Samantha Searle presented some of Gartner’s research on how to set up effective process governance and ownership. She started with the definition of a process owner, and reinforced that it’s necessary to have someone accountable for delivering the business outcomes of an end-to-end process. A process owner is typically at the executive level, but doesn’t necessarily have all process participants reporting up to them; they’re not the process police, they’re more like an orchestra conductor, guiding skilled professionals to work together.
She identified a number of best practices for process ownership and governance:
- Identify clear responsibilities for BP owners, setting expectations, establishing objectives and agreeing on key responsibilities.
- Establish BP governance for a BPM decision framework, creating a RACI matrix (for example) mapping actions against roles.
- Set goals and gather data to improve process decision making, using a BP analyst in a support role.
- Get commitment to process ownership through incentives, since these people are rarely fully dedicated to that role.
- Assign collective responsibility for business outcomes, empowering the community and having each person understand their contribution.
[My formatting is a bit primitive here at Gartner BPM since I’m on the Android tablet with the WordPress app, and there’s no easy way to add lists. Update: hacking lists with direct html tags.]