Our Execute Stage comes to life in a “scenario-based” guided tour that provides a contextual framework for DX Plan Execution. Ushering a fictional company through the process will help CXOs visualize steps in the process and identify potential challenges and opportunities on their way to plan launch.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Launching Project Pulsar: Dreams, Doubts, and Digital Transformation
- Chapter 2: Investigating Team Dynamics: Uncovering Insights for Developing an OCM Plan
- Chapter 3: Mobilizing Change Agents: A Digital Transformation’s Secret Weapon
Introduction
Before project teams can build solutions that fulfill their business needs, they must have a solid understanding and clear definition of business requirements. Gaining that understanding begins with thoroughly documenting as-is processes, identifying pain points, and defining the desired business outcomes.
In this chapter, Jesse Bowman – Solution Architect for Galactic Gravity Inc’s (GGI) ‘Project Pulsar’ initiative – is tasked with assessing the company’s current processes – both what’s on the page and what goes on behind the scenes. The information he finds will be critical in building a solution to modernize the company’s forecasting, production, and delivery processes, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and positioning the manufacturing company for future scaling and growth.
Watch the short video below from The Digital Transformation Roadmap contributors as they discuss the importance and the challenges that come with building effective business requirements for a transformational initiative.
A Crucial Task: Assessing Processes Beyond the Paper Trails
As much as Jesse Bowman felt like he knew about the business and how the teams operated after reviewing each team’s current process documentation, he recognized there was a lot that he didn’t know. Processes evolve organically as needed, and the documentation didn’t always reflect those changes. But since he wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations in those teams, he’d need to do some serious assessment to figure out what wasn’t on the pages he’d been given.
When Jared, the project manager for GGI’s Project Pulsar initiative, tasked Jesse with updating current process documentation and documenting all business requirements, Jesse was equally excited and daunted. If this project was going to have a reasonable chance of success, he had to make sure the requirements – and thereby the solution – weren’t going to get overcomplicated like they had in previous projects.
This meant it all started here: meeting with the teams and documenting as-is processes. Not just the parts of the processes that made it on paper, but the real-life steps that the team members walk through every day. He had to ask the right questions, and his business analyst Barry had to document the answers enough to extrapolate the necessary elements for process diagram flows and business requirements. Was Barry up for the job? Jesse wasn’t sure, but he was about to find out.
Ensuring Alignment on Expectations
As requested, Barry O’Connor showed up to the process review meetings twenty minutes early. The young business analyst’s red hair was carefully combed back and his shirt impeccably ironed and tucked in.
Jesse had never worked with the kid before, but from everything he’d seen, Barry showed good attention to detail.
“Hey Barry,” Jesse greeted, shaking hands. “Thanks for joining me a bit early today.”
Barry just nodded and took a seat near the corner of the room.
“Alright,” Jesse continued after a moment of awkward silence. “Before we interview the production and procurement teams, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. Do you have any questions about your role during the meetings?”
“No,” Barry shook his head. “I’ll just be listening in and taking notes.”
Did the kid not want to be here? Jesse wondered to himself. The BA seemed stiff as a board.
“Great,” Jesse continued. “A lot will be covered in these meetings, so take as many notes as you can, but especially focus in on pain points and any areas of manual labor. The notes you take will be the foundation for building out process flow diagrams and business requirements, so don’t stay quiet if you’re confused; jump in to ask clarifying questions. Remember, clarity is absolutely critical when it comes to defining business requirements, so now’s the time to ask questions if you need to.”
Barry nodded again. “I know, I will.”
Jesse bristled a little at the dismissal in Barry’s tone and he took a second to take a breath. He briefly considered ignoring both the tension and the BA, but with the entirety of the project in front of him, he knew that wasn’t the right decision. He took another breath and tried again. “You seem a bit tense, Barry. What do you need from me to help you feel more comfortable?”
Barry blinked in surprise and then flushed slightly. “I’m– I’m fine, I’m just focused.”
“Alright, let me know if I can support you in any way. We’re all in this together.” He offered the kid a smile and to his relief, Barry offered one back.
Unraveling Chaotic Processes and Tribal Knowledge
“Thank you both for meeting with me today,” Jesse said, standing and shaking the hands of Lucy, the Procurement Manager, and the purchasing agent Frank as they filed into the conference room.
“Of course, happy to help!” Frank responded with a grin.
Lucy nodded and smiled. “Thanks for setting it up, Jesse.”
