Pursuing Approval for Requirements: A Battle Not Easily Won

Introduction

Over the last few weeks, Jesse Bowman, the Solution Architect at Galactic Gravity Inc, and Barry O’Connor, the young Business Analyst, have met with the teams from procurement and production to warehousing and finance and have put together process flow diagrams of team processes. Through interviews and current process documentation, they have been filling in the gaps for what is missing – which, as they’ve discovered, is a lot.

They’ve reviewed notes and documentation to build business requirements, and now it’s time to present the process flow diagrams and business requirements to the teams for feedback and approval. This step is crucial in gaining buy-in and alignment before beginning the solution design sessions that will shape the future of Project Pulsar, the company’s initiative to modernize their forecasting, production, and delivery solution.

However, securing approval on business requirements is often easier said than done, as Jesse and Barry are about to find out.

Watch the short video below as The Digital Transformation Roadmap contributors discuss the common challenges that can occur during process review meetings and how Victoria Fide’s proven process can help organizations overcome those challenges.

Surprising Revelations in Process Review Meetings

“How does that look?”

Jesse looked up from his notes as Barry turned on the projector, displaying a process flow diagram for a changeover process. “It’s cut off a little on the bottom.” The young BA adjusted the angle of the projector until the entire diagram was visible.

“Perfect!” Jesse gave a thumbs up. If only making adjustments to the diagram itself was that easy, Jesse thought to himself. It had taken a few weeks for him and Barry to finish comparing notes, building the process diagrams, and documenting proposed business requirements for the updated processes across the production, procurement, finance, and warehousing teams at GGI in preparation for implementing the company’s digital transformation initiative, ‘Project Pulsar.’

After reviewing the diagrams, he and Barry were left with a number of questions he hoped to clear up in the meeting with the procurement team here today, but he knew it might be difficult, especially considering the chaos that surrounded their current processes.

As if he had summoned them with his thoughts, the door to the conference room opened and the Procurement Manager Lucy walked in, followed closely by Frank, a purchasing agent and one of the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on the procurement team.

After spending a few minutes chatting and letting everyone get settled, Jesse began, “The purpose of this meeting today is to ensure the process flow diagrams are accurate, and to secure your approval of the proposed business requirements. Let’s get started by walking through the ordering process.”

Lucy and Frank listened intently, nodding along, until Jesse got to the steps around receiving and processing vendor invoices.

“Once the vendor invoices are entered into the system,” Jesse continued. “We start the process of doing the three-way matching.”

“That’s not right,” Lucy furrowed her brow, shaking her head.

Jesse trailed to a stop. “Pardon?”

“All of the major vendors we work with send us file feeds of their invoices.” She gestured to the projector screen. “This whole elaborate workaround for inputting invoices into the system simply isn’t happening.”

Jesse caught Barry’s eye and saw his own confusion mirrored in the young BA’s face. “In prior conversations with the procurement team, we were led to believe that the invoices were being manually entered into the system,” Jesse said, trying to keep his tone neutral.

Lucy shook her head. “Who said that? That’s not how it’s done.”

Frank shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Most of our major vendors are providing their invoices through EDI, however, this manual process is being used with one of our biggest vendors, Comet Horizon. They aren’t conforming to our EDI request, and it’s costing us a lot of manual hours each week preparing their manually generated invoices.”

Lucy’s disapproval turned into a glare of frustration as she turned to face Frank. “Why are we allowing a process like this to continue when it creates hours of extra work for our team? We have a small team that’s already over capacity; we shouldn’t need to–“

Frank held up his hands defensively. “I was told that it was part of the vendor contract negotiation in order to get Comet Horizon in the first place. They’re our largest vendor, maybe you thought the extra manual labor was worth the concession during the negotiation.”

“Were you part of the negotiations?” Jesse asked Lucy.

“Well, yes,” Lucy stammered. “And I do remember discussions about them not being willing to provide EDI feeds immediately, but I thought this workaround was just a short-term solution so we could start working with them right away. It wasn’t supposed to stay that way forever. We’re spread too thin to keep doing it this way. Why haven’t they started providing EDI feeds as requested?”

A tense silence filled the conference room as Lucy’s question hung in the air.

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted, frustration written across his face.

“Regardless,” Jesse went on. “Barry and I will make note that this process is unique to that single vendor and make sure we have documented the other processes.”

