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Neha has recently taken charge of a software organization from her father who’s decided to retire after five decades of distinguished leadership. When Neha asks her father for some advice on how to run the organization, her father’s words are short and somewhat cryptic: “Focus on the cycle. The rest will take care of itself.”
Puzzled by her father’s comment, Neha decides to use her own wisdom to navigate the challenges of running the organization. That’s until she finds a notebook in the same office drawer that belonged to her father. In the notebook, Neha learns exactly what her father meant by asking her “to focus on the cycle”- the different components of a business process management (BPM) life cycle.
Neha carefully studies her father’s notes and equips herself with the multiple ways in which a business leader is supposed to look after the BPM lifecycle. This enables her to cope with some early turbulence in the industry before settling in and consolidating her own tenure at the head of the organization.
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What Is The BPM Lifecycle?
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Importance Of The BPM Lifecycle
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Phases Of The BPM Lifecycle
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Get To Grips With the BPM Lifecycle
What Is The BPM Lifecycle?
The business process management life cycle consists of the progression or development of the processes in a business over time. This cycle is meant to illustrate the different BPM lifecycle phases that are involved in the BPM lifecycle and how each phase takes an organization closer to achieving its targets, both in the short-term as well as in the long term.
Understanding of the BPM lifecycle is key to figuring out how modern businesses operate, expand and optimize. While there’s no hard and fast rule that the BPM lifecycle phases must be attained in the same sequence by every business, conventions and precedents have found largely uniform patterns in business process management phases among successful organizations.
Importance Of The BPM Lifecycle
The BPM life cycle includes several distinct phases that will be analyzed soon. But before that, it’s important to take note of why the business process management life cycle is so important:
- The business process management phases that form the BPM lifecycle allow an organization to break down its objectives on a year-by-year basis and create a thorough blueprint for the future
- The fact that the BPM life cycle includes core strategic elements means that organizations have a blueprint of how to think about growth and sustenance in a competitive industry
- The business process management life cycle makes it easier for organizations to transition, in terms of leadership or a shift in short-term objectives, by keeping the macro picture more or less intact
Phases Of The BPM Lifecycle
The six phases of the BPM life cycle are explained as follows:
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Planning And Strategic Alignment
This phase is all about putting in place the primary and secondary processes that support an organization’s core operations. Any process that involves designing, creating and selling products is considered primary. Secondary processes are those that support primary ones, such as human resources, office administration and IT assistance. During this phase, organizations must be careful that these processes align with their broader strategic aims.
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Process Analysis
The BPM life cycle includes this all-important phase where organizations have to study the processes identified in the previous phase and analyze them quantitatively and/or qualitatively. This phase is used to get a complete picture of how an organization is supposed to build a project or a product. Process analysis requires interviewing process performers, analyzing available process documentation and in a few select cases predicting modeling.
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Process Design
The third of the six phases of the BPM life cycle is about making vital decisions. Organizations have to decide if they want to opt for continuous process improvement or go with a full redesign where the entire process is remodeled, taking into account various kinds of bottlenecks, lags and delays.
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Implementation Of The Process
There are two main ways of implementation: systemic and non-systemic. The biggest difference is that the former uses specific software and tools while the latter has no predetermined options.
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Process Monitoring
The BPM life cycle includes a monitoring phase where key performance indicators (KPIs) are identified and monitored to check that the organizational process is in line with the organizational goals and strategy. Some common KPIs include duration of the process, cost of the process and how much the process can produce. Information acquired during process monitoring goes a long way in establishing if the process needs any tweaks or late readjustments.
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Process Refinement
The final phase of the business process management life cycle is about fine-tuning and ensuring that actual performance is as close as possible to the modeled process. Once the refinement phase is over, organizations repeat the six phases explained here for their next project or for the development of their next product.
Most bpm lifecycles proceed in sync with the conventional stages or parts of a business cycle, which are as follows:
- Launch
- Growth
- Shake-out
- Maturity
- Decline
The difference between a BPM lifecycle and a business cycle is that the former is concerned with the phases involved in the business process while the latter is concerned with the phases in which a business evolves over time.
Get To Grips With the BPM Lifecycle
Familiarizing yourself with each step of the business process management life cycle takes expertise, energy and resources. At Harappa, you’ll get all three, thanks to the Rise In An Organization pathway, which allows you to build and harness the critical skills essential for mastering business process management. With the help of this pathway, you’ll be able to nurture Thrive Skills like being empathetic, practicing mindfulness, and executing excellence. Frameworks such as The Flywheel Effect, The Performance Equation and The Trust Equation will make you inspire trust, lead with influence and learn from setbacks.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for the Rise In An Organization pathway right away and get to grips with all the nuances of the BPM lifecycle.
