Much of the consulting and training I do centers on the value independent analysis can provide to ensure business processes don’t only run well, but make sense in terms of the organization’s big picture.
While I’ve never met anyone who has felt this is a bad idea, many nevertheless are resistant because of the up-front effort it involves – even as they acknowledge they’ll likely save lots of time and money at implementation time!
I bring this up because of a news item I saw today about a Northampton, Massachusetts man who received a notice that he pay $0.00 or his bank would foreclose. Yep, you read that correctly: zero dollars and zero cents.
In this case, the issue undoubtedly arose because no one thought to include a process rule that would kick out any notice calling for no payment. I’m not saying an independent analyst definitely would have caught this at design time – but daresay that someone with a fresh perspective would have been more likely to have noticed than someone who has lived the process for so long that obvious logical disconnects like this simply recede into the background.
Enjoy the news video here.
Let me ensure your processes make the most ‘cents’ they can – catch me today at steve@hollygroup.com or 617-383-4655!