A Truly Path-Based Approach

This month’s edition (March 2008) of the Harvard Business Review contains an article by David Upton and Bradley Staats called ‘Radically Simple IT’. It proposes an approach to implementing new IT systems that is preferable to the ‘big bang’ or ‘incremental’ methods favoured by most organisations.

The ‘Big Bang’ method involves spending a long period of time developing a system and then implementing it in one foul sweep. This clearly is problematic as the new system may end up being ‘legacy from the day it is turned on’. The incremental approach involves replacing an existing system one small piece at a time. This can take even longer than the ‘big bang’ approach and usually ends up duplicating what it replaces which prevents innovative advancement in the business.

Upton and Staat’s suggestion is one that has been used with particular success at a Japanese company called Shinsei. It is called the path-based approach. The idea behind the path based approach is to focus on providing a path for the new system to be developed over time rather than the functionality that will be in it. This approach takes into account the problems inherent in the implementation of new systems namely,

· People often cannot specify everything they will need at a project’s inception
· Unanticipated needs almost always arise once a system is in operation
· Persuading people to use and own the system after it is up and running is much easier said than done

Three foundational elements of the path-based approach are: -

1. Build a low-cost, efficient platform for running the company’s existing business
2. Ensure that platform is flexible enough to support the company’s growth into new areas (i.e. tweakable)
3. Forge together (don’t just align) business and IT

I was speaking recently with a man in South Africa who has used Serena TeamTrack to build such a foundation for his company. This bank operates in 38 countries round the world and employs about 40,000 people.

At his bank, over 30,000 users can log into TeamTrack to participate in over 300 different processes ranging from HR related processes to server commissioning to SLA management. In other words, TeamTrack extends into all parts of the business and links those parts together.

Continual Improvement is something that Shinsei also recognises as important. By using TeamTrack, companies are able to perform continual improvement even after a system is rolled out. The system can be tweaked extremely easily. Any changes that are needed can be implemented by configuration rather development. Business users can make changes themselves rather than having to renegotiate with software developers every time a change is needed.

So how does TeamTrack meet the three foundational elements of the path-based approach? TeamTrack provides a low cost framework (element 1) that can be easily modified to facilitate growth (element 2) by business people as well as IT people (element 3).

If you would like someone from Client Solutions to contact you to discuss how you might be able to leverage the power of TeamTrack in your organisation, please get in touch.

Augmenting your SharePoint system with TeamTrack

Many organisations have a Microsoft SharePoint system in place which they use primarily as a document library. Often it can grow to become a monster that is full of redundant documents and is impossible to navigate and maintain. TeamTrack, a business process management tool, can be used with SharePoint to enforce a more controlled solution.

To understand how this can be done consider the following core strengths of both SharePoint and TeamTrack.

SharePoint
SharePoint is mostly used as a browser-based document management system. Individuals within the organisation create site collections, sites and personal sites in which libraries can be hosted. SharePoint can tightly integrate with Microsoft Office (2003 and later versions only) so that documents can be added to SharePoint libraries directly from within the Microsoft Office application itself.

Users can also ‘check out’ a document from within the Microsoft Office application itself which effectively locks it down so that other users cannot edit it until it is ‘checked in’ again.
Some basic process management can also be implemented in SharePoint such as a predefined approval process though it is limited and difficult to change.

TeamTrack
TeamTrack is a full business process management tool that enables an organisation to quickly define and automate its own internal processes. It can enforce agreed standards so that control is put on the routing and authorisation of items such as documents or issues. Versioning can also be enforced and any changes to the process can be rapidly implemented.

Processes that have been enforced can be viewed graphically so that users can easily see what the document has gone through in order to be in its current state and where it will be routed next.

Combining SharePoint and TeamTrack
A solution that combines both SharePoint and TeamTrack would be the ideal as it would effectively wrap the SharePoint library with the control provided by TeamTrack as shown in the graphic below.

