Purpose
Process analysis assesses a process for its efficiency and effectiveness, as well as its ability to identify opportunities for change.
Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®)
The business process analysis identifies and examines every part of the structure including the process, the participating team, the information exchange, and others. It will help to identify the potential improvements within the process, which makes it easier to carry out the process further. Business process analysis is helpful in finding the reasons behind the systematic delays, the right way of doing the process, determining the process is operating at maximum potential capacity, and finding out whether the process should be improved. The process analysis technique is important because every businesses has to constantly evaluate its processes and apply the changes if required to improve the efficiency of the business. It allows to have a very thorough and detailed look of the process and its components.
A number of frameworks and methodologies exist that focus on process analysis and improvement methods. The process analysis is the full fledged analysis of the business process, which incorporates a series of logically linked routine activities, that uses the resources of the organization to transform the object with the aim of achieving and maintaining the process. Process analysis is used for various purposes including,
- recommending a more efficient and effective process
- determining the gap between the current and the future state of the process
- understanding the factors to be included in the contract negotiation
- understanding how data and technology are used in the process
- analyzing the impact of the pending change to a process
When analyzing a process, business analysts look for how the process adds or create value to the organization, how the process aligns to the organizational goals and strategies, the degree of the process involved, and how the requirements of the solution cover the future state process.
Some of the articles related to Process analysis techniques are as follows,
The process analysis template is used to capture the business process details which will help you to ensure that the team understands the requirements the same way and the capabilities delivered are scoped and prioritized properly. With the process analysis template, we will be able to,
- collect all the deciding inputs from stakeholders and process participants
- implement the business process analysis according to the best practice
- coordinate process optimization efforts
- gather all process related information and solution requirements
Some of the elements in the process analysis technique include,
- Identify Gaps and Areas to Improve - It helps to identify the ares in scope for analysis and to improve the process accordingly. Industry specific models and process frameworks are helpful in this regard. When identifying gaps and areas to improve, the business analysts,
-- > identify the gap between the current and future state
--> understand the challenges of the process from multiple points of view
--> understand the opportunities to improve the process
--> understand the relationship of the gap and areas to improve to change in the enterprise.
- Identify Root Cause - Identifying the root cause of the gaps and improvement areas ensures that the solution addresses the right gap and area. The business analysts understand the multiple root causes and the input leading to the gap.
- Generate and Evaluate Options - It helps the team to evaluate and see different points of view for improving the process. It is important for the stakeholders to be involved in identifying the impact, feasibility, and the value.
- Common Methods - Some of the common methods used in process analysis techniques is,
--> SIPOC - It is the process analysis methodology that originates from the six sigma methodology. It is used to look at the process and understand the suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers of the process being analyzed. It is a powerful tool used to create dialogue about the problems, opportunities, gaps, root cause, and options during the process analysis.
Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®)
--> Value Stream Mapping (VSM) - It involves the diagramming and the monitoring of the inputs and application points for processing those inputs, starting from the front end of the supply chain. It provides a one page picture of all the steps involved in the end-to-end process, including both the value adding and non-value adding element
Some of the books for Process Analysis techniques are,