Governance. The mere utterance of the word evokes thoughts of jack-booted control freaks descending down upon hapless process teams. But it doesn’t have to be that way; modern governance models provide structure, guidance, and support to process owners and workers. By leveraging automation and transparent access to information, today's models reduce governance overhead to manageable levels.
Common IT tools and applications have enabled even the smallest of organizations to build change management, version control, and accountability for changes into even the most manually administered process repositories. More advanced organizations benefit from the features of modern business process management system tools, especially workflows to obtain approval of changes. These powerful features have become the new norm in how organizations ensure that the “one version of the truth” remains pristine, and when change does occur, the appropriate people are notified.
However, governance is not just about tools. It also depends on well thought out policies and procedures to ensure that process management steps are performed in an orderly fashion. This requires organizations to define process roles (owners, champions, etc.) and allocate process responsibilities to ensure their timely performance. Those responsible for components of process management own one of the most important assets of the organization: process knowledge, which includes the organization's process models ,supporting documentation, and more. With visibility and accountability, process improvements can proceed in a more structured fashion, with greater alignment to strategic goals and objectives.
Perhaps the one thing that is required of any successful process governance organization is the authority to say “no.” Without that final word, all of the organization's tools, technology, policies, and procedures are worthless, and the resulting chaos will sap the will of even the strongest organization on its journey to process excellence.