In this third post on the topic "Demystifying the term process", I’ll explain requirement 4 of the 10 requirements that something must meet, before we can use the term ‘process’ in a service management context, according to the Unified Service Management method:

  1. A process describes what has to happen successively, not the who or how.
  2. A process can be interpreted with a verb.
  3. A process can be counted.
  4. PROCESSES ARE NOT DEPENDING UPON PRACTICAL CONDITIONS (◊).
  5. Processes have a customer-relevant and unique purpose.
  6. A process can be divided into sub-processes, but that does not change the process.
  7. A process model organizes the processes.
  8. An integral process model includes all service management activities.
  9. In an integrated process model, each activity occurs only once.
  10. All activities are steered using process control.

Requirements 1,2, and 3 have laid the foundation for the difference between a process (the what), a procedure (the what and the who), and a work instruction (the what, the who, and the how). See the image on top of this episode of the USM Newsletter. Practices are generic descriptions of work done at the level of a work instruction.

Practical conditions

It is immediately evident that any practical condition in a description of work can only be positioned at the level of the work instruction, i.e. the level of these practices - and never at the level of the process, for the simple reason that the how is not present in that process level. Quod erat demonstrandum.

This means that, whenever you see a 'process description' that contains a gateway symbol (◊) for a practical condition, you should immediately understand that you are not dealing with a process description, but with a practice description. On itself, this wouldn't be that bad, but unfortunately, it has far-reaching consequences. The rationale of requirement 4 is very easy to understand, but a simple example will demonstrate the devastating effects of not using it.

Far-reaching consequences

The large majority of 'business process analysts' use a drawing technique like BPMN to define 'business processes'. BPMN is the acronym for Business Process Model and Notation. BPMN uses three 'swimlanes' to describe that 'process'. These swimlanes are used to describe work in terms of who does what and how. It may be evident that any result of a swimlane description of work is positioned at the level of the work instruction, the practice. Therefore, the tool BPMN should not stand for Business Process Model and Notation, but for Business Practice Model and Notation. And business process analysts are never business process analysts: they are business practice analysts. And by starting to define business practices, they start at the wrong end of the stick, as I explained in PTO: The new Pandemic. And that is where it hurts. At best, their efforts will deliver some improvements of the Lean type: less loss. But they fundamentally miss the sustainable solution that they could have found if they had started at the other end of the stick.

The litmus test

Ask any so-called business process analyst which process architecture they used to derive the practices in their BPMN swimlanes. All you'll get is silence. There will be no answer. For the simple reason that they didn't use a process architecture. They have simply started their thinking at the level of the practices. Most likely, they are even unaware of the whole concept of process architecture, for the simple reason that they have learned to use the term process for what actually is a practice. And then you're blind for the consequences. You'll never find a sustainable solution for the organization of work until you start to think from the other end of the stick - from the beginning.

It sounds crazy, but the majority of experts has become used to start at the end instead of at the beginning.

The new thinking of USM - the Unified Service Management method - can help you unlearn this. Read the USM book or any of the free downloadable e-books, or take a USM Foundation course or a free online USM workshop - whatever you prefer, and learn what you haven't learned at school.

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