Dec
13
More Draft BABOK 2.0 Viewpoint Material
December 13, 2006 |
Again, a first draft. These sections are from the introduction–there’ll be more changes within the KAs. Agile and BPM won’t be the only things described like this, they’re just the first ones I’ve written.
Business Process Management
Description
Business Process Management (BPM) is focused on the identification, development, improvement, and management of processes as a means to effectively accomplish organizational change and implement organizational strategies.
BPM methods seek to:
- Identify a process architecture that defines the core objectives of the business • Integrate processes across the organization
- Improve the performance of existing processes (increasing customer satisfaction, reducing cost, shortening completion time, etc.)
- Define measures to assess the ongoing performance of processes
- Enhance the organization’s ability to respond to ongoing changes in the business environment.
BPM efforts may vary greatly in scope, ranging from continuous improvement to radical overhaul of an organization’s operations.
The Role of Business Analysis
The Business Analyst role is critical to BPM efforts. Business Analysts will be needed to define a process architecture for the organization, develop detailed process models and assess potential improvements to those models, and maintain those models as the organization evolves.
- Process Identification and Definition: This is generally the primary focus of a Business Analyst working on a BPM effort. The BA will be responsible for defining the requirements that describe new and improved processes and for integrating those processes across organizational groups. BAs on a BPM project are generally business rather than IT oriented, although in leadership roles they will have to have a deep understanding of both.
- BPM System Implementation: The role of information technology in BPM is to support and increase process flexibility, in order to support continuous improvement of processes. The Business Analyst must consider not simply what the organization needs to do today, but what it may need to be able to do in the future and define systems to support those needs. Many BPM efforts involve COTS BPM products, rather than custom solutions. If the organization is handling the development or integration of components itself, the BA role will be similar to the role as defined in Service-Oriented Architecture (q.v.).
Knowledge Areas and Tasks
- Enterprise Analysis is critical to a BPM effort, as process change must always be aligned with organizational goals. In particular, a BPM effort will focus on defining the process architecture and on ensuring that a business case for changes is maintained.
- Requirements Planning and Management is largely unaffected.
- Requirements Elicitation is likely to be performed primarily through document analysis, observation, and requirements workshops, which assist the BA in understanding the components of a process and in encouraging discussion across functional boundaries (where problems are likely to occur).
- Requirements Analysis focuses on defining process flows and identifying opportunities for improvement. The primary requirements categories that will be relevant are process, role, and data requirements. Other classes of requirements (particularly system requirements) are of secondary importance at best.
- Requirements Communication becomes critical in BPM, as significant business buy-in to the effort is necessary for these projects to be successful. It is likely that a significant amount of informal discussion of requirements, as well as presentation of the requirements to business audiences, will be necessary.
- Solution Assessment and Validation will focus on the assessment of commercial products and on monitoring the solution to identify potential improvements.
Comments
5 Comments so far
What I'm Reading- Do You really Believe in What you Do?Requirements Defined - Seilevel's Software Requirements Blog
- C.R.A.C.K. Requirements managersBetter Projects
- ‘IT has no inherent value’IT Project Failures
- Business Analysis in an Uncertain EconomyJonathan Babcock
- Why We Lost Focus on Development PracticesAgile Management Blog
- Talking about what we doRequirements Defined - Seilevel's Software Requirements Blog
- BPM is not Software EngineeringGo Flow
- 3 Big CaliberRM Gotchas And How To Fix Them Part 1Requirements Defined - Seilevel's Software Requirements Blog
- Project World and World Congress of Business Analysts (PW&WCBA)Better Projects
- Troubled ProjectsHerding Cats
RE: “Requirements Planning and Management is largely unaffected”
I hope this not true, that chapter needs some major rework! I can understand that in version 1.x, but I was hoping for a major improvement in 2.0. Especially since it’s been work-in-progress for such a long time.
Our mission, as an IIBA community, is “to develop and maintain standards for the practice of business analysis”. We can’t prove ourselves as the organization to set high BA standards as long as he BABOK continues to exist in a draft-like form. And if we don’t set such high standards, what is our mission? Furthermore, why would companies value CBAP if the only thing it certifies is a continuous work-in-progress Body of Knowledge?
I strongly suggest we post BABOK 2.0 for public view and allow the BA community to debate it and to contribute to its definition.
Still hopeful,
Razvan Radulian, MBA, PMP, BA Certified
VP of Education, Research Triangle Park IIBA Chapter
I think you’ve misunderstood. This article is describing how each of the KAs applies to a particular type of project (in this case BPM) and the statement above is only saying that the content of that chapter is fully applicable to this kind of project.
The current state of 2.0 has been described in detail in more recent articles (including in the IIBA newsletter and on this site). It has changed substantially since this article was written.
The CBAP certification is actually not dependent on the BABOK and would be worth a lot less if it were! We based it on extensive surveys of the BA community to determine the work performed by BAs and then built the questions around those survey responses. It would be just as valid and relevant if the BABOK did not exist. The BABOK helps explain and standardize the definitions of the work business analysts perform, and it is useful for people seeking certification because it helps them understand our expectations and terminology, but if the exam is seen as only certifying knowledge of the BABOK then we’ve failed in our mission.
As for the publication of version 2.0, it will be rolled out over the next several months. I know some people are impatient to see it but there are other groups that are equally concerned about having time to adjust to the changes it includes. We don’t do anyone a service by rushing the material out there before it’s ready and complete.
Thanks for the prompt reply and I agree with your statements. I didn’t realize my comment was taken out of context (BPM) and I apologize for the confusion.
I read the newsletter and I am very happy to see that the Planning and the Management of Business Analysis got separated into two different areas (it was my most important reason for suggesting re-work of that KA).
Regarding the BABOK 2.0 release, on one hand I understand why we have to be careful and not rush its release prematurely. On the other hand, I don’t see any harm in posting iterative and incremental revisions of this version, as long as they are labeled appropriately as “Draft version”. Even if we don’t have the infrastructure to processes the BA community’s feedback (I agree, that can be overwhelming), it would give us a view on what’s coming and allow us to engage in a debate, local as it may be, based on a common body of knowledge, rather than on speculations of what that body of knowledge might be. Would allow those “concerned about having time to adjust” to better plan and manage their adjustments.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Thanks,
Razvan
Actually, there are quite a few problems associated with incrementally publishing draft versions of the BABOK. Our past experience is that we end up getting a lot of commentary on it sent to members of the team and are faced with the choice of not replying (which looks rude) or being significantly distracted from the work of development. Most of the debate tends to focus on superficial issues (of the kind the development team is able to identify internally) rather than identifying new problems. Plus the release itself requires time and effort and slows work down.
Our experiences with previous releases have demonstrated that the best approach is to only release material which we feel is “ready” and essentially final. That said, there are plans to release such material over the next few months as well as some draft content for sections that are missing from the 1.6 release, and you will see regular updates on the work we’re doing.
Thanks for the info. Based on this discussion I have a question.As far as getting corporate training for a company is concerned would it add any value for a company if they just get trained in BPM neglecting the BABOK standards? I guess I want to highlight the importance of understanding BABOK before getting into BPM