Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) [Paperback]

Paul Harmon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1558607587 | ISBN-13: 978-1558607583 | Publication Date: January 1, 2003 | Edition: 1

Every company wants to improve the way it does business, to produce goods and services more efficiently, and to increase profits. Nonprofit organizations are also concerned with efficiency, productivity, and with achieving the goals they set for themselves. Every manager understands that achieving these goals is a part of his or her job.

In the wake of the dot-com collapse, managers are trying to figure out how they can take advantage of email, the Internet, and the Web to improve their business process. At the same time, managers are interested in developing business process architectures and measurement systems that align business processes with corporate goals. Managers face many options in approaching these problems. Business Process Change provides an overview of the options and describes a variety of business process techniques proven by successful companies over the course of a decade.

*Focuses on the process change problems faced by today's managers.
*Summarizes the state of the art of business process analysis & improvement, including the basic vocabulary of modeling.
*Presents a methodology based on the best practices available that can be tailored for specific needs and that maintains a focus on the human aspects of process redesign.
*Offers detailed case studies showing how these methods are implemented.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is a must-read for every business manager who wants to manage business process change in an e-business environment; it's a true practitioner's guidebook to the complex world of end-to-end business process management. The book not only gives an excellent introduction to all aspects of process change management (from analysis or redesign to implementation to monitoring to improvement of business processes), but also provides a comprehensive guide to state-of-the-art techniques and technologies supporting the various aspects of this process (from process design methodologies to realizing business processes via choreography of Web services)."-Steve Mill, Senior Vice President, IBM Software Group

"Finally a book that brings it all together-background, theory, and practice-in a way that is easily digested by business and IT managers alike. This book is a must-read for anyone contemplating a business change project in order that they understand why a holistic approach is beneficial and how the work they are undertaking will impact others.
"The concepts and notations presented in the book are straightforward and easy to follow and do not require either weeks of training or an army of outside consultants to help implement them. I feel sure that after reading the book, any manager will come away with two lasting impressions: first, "Now I understand where that fits . . ." and "Yes, I can do it.""-Mark McGregor, Vice President, MEGA International

"Finally, someone has written a practical guide for those building a business for the information age."-Bill Coleman, Founder, Chairman, CSO, BEA Systems

"When it comes to Business Process Change, Paul Harmon"s new book is a must-read. It is a great resource for performance improvement professionals."-Dr. Roger M. Addison, Director Performance Technologies, International Society for Performance Improvement

"A great deal has been written about process improvement and business process reengineering, most before its presumed demise and recent resurrection. Much has been written about the Internet and e-business, most before the tech bubble. This book is "post-bust"; it is the first book to thoroughly discuss the critical link between "process," information technology, and the Internet-all things that managers must understand if they are to develop and manage sound internal operations that will provide legitimate profits. And it is the manager"s job to do that. Some of the technical work must be done by business process consultants and IT staff, but the setting of the direction and requirements, the management of the integrating efforts, must be done by managers. That critical role cannot be delegated to the "techies." Meeting that management challenge will be made easier by this book."-From the foreword by Geary A. Rummler, Founder and Chairman, Performance Design Lab; Co-author, Improving Performance

Book Description

Focuses on the process change problems faced by today's managers.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 529 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558607587
• ISBN-13: 978-1558607583
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Education: Earlham College (Richmond Indiana) & Columbia University (NYC)
Spent adult life working as a management consultant.

Worked for Geary Rummler in NYC then started Harmon Associates in San Francisco. Wrote newsletters for Cutter Consortium in the 80s and 90s on Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence, Object Oriented Technology and CASE. Co-founded Business Process Trends - www.bptrends.com - in 2003 and then joined with other to create the BPTrends Associates Methodology for organization and process change.

Have published a series of books on different software technologies that can be used to improve business performance.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Backward Glance, February 5, 2003

By 

Joseph Francis, Director IT Business Process ... (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

I spent last year creating a "Business Process Management" team for the CIO of HP. We spent much time and effort thinking clearly about how to approach business processes without the pitfalls of "Business Process Re-engineering," and worked to create both a holistic approach and an extremely simple, intuitive methodology. Through concentrated effort, without the luxury of time (in the midst of a complex, highly-visible merger), we arrived at a set of conventions for our work, policies on alignment to the office of the CIO, IT Architecture and Program teams, as well as different approaches we could supply to our business and IT internal clients. The value we've provided has been dramatic in the areas we've worked in, from Supply Chain Integration between pre-merger HP and pre-merger Compaq, to HP direct sales process design, to Global Content Management processes and re-engineering.

In hindsight, I wish I'd been able to read Paul Harmon's Business Process Change a year ago. Creating the team and its functions would have been much simpler, direct, and less time-consuming. Based on our experiences in a process architecture team in a $75B IT company, I see the book having major value to at least three audiences I deal with daily. First, the book is for managers considering major business change. It will provide a blueprint to why they might be changing (Part 1 - Process Management), specific ways they might change (Part IV - Patterns section), and if/when they use external consultants, a way to specify with formidable detail what they're expecting to receive (Part II - Modeling, and Part III - Managing).

Second, it is for IT people who are seeking to regain architectural and analytic skills, which ERP and packaged workflow may have supplanted. This book provides both modern idioms for approaching business with what might be termed `object-oriented' analysis (Part II - Modeling), as well as a summary of the field of implementation techniques (Part V - Automation and Part VI - E-Business).

Third, for the consulting function to both IT and business, it provides a well-rounded blueprint for marketing (value propositions), tools, techniques, and implementation approaches. I cannot imagine a consultative team which doesn't have virtually all the elements of Paul's book as part of their basic operations. Certainly, no state-of-the-art team would want to be without them.

For the futurists (which I don't deal with daily), the book provides an implicit narrative of how the nature of business is changing (I myself feel we're on the edge of a dramatic change in business structure.) It begins with the disappearance of organizational models - which in the book are artifacts of a process model - and the focus on quantifiable outcomes for transactions (I'm thrown back to hierarchy-disrupting transactional analysis from the `70s). It continues by looking at virtual business structures - the `extended supply chain' example which Paul walks through -- a linking together of transactions. And it ends by building IT - automation -- around process elements instead of traditional `systems' architecture. Traditional labels, capsules, and hierarchies change and shift, and I see the book in a more `future perfect' tense.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Actually useful, very little BS, April 21, 2005

By 

Hearth (Darnestown, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

I must have 500 business books in my home library. this is one of the most practical and useful for really understanding the field of process management. There are excellent diagrams that are worth the price of the book on their own. Excellent bibliography and glossary.

I especially liked the overview of the history and trends in process management. Showed where the field is evolving and why.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great BP Primer, May 6, 2004

By 

Danny T. Moore "Lean Professional" (DC Area (NVA)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

Having experienced process improvement in the Manufacturing arena with influences from the Japanese (JIT, TQM, Kaizen), I wanted to expand my horizons by getting an orientation in BPM. The first chapter is worth the price of the book on strategy, fit, focus and position. Excellent summary of M. Porter the hot daddy on strategy. Harmon is a good writer--he writes clearly and succinctly. His insights and observations are biased toward the practical. If you are need a good intro into BP, start here--you will be ahead of the pack.