Jesse gestured to Barry. “This is Barry, Project Pulsar’s Business Analyst. He’ll be taking notes during our meeting and documenting today’s conversation so the process flow diagrams and true business requirements can be accurately built.”
“Wonderful! I’m glad you’re here to keep us all in line,” Lucy teased.
Barry shifted his weight and chuckled, but didn’t respond.
As the group settled around the table, Jesse continued. “My goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the procurement team’s processes. While I have the documentation from your team, I know there are intricacies and daily realities that might not have made it onto paper. It’s essential to capture those details, especially when identifying pain points, so that our solution will effectively address the issues we’re facing today.”
Lucy nodded. “That makes sense. There are definitely gaps in our documentation that don’t cover all the nuances.”
“Exactly,” Jesse agreed. “I want to ensure that we address all aspects of your work and cover any gaps. I understand that you may not have every answer in this meeting, and that’s completely fine. We can always follow up offline with other members of the Procurement team to dive deeper into any aspects we miss today. My intention is to create a comprehensive and accurate representation of how things currently work so we know what requirements to build into our solution for how future processes should work.”
Lucy and Frank both voiced their agreement, and Jesse took a moment to review his notes. “To get started, talk to me a bit about how you determine what needs to be ordered.”
“Sure thing,” Lucy responded. “Our material requirements planning system creates planned orders for what we need to order. They are more of a suggestion than a rule because they are not always accurate.”
“How do you know if a planned order isn’t accurate?”
Frank spoke up. “It’s a pretty basic system and isn’t able to take into consideration all the variables that are related to inventory minimums, seasonality, and partial orders. We end up needing to do further research and analysis to track down those variables on our own. And then we have to manually review our production schedule and further tabulate exact totals of what needs to be ordered in a separate spreadsheet that allows for all the variables. This spreadsheet has been built with logic that allows us to account for seasonality or any other trends or issues our vendors may be relaying to us.”
To Jesse’s surprise, Barry looked up from his notes and asked, “And how do you go about tracking down those variables? What does that look like?”
Lucy leaned forward to answer. “For some of these variables, we need to go directly to the different teams, whether it’s sales, customer services, and production teams as well as executives. Once we have all the information, it goes in the master spreadsheet.”
“That sounds like a lot to keep track of,” Jesse observed.
“It is,” Lucy agreed. “It takes a lot of time, and it usually falls to the same people who know what they’re looking for and how to find it.”
After he was sure Barry had caught up taking notes, Jesse moved on to the next question. “How do you determine who to order from, or who is the preferred vendor?”
For the next hour, Jesse and Barry poked and prodded to peel back the layers of the procurement team’s processes, most of which wasn’t even mentioned in the documentation they’d been provided with ahead of time.
Clearly the documentation had been created and then never updated or referenced, leaving the process to exist only in tribal knowledge from some of the more senior team members. From navigating vendor relationships to determining what needed to be ordered, it was clear that a majority of the process was manual guesstimation at best, and an educated shot in the dark at worst.
Throughout the meeting, Jesse was encouraged to see Barry loosen up and speak up more often to dig deeper and clarify, attempting to untangle the chaotic processes and habits of the procurement team.
“Thank you so much for your time and cooperation,” Jesse said, standing and shaking Lucy and Frank’s hands. “I know it’s a lot to cover, but this information will lay the groundwork for the business requirements and solution design in Project Pulsar.”
“Thank you for putting in the work to make our job easier!” Frank grinned. “I look forward to implementing the improvements you suggest.”
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Palpable Tension on the Production Team
Their meeting with the production team the following day was a lot more straight-forward, as their day-to-day processes matched more closely to the documented processes they’d provided. But where Lucy and Frank had exhibited a relaxed and respectfully reciprocal vibe, Jonathon and Marie — the production manager and supervisor — didn’t appear to be on the same page.
“There are several models of the headset that GGI manufactures,” Jesse looked through his notes. “When you have to manufacture different SKU’s in the same day, do you have any issues handling your production changeover?”
Marie opened her mouth to reply, but Jonathon beat her to it. “No,” he shook his head. I’ve never seen any significant issues as long as we have the right production schedule.”
Jesse turned his attention to Marie, who had pursed her lips and fixed her eyes on the table top. “What about you, Marie? Have there been any issues from your perspective?”
Marie glanced at Jonathon and then cleared her throat. “Actually, there have been some significant challenges with production changeover. The basic models use cheaper components. The front cover is made from a cheaper shell and the face cover uses a lower grade silicone. However, the components look and feel similar enough that it can cause confusion on which component is being used.”
