be good for us to just start not look at a definition but just think about the world and the fact that we are performing tasks and
activities every day, right? Everything we do in action, we do even you know the the actions that are natural in terms of physics, they're all processes. So all the things we do at the general sense and how we interact with things and how we think. I want you to take that broad view in terms of in terms of process and specifically as business analysts with we're looking at business processes, we're looking at the processes within the organization.
We're looking at processes in terms of interactions with systems and and other technology. We're looking at processes in terms of those which are at the top end of the business, the business model, the organizational capabilities that are required for the business. And we're looking at what you might standardly think of when when I say process, the business process, the both the model and
you know and the maps there. And finally, there's of course one of the most important processes which aren't discussed much when we talk about process modeling internally at a business, which is the customer journey, the process in which the customer, our end customer go through. So when I talk about processes here, I'm talking about all of
those aspects. And so if you think about the customer journey and you think of the process between that in terms of the organization fulfilling a service, the service design process and then the business model required to support that. Then the highest level capabilities required to support the business model. Then the processes within each area of the business and then the tasks required to execute on that process.
And then there's system processes of course and then there's data probably under that. That's a lot of different layers. And what we use to describe those layers is a hierarchy. Because there is a hierarchy, there's usually a lot less at the top and there's usually a lot more exponential kind of growth down below. And you can and you can visualize that like a triangle. OK.
And when you talk about business hierarchy, various different organizations have divided up the hierarchy into different sections. And we usually refer to those sections as levels. And they're usually given a number from zero, you know, down to four or five or six. And you depending on where you go, If you go to, say, some of the organizations that are closely along with BPMM, there will be a process model. In education learning, you learn
around process models. And also there's a great website which we'll talk about more of throughout the episode, which is called the APQC model, which also has its own definition of what these levels are. And I don't want you to get too
too caught up on these levels. All I'll say is that there's slight differences in terms of where they draw the line or how many levels they are, but they've really divided this pyramid up in terms of talking about the information you need and the level of level of abstraction in which that level
talks about. OK and and and I'm going to just talk about four levels today because this is the model that I subscribe to and that means that I would choose the right definition of those levels for the organization or come along with one. So as Bas don't please don't get into debates necessarily on different views of that as long as you know the logic of the the competing model makes sense.
What we'll we'll start with is what is level 0 and and this is where the numbering can can change depending on which which definition you look at. So #0 process 0 should be the highest level process in which your business, your organization operates in. And you could argue that that is the business model itself. So it is taking inputs, which is usually investment time. For example, it is doing something and it's outputting something.
And so if you think of that as just one rectangle box with a couple of arrows in, a couple of arrows out and your business model being the middle part, the black box, which we'll talk about a lot today, then that is the highest level process. And that can be depicted as a simple box or as a business model canvas for example, or as a lean canvas depending on kind of where you've started your business and how mature it is. And so that defines the highest level reason for existence.
Below that you then get into what can be referred to as capabilities. So level one being the capabilities needed to support your business or your type of business. Your business will have some unique attributes which we talk about as UVP, unique value proposition and it will have some attributes that are requires but aren't necessarily unique to your business and more of the generic business type processes.
So you have a series of those. The APQC model defines templated capability levels which it suggests are common across business or at least very similar across industries depending on what you do. And you know these are things like managing financial resources and so that is there everything to do with accounts payable, receivable accounts.
I always use accounts as an example because people generally understand that and it really says that it provides a series of of of processes and lower level tasks which need to be completed within that area and they're generic and they say that you know every business will do a variation of these things. We'll go into deep about how that can be useful for us as Bas in a minute, but let's just say that's the highest level kind of organizational capability boxes
we might have. And so you'd look tend to have a tendency to have maybe somewhere between 5 and 15, not too many of these boxes. If we take an example of a cupcake store, it will have processes around marketing, it will have process around sales. It will have processing around producing the physical good. The manufacturing side will have processes around our financial side, HR, strategic planning for
example. And there will, you'll find there will probably be around 10 to 13 of those processes. And when you think about selling cupcakes through a shop, I guess the shop, the cupcake, the customer experience and the serving of the customer are three really important elements that you would most likely be unique to you and not necessarily replicated by every other cupcake store unless you
are a franchise restaurant. So those processes there we've just talked about maybe critical processes for you. So at the highest level, we may have a cupcake cafe, if you like, which has got some inputs, investment people, resources. We produce cupcakes and we sell them and maybe coffee and tea and then the output is ideally profit.
And that's our business model. Below that we have these processes or organizational capabilities we talked about, which are effectively groups of processes if you're looking at from the bottom up. So that's level one and then we get to level 2 and it's usually at this level. And this is again where the different definitions come into play. But I like to think about this as the we're starting to actually look at a flow here.
We're starting to look at a process flow that may happen within one of those capabilities. Obviously they join together but you're adding sequence at this point and still this might be there may need to be this is a level 2 and you may need to do a Level 3 version of this process to get down to the task level however or activity level.
But at this point we're really talking about doing a series of flows and so. So one approach could be just a very straight line process for how we, for example, we were looking at the delivery of physical goods, in this case the cupcakes and manufacturing cupcakes would be another way of saying that. Then it could be, you know the beginning of the process could be we've taken an order and then it could be all the steps for making maybe you've already done
some prep. So it might be take cupcake, apply icing, apply design, provide that back to the server to deliver to the customer and that's really very, very high level. And then you then would go down to another level of abstraction and that was just a straight flow where you might go into a bit more of what we would
consider process. The word we use business process is really this level where we say you know the fundamental, what steps in terms of manufacturing cupcake which would be a lower level sub process. So again that could be Baker takes cupcake, Baker applies, looks at order, form takes icing from the icing area applies icing you know moves to tray and so forth.