TeamTrack Process Wrapping your SharePoint Libraries

Taking advantage of TeamTrack’s open APIs; integrations to established third party change management tools can be easily implemented. This level of version control is not present in SharePoint alone and is important from an auditing perspective.

Rather than forcing your employees to provide required documents as a method of controlling how they work, this solution will allow your existing processes to drive the business and where documents are required along the way they can be attached. This is a subtle difference but it results in a solution that is more in tune with how you do business. Any collaborative business process can be represented in TeamTrack quickly and easily. Where you rely on SharePoint alone to manage your documentation you can miss out on this.

Finally it is worth pointing out that this combined solution will also be Mashup-Ready as the next version of TeamTrack (due out in the next couple of months) will allow quick integration with any Web 2.0 application that exposes web services such as SalesForce, PeopleSoft or Google Maps. More about that in other blog articles.

Conclusion
Integrating SharePoint and TeamTrack provides a stable, extensible, enterprise-wide solution. It will allow you to easily manage your documentation ensuring any approval or change processes are well managed and audited. If you would like to discuss augmenting your SharePoint system with TeamTrack please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Getting the most out of your TeamTrack System

Serena estimates that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of TeamTrack applications in existence. This means that although you may have installed TeamTrack in your organisation to manage a particular process, chances are, you could be getting more value out of it.
In this brief article I want to give you some examples of ways that organisations are using TeamTrack.

1. NDA approval
In the US, over 4,000 employees at Lockheed Martin use TeamTrack to manage a number of processes including their Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Details of each NDA are entered into TeamTrack and can be tracked as they are approved. Through powerful reports, users can quickly see what NDAs are in place and what their statuses are.

2. Leave Requests
In this workflow, an employee submits a request for leave. The system routes it to the employee’s supervisor who will receive an email with the request details. The supervisor can approve or reject the request and this response is sent back to the employee. If the leave request is approved, the number of days requested is subtracted from the employee’s entitlement. Reports can show all outstanding holidays for employees.

3. Project Governance
While Serena Mariner can be considered the tool of choice for managing a portfolio of projects, some organisations do not want that level of control. For simply guiding a project through a series of authorisation gates and phases, TeamTrack can be the perfect tool.
TeamTrack can be configured to require that certain documents are attached at specific phases of the project and that sign-off is obtained from management at various points along the project lifecycle.

4. Expenses Approval
Many large organisations use TeamTrack to manage their expenses approval process. Employees can enter their expenses directly into TeamTrack or attach their expense forms as spreadsheets or documents. They are then routed to appropriate supervisors who can reject or approve them. If they are rejected, they will be sent back to the employee with a note and if they are approved they will be automatically sent on to the finance department to be dealt with. This simple process can really speed up expenses approval and reports can show how expense claims are distributed across your organisation.

5. Managing Customer Enhancement Requests
Over 3,000 employees at Thomson Financial use TeamTrack to streamline various processes including the routing of enhancement requests. Using the process that they implemented, when a customer logs a suggestion or request with a customer service agent, it is routed based on its importance, to the product manager or development manager for consideration.

Thomson Financial has also overhauled its sales proposal process with TeamTrack. “It used to take about five days to pull together a sales proposal. Now it takes three minutes,” says Hastings-Kimball. “Our sales teams now spend more time with their customers and prospects to increase revenue.”

I hope this short article has stirred your creative juices and you can start seeing new ways that TeamTrack can be used in your organisation. If you would like to get in touch with us to discuss those new ideas, please do not hesitate to do so.

Business Process Modelling third in top 10 technologies for 2008 (Gartner)

According to Gartner, Business Process Modelling is one of the top technologies to focus on in 2008. While BPM is not technically a ‘technology’ (it is more a field of knowledge), it must be in place before really useful SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) applications can be developed.

This supports comments in an earlier blog article where I suggested that more formal automation of business processes must occur in organisations to accommodate recent changes in the general business environment. In that article I argued that organisations cannot enforce their processes without some process automation tool like Serena’s TeamTrack.

Gartner’s full top-ten list can be found here.