Jonathon frowned. “I’m sure that’s happened once or twice before, but it’s not really an issue, just a user error now and then. The components all have unique names assigned in the system, they just have to look it up. Easy fix.”
“It’s actually a lot more complex than that,” Marie continued. “The system naming convention of the components are similar enough that it also contributes to the confusion. It takes a lot of extra time and effort spent identifying and retrieving the correct components for production to fix the mistakes. Plus, the system we are currently using doesn’t have effective version control, which only adds to the challenges we deal with during changeover.”
Jesse waited a minute, allowing Barry some time to continue his notetaking, and watched Jonathon. The production manager didn’t have anything to add, and Jesse could tell Marie was trying not to squirm from the palpable tension.
Although Jonathon was the Business Process Owner (BPO) on the production team, Marie held a large amount of influence among her peers, which was why she had been selected to be a change agent. But if she wasn’t given the space to speak up about issues going on within Jonathon’s team, her effectiveness would be cut short. Jesse made a mental note to follow up with Erin, GGI’s OCM lead, to see if she could help monitor this friction before it blew up into something bigger further downstream.
“Thanks for your candidness,” Jesse concluded. “I think we have everything we need for now. We will work to put together the process flow diagrams and a list of business requirements and then regroup to let you review what we’ve put together and share your feedback. Thanks again for your time!”
Reviewing Results and Building Relationships
The interviews continued over the next couple of days with other teams and employees of Galactic Gravity Inc, Barry diligently taking notes every step of the way. After they wrapped up the last meeting, Jesse asked to have a word with Barry.
“How are you feeling about this round of meetings?” Jesse asked as the young redhead sat across from him in his office.
Barry shrugged in a noncommittal way. “Pretty well, considering,” he said.
Jesse could tell the BA was holding back, still unsure of himself. “Yeah, I’d say things went really well,” he said. “I’m very impressed with the notes you took, Barry. They’re going to help us a lot when we go to build out requirements.” Jesse saw the young man’s shoulders loosen ever so slightly as Barry smiled.
“Thanks,” he said. “I was pretty nervous I wouldn’t be able to take as detailed notes as you needed, but I enjoyed the investigative work, actually.”
Jesse nodded. “That’s great! I could see you getting more comfortable asking questions and digging a little deeper; I’m glad you enjoyed the work. For your next steps, I’d like you to build out a list of business requirements by team based on the information we dug up this week. You can refer back to the BA training you took a few months ago to refresh your memory if you want. These requirements will be the building blocks for when we move into solution design, so it’s critical that they’re clear, necessary, and verifiable.”
Barry nodded. “You got it.”
“I’d also like you to work with each of the teams to finalize their process flow diagrams, especially procurement; there are a lot of gaps in that one.”
“You could say that again,” Barry said wryly. “Their current documentation is more gaps than process.”
“Yeah, good luck with that one!” Jesse laughed. “Let me know how I can support you, okay?”
When Barry left his office, Jesse sighed and leaned back in his chair. It had been a long couple of days, but they’d gotten a lot of important work done, and he was encouraged that not only had Barry taken thorough, detailed notes, but he’d seemed to warm up to him throughout the entire process as well.
They had a long road ahead of them with Project Pulsar, but Jesse knew that with the right business requirements to address the current issues and pain points, it would all be worth it in the end.
Conclusion
The interviews that Jesse and Barry conducted throughout this phase of Project Pulsar have uncovered vital insights into the current processes at Galactic Gravity Inc. By systematically documenting the pain points and challenges faced by various teams, they have laid the groundwork for accurate and effective business requirements to directly address the concerns of the production and procurement teams.
By interviewing multiple team members, Jesse and Barry were able to capture a more holistic, accurate view of operations which will aid them in building business requirements. Moreover, Jesse aims to ensure Marie receives the OCM support needed to have the space to speak up. This will ensure she continues to be a great asset for the Project Pulsar project team by providing details of the production team’s struggles and concerns.
Join us next time as the team at GGI has a chance to review and approve the proposed business requirements, revealing if Barry and Jesse understood the current issues or if there may still be gaps.
Subscribe for more insights as GGI progresses through Victoria Fide’s proven Process for Transformational Change. If you are considering or currently involved in a digital transformation initiative, contact us for expert guidance on crafting effective business requirements that align with your organizational goals.
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