In late 2022 and into early 2023, APQC conducted our annual priorities and challenges survey. The survey explored trends in process and performance work and revealed the top five priorities and challenges in process management and organizational performance management. The survey found that about 66% of organizations have a process team in place; and nearly half (48%) of them have been in place for less than three years.
STRONG FOUNDATION BEGINS WITH DEFINED PROCESS ROLES
That means that there is room and a need for organizations to ensure that those relatively new teams are built on a strong foundation. Processes will and should change and evolve, but it’s important to have strong process roles at the foundation of those processes.
Here’s an analogy – think of a house. You buy a house that fits your needs at that point in time (maybe a little room for growth); but then you have more kids or your life changes, and you need more space – perhaps you need a new at-home gym, or a hobby room; if your house has good “bones” or a strong foundation, evolving the house to fit your agile needs shouldn’t be hard. However, if your house, or your processes, don’t have a strong foundation – change will be really hard and require more work than it should.
According to the survey, skillsets were among the top five needed changes in process management, right behind process management and change management methodologies. Of course, it’s important to have good change management methodologies embedded into your organizational culture, maybe even a process-thinking culture; but all of that is really hard to have if you don’t invest in the right skillsets in the right roles for your process efforts.
Having a strong foundation for your process efforts is essential, and our research revealed that only half of organizations feel their PPM efforts are meeting their needs and have room for improvement. So, how can organizations structure their process roles to set them up for success?
STRUCTURE YOUR PROCESS ROLES FOR SUCCESS
The most common and effective process role structure includes: a dedicated business process management (BPM) function, process management roles in the business, and a steering committee that provides guidance and connects BPM with the business. The key roles, presented in the top half of the graphic, are essential for effective process management. However, additional roles—both in the BPM office and in the business—contribute significant value and may be essential for successful process management at large or complex organizations.
Dive deeper into each role, the key responsibilities, and key skillsets for each, as well as role variants in APQC’s article Common Process Management Roles, as well as the webinar Process Management Roles All Organizations Should Have that covers the roles found explicitly within the business.
WHAT QUESTIONS DO ORGANIZATIONS ASK ABOUT PROCESS ROLES?
How do you sell the importance of process documentation?
You could help increase the buy-in for process documentation in two ways: framing and defining the scope/prioritizing what you will document.
- Framing: There are a lot of scenarios you could come up with, and many of them are negative or intangible. But one relatable way to frame it is: “You want to go on vacation for a week. Who is going to tackle what you need to do? Or would you like to take your sabbatical? We need to be able to fill your role or complete those tasks while you're gone.” Sometimes finding a way to frame it that is a little more positive (and realistic) in nature for those people trying to document creates more excitement around completing the document. Also, consider what’s important to the employee or the bottom-line of the business. Is there a recurring problem that documenting the process could help you solve?
- Defining the Scope/Prioritizing: You don’t need to map everything you do to the lowest level; instead look at what’s important to the business and start there. For example, maybe increasing production on this product line is important. Well, you can map only the processes that relate to getting more product out the door, figure out if there's any improvement there, present it that way, and do it in baby steps or bite- size pieces to create an easier roadmap in the beginning.
How do I empower my process owners in their roles and make them effective?
Basic answer: communication. Also, a little bit of governance goes a long way. Having clear roles and responsibilities defined, then communicating them out to, and getting everyone involved gives a shared understanding of who the process owner is and what they're supposed to be doing in a way that is empowering. If everybody knows this is my job, which is why I’m doing it, it helps establish a position of authority for lack of a better term.
If you create a process owner, but then you allow everybody in the organization or that process to be able to change the process documentation without approval. Then you've totally undermined the process owner. So, they don't have any authority at that point. So, they might as well not be there because now it's just random acts of improvement or a culture of heroes.
Another way you can empower your process owners is to provide them with a handout or printed one-pager that defines their roles and responsibilities. Often an employee will wear multiple hats, but it’s important to know – in this process, this is my defined role, and these are my typical responsibilities. Knowing what's expected of you is very helpful as an employee, process owner, process worker, or wherever you sit in the organization. You could also include their role/responsibilities in performance reviews or annual goals to enhance the importance of their role and its effects.
What do you do when the process owner doesn’t know they’re the process owner?
Sometimes people don't always want to wear the hat. Because process documentation or definition can sometimes happen in a vacuum, someone can be declared the owner without their knowledge due to someone forgetting to inform them. Other times, people don’t want to volunteer because they feel it’s an additional duty that’s going to take too much time, but it really shouldn’t be that way. If organizations don't have or aren't a process-based organization, and they're starting to make a change, there will be extra initial work to be done to get things set up and going. However, if done correctly and thoughtfully, once established, work shouldn’t take a lot of time, and the process owner’s roles and responsibilities are more defined.
Who should oversee updating process documentation: process owner, steward, managers?
The process owner should be the one approving updates, but are not necessarily the person performing the updates, unless they sit lower in the organization. If the process owner sits at a team level, they’re probably going to do their own updating of the process. But typically, your subject matter expert or the process steward will be in charge of documentation updates, and the process owner will give final approval.
Should the data steward role be combined with the process owner role?
Well, it depends. The data steward sometimes spans across multiple processes. Depending on how your organization’s data and/or analytics team is set up, the data steward may be handling multiple processes, and so to have them try to be the pro, or the single process steward on top of managing the data, may be too much. At a minimum, the data steward should be integrated and share ideas. Data is only good, if it's useful, and you don't need to track something simply because you can. And that's where the process steward coming in and saying, “okay, this is the data we want, this is what's critical for our process”, is integral. From there, the data steward would typically roll it up or provide it in a digestible format for the process folks.
Should there be a single process steward or potentially multiple by area, project, etc.?
You can definitely have more than one. It doesn't have to be a single role. It is more commonplace for a steward or multiple stewards, especially if it’s a global process, or if you have different countries or different regions that are executing the same process. It’s recommended that you have a steward in each location, or even if you're running a split shift, in a manufacturing setting. Perhaps you want to have that steward available for the process workers when they're working. When it makes sense to, it’s ok to have redundancy and have more than one available. Another example of redundancies may be a director or a manager as the owner of the process, technically, and they'll defer responsibilities that would fall on the owner to the steward, so that, say a cohort, or somebody below them in their department could carry out the stewardship of the process versus it all falling on the director at times.