Process, Work

In models of work, sets of repeatable structured activities that add predictable value (including creation, refinement, transportation, and marketing), while consuming budgetable costs to an enterprise.

Click for all entries in work processes. One popular work process serious game is Industry Giant II.

Processes can be around transforming ideas, money, people, and products, delivering a service or message, branching to alternative processes, or triggering an action. There is often the movement and enrichment of some container of value, whether a widget to be painted or a form to be approved (or kicked back).

They often have an owner that takes responsibility for them. Managing a process requires the application of Middle Skills and Big Skills.

Some processes are core while others are tangential. Processes can be ongoing (infrastructure), or triggered by an event.

Processes also might produce unwanted, and perhaps unintended, outputs, beyond their cost. The refinement, reorganization, or elimination of processes is a high value activity in many organizations, often called process reengineering. And as with other systems, the optimization of one process without looking at the interdependencies can be sub-optimal or even counter-productive. Improvements can also be made within a process (business process redesign).

Processes can be simple or complex, and need to be connected to other processes, sometimes through paths. Processes can also be done in parallel. And the integration between the processes is called “the process fit” which can be as strategically significant as the process itself. Business processes maps are also called business process diagrams.

Processes often need units and resources, and can be represented on a Maps by structures. Processes can be automated.

A process can be

• done internally (retailer’s employees stock shelves),
• outsourced (retailers contracts independent workers to stock shelves), or
• transferred completely to another organization (retailer asks vendors to stock shelves, or retailer becomes online retailer and asks vendors to ship directly to customers).

Typically, the more important the process, the more ownership the enterprise wants to have. New process can also have a disruptive effect.

In many charts, both processes and activities are represented by rectangles with rounded corners. The completion of some, typically more complex and unique processes, are considered milestones. Business processes should be evaluated against balanced scorecards.

Contrasts and overlaps with activities, including internal/high control activities and external/ low control activities.