As Jesse continued walking through the processes, Lucy continued to point out discrepancies. Not wanting to continue to butt heads with her, Frank just grimaced and looked away when Jesse looked to him for clarification. The tension was palpable, and by the time it was time to review business requirements, Jesse was ready to be done.

He waited patiently as Lucy and Frank looked over a list of business requirements such as:

• Ability to create and submit purchase requisitions
• Ability to have an approval workflow for requisitions where the Purchasing Manager can approve up to their individual spending limit.
• Ability to approve payments before electronic payment

“I’ll have to spend some time reviewing these in more detail before giving my official approval,” Lucy said.

“Of course,” Jesse replied. “It’s critical that we get these requirements right before starting solution design. We don’t want to miss anything.” He glanced over to Frank again, but the purchasing agent had checked out already.

Jesse’s leg started bouncing. He was pretty sure there were things still left unsaid, but he didn’t know how best to get it out into the open. He made a mental note to touch base with Erin, the OCM lead, and see if she had some ideas. If they couldn’t get to the bottom of these processes and business requirements, Project Pulsar could fall apart.

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Frustration Simmers with Communication Gaps and Documentation Discrepancies

“Wow,” Barry said once Lucy and Frank left. “That was rough.”

Jesse nodded and sank into a seat with a heavy sigh.

“I thought this meeting was to confirm what we already knew, not to uncover new information,” Barry complained as he shut down the projector.

“These setbacks are fairly common,” Jesse reassured him. “You have to understand, Lucy and Frank aren’t experts in digital transformation. They’ve never been asked these types of questions before and haven’t had to think about things through this lens. Seeing the updated process diagrams often sparks new thoughts or memories about things that were missed in the first round of interviews. It’s our job to get to the bottom of things by asking different questions or approaching a problem from a different perspective in order to solicit more feedback.”

“How do we get more feedback if they don’t want to speak up?” Barry asked. Jesse could hear the frustration in his voice. “Frank seemed like he had more to say, but he just stayed quiet.”

“I noticed that too,” Jesse agreed, frowning slightly. “Lucy’s reaction to learning about how much manual labor her team is actually doing threw Frank for a loop and it was like he just shut down. I’ll follow up on this with Erin, the OCM lead, and possibly the PM as well; we need Frank to feel free to speak up.”

Barry nodded. “Okay, good. I don’t want to have to redo all these diagrams and requirements just because information is being withheld!”

Jesse chuckled. “It’s frustrating when that happens, for sure. Part of the reason we have these meetings to review the process flow diagrams and get formal approval is because of situations like this where things change and new information comes to light. We need each BPO to be accountable for their sign-off on business requirements before we move forward in the process. Inevitably, there are going to be some misses, but we want to minimize them as best we can and have a thorough record of how we moved from one step to the next with approval from all of the key team members.”

Jesse stood up and rolled his tense shoulders. “Go ahead and update those process diagram flows and make sure the ones for the other teams are ready for review. We meet with Finance next week to go over their processes and get their sign-off on business requirements.”

“Sounds good,” Barry nodded.

“You’ve done a great job putting together these process diagram flows,” Jesse said with a smile. The young BA glowed with the appreciation. “It’s been a lot of work already, but once all the BPOs sign off on the requirements, we can move onto the next task: designing the future solution.”

Conclusion

In this chapter, Jesse and Barry’s objective to resolve some minor uncertainties and secure approval for the process flow diagrams and business requirements was more challenging than anticipated. During the review, unexpected tension arose as Lucy, the Business Process Owner (BPO) for procurement, appeared taken aback by the revelations and reacted strongly, prompting Frank, the change agent, to withdraw from the discussion, withholding the clarity Jesse and Barry sought.

Despite this setback, Jesse assured Barry that such situations frequently occur in process design work. It’s crucial to revisit and refine business processes periodically to accommodate emerging details and changes, especially since BPOs and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are often new to the intricacies of digital transformation.

Maintaining open communication and fostering proactive involvement from all team members will be vital as the project advances to ensure that business requirements are clearly defined, essential, and backed by the team. Such alignment is key to driving the solution design towards an outcome that significantly benefits the organization. Securing documentation and endorsement of these requirements remain essential as they pave the way for building an impactful solution that elevates the organization’s future prospects.

Subscribe to our series to discover if Jesse and Barry will achieve their goals in designing and implementing a solution that effectively transforms their organization’s operations, or if Project Pulsar will join the ranks of other failed digital transformation initiatives.