And so these are the kind of what activities and and there I dipped into a little bit of a how and and that was probably not 100% correct, but you're really getting to where you are associating an actor or a person or a stakeholder. You know we are in the process, they are, they're a back office person in this case. So we know that this is the manufacturing side and it's where they are doing an
activity. So that's usually represented by a or should be represented by a BPMM process map model that you're drawing and that's accurate and that can be read. And this was cupcakes, but it was a computerized system. It was very important that we use the notation language that's common. So another BA could pick it up or a computer could read it. And so once you've got down to the series of steps there, we really know now.
So if we look at our cupcake model, we know that we've got this cupcake business at our level zero kind of process. We know the kind of process groups. We know the general sequence, then we know the process steps involved and below that we get into the how we get into procedure task level. So this is where you are associating the activity, what you are doing with the tools in which you use all the systems that you interface with.
And so that could be the oven in this case, it could be the pulse system, it could literally be the tools we use. And and the reason why that's different and also important is that that level, that lower level procedure level which is how level changes quite often. So that you usually find that these this process level was the most open to change and it will evolve and it's usually where the interface was system changes evolve and this is how people experience kind of it at this
level and that changes often. But whereas the general ability to manufacture and to bake and to design A cupcake doesn't particularly change even if you get a new blender or you you know get a new piping tool for icing. So that's the distinction there. The house step is the procedure step. So that hierarchy we talked about which is 0 down to four in this example is pretty much it in terms of the hierarchy that's four levels.
Obviously we we start at 0, but but we've got those four levels and so you've gone down from business model to organizational capability down to kind of process map to process model and then procedure in terms of the how. So five, I guess if you talk about 0 as well. Now what we have missed out there which is equally important is what I would refer to as process Step -1. It's not the sexiest name but it's the customer journey.
So this is the process the customer goes through to interact with us or from their it's always written from their perspective. So it's their the customer's journey to acquire a cupcake, for example, buy a cupcake and enjoy it. So that could be, you know, learning about us online, visiting the store, putting in an order, waiting to receive an order, receiving the cupcake, eating the cupcake, posting a review.
So that's now customer journey. And that customer journey usually will have our corresponding element in terms of obviously it connects with our business model. And if it doesn't, they're not a target customer. We've got something fundamentally wrong there and it will have a relationship, a mapping relationship with our capabilities about where they interact. And so in this case, it would be in terms of our managing customer service, in terms of our marketing, our sales.
They don't really see the manufacturing side, which is why it's back office. But they do experience our customer service and our post sales processes which could be you know, following them up with an e-mail or potentially the, you know, the Baker coming out and asking them what they
thought of the cupcake. So that customer journey is hugely important, very important when you haven't even established a business yet, it's usually a place for opportunity or for you to understand your customers and every VA needs to understand service design and customer journey from the world of you know design thinking of it something called a mystery as in they we it's new and then equally from more structured service design if it's something that you are changing a process
or making it better or it's much more straightforward. And so that process is that -1 as I've talked about, but it should always be there. And so then you can clearly see from the top of the pyramid this kind of line above the pyramid and then the process model from that from zero down to the procedures and that that is your hierarchy and and here and you will not necessarily especially if it's a company bigger than a cupcake cafe, the idea of modeling all that stuff is too
much and would be wasteful. So what we need to do is first understand where we are in a project or a change, what level it's affecting and map that out. Just with really simple, simple boxes. You don't necessarily need to know the process steps, you just need to know the inputs and outputs of these steps using techniques like an IDIF diagram. Look that up if you don't know what that is and we talk about
it on our website. So you're effectively when you start a change you should understand the scope and when we have a process hierarchy or at least have an idea of what that should be for our company, then we can start you know circling where a change may be affected. And that could be driven from the customer journey if it's customer driven or it could be something internal or it could be both.
And if we did something internal then we can see what effect that might have on the customer and it could actually have you know cause and effect as with any change that we could model out. So that's process hierarchy. When you RBA you generally are playing in the middle, but where you're modeling a process for a department or internally and you're you're finding out what the activities are, that'll be a that, I'm sorry, your
stakeholder is going through. And that's generally using you know tools like Visio, Mural where you are trying to map this out and using post its is a great way of doing that and moving things around until you get to a position where you kind of understand what's going on and you understand the rules that need to be applied throughout that process flow. And then jumping to something like Visio and playing that back to customers to get that right is kind of what you experience
and having a great template. Understanding the shapes of BPMM is very important and we'll be putting out some free learning around that very shortly. That's the kind of area that you will find that you might start with or you'll really experience them. And when we talk about process improvement, we we're generally looking at that kind of level of
the hierarchy. However, those who are Better Business analysts understand where they play within the hierarchy tree and what the impact of that process has on both anything below IT systems and anything anything above IT. So that's this episode I've just talked about the process
hierarchy. We will have a specific episode on BPM Process modeling and maybe a little bit more on IDIF in the future, but hopefully that gives you an idea about what process is. Every business is basically for the the purpose that exists for as its business model, which is a process in itself made-up of all these other connected processes. So yeah, I hope you learned something today and I'll see you in the next episode.