8.1 Business Analysis and Complicated Modeling Part 1

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Hello and welcome back to Enterprise Project Management. This is Cane. And today we're gonna be going through less than eight

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business analysis and complicated business modeling.

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One of the things that I really want you to remember is in this particular lesson. What we're talking about is complicated business process is not to be confused with complex business processes, which will be in the next lesson.

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So what we're looking at here are processes that are, no matter how complicated that they are,

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are still still have enough finite variables. They were able to get a good model for how we expect the system

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to process the transaction, if you will.

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And one thing to keep in mind also is a system is made up of five separate things

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hardware, software,

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people, data

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and processes processes being either technical or manual. So when we talk about a system, especially in business process modeling,

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you want to take those five things into account because if you only focus on the technical side of the house,

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then you're going to

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underestimate the impact of

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the people and the processes that may exist outside that system. So don't think of things necessarily in a vacuum.

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Try to think of the system holistically with all five of those elements. And again, they are

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hardware,

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software, data, people and processes.

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All of those make an enterprise level system.

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So let's go ahead and get started

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now. Business analysis really got its start,

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uh,

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through the efforts of a gentleman named Frederick Winslow Taylor.

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And what he did is he wrote a book called The Principles of Scientific Management and you can do the link on this slide here. That should also be visible below the video that you can use to greet a little bit more about him.

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But basically he was a,

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you know, a child of wealthy parents in from New Hampshire.

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He started off in Harvard, had some eye problems that was given him headaches or something like that. I can't remember the details, but basically he was unable to complete his degree from Harvard. So then he went to work for a machine shop on the factory floor and one of the things that he noticed Waas during the manufacturing process,

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he saw a lot of artisans. If you will, that would start on whatever it is they're building and they would

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you'll stand around it, work

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their own pace, had their own processes. Each artisan did things differently, so they produced the same item. But the head wide and varying tolerances and his analytical mind sort of indicated to him that there would that there should be a better way.

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So what? He ended up doing WAAS

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taking studious nose and researching

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the

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various steps that it would took to build whatever the manufactured. I don't waas and then d compiling that into a series of distinct

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movements and processes and individual work packages, if you will.

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And then he took that information and looked at the layout of the factory floor. How close the tools were in what order the tools were for the artisan and so on and so on. And ultimately, what he created was that business process model that was

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the maximum level of efficiency that the human being was capable of wind producing this particular item. And then again, like I said, he wrote a book called Principles of Scientific Management,

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and what he really was trying to do is quantify

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the human horsepower like what is the maximum level of output

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of a person

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when you

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reduced the number of variables to a finite set and control for them and create this utopian vision of what maximum efficiency. But look like

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now the mist of all this. He had Cem

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rather controversial human resource believes he believed that all workers were really lazy and some other stuff, So I don't want to give him necessarily a ton of credit for

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business management in general. But I think that if you just keep focused on the complicated problem solving process, So he used sort of that deductive reasoning, um, type of process, whereby he said, How do I make a car?

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I've gotta get the frame with wheels on it, Put the brakes on before the wheels and so on. It's on.

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So therefore, you know, this is the most efficient way that I can scientifically determine

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to build this car, and I want to put

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all my tools in a certain order. I don't wanna have my big, heavy wrench be the farthest tool from me. I don't want to have to walk across the shop floor when I could just turn around and get a tool things of that nature. So he was very interested in that efficiency and really maximizing that human capacity so

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fast forward, top 100 years or 150 years.

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Um,

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what he really established

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was this idea that if you have a finite set of steps, regardless of what that is, it could be

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500

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200,000.

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Whatever the case might be. If you have a finite number of steps,

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you can model that,

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and when you model that you can then go back and look at that process model in order to determine if there are any levels of efficiency

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in order to increase the productivity of that model.

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Now,

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why does this matter for enterprise projects? Well,

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one of the things that we find when we study enterprise project failures is that

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the business modeling process,

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especially in government but even in private sector, is usually short changed. And what I mean by short changed is you either invite the vendors into early. So therefore, what you're really doing is looking at the vendors determination of what the business process model is

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and not really looking at the adaptability of that model to your organization

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or you just don't take the time to really drill down into the well they sometimes call, as is to be specifications,

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to really understand what this model is going to entail for your your organization or you

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model be existing process. And this goes back Thio. I mentioned it early on in the course, the thinking for implementation,

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where you're so hung up on how you currently do business, that you basically build a new system that models all the inefficiencies of the existing system, in which case that bears the argument of why I have a new system. So

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as an enterprise project manager to the best of your ability, especially when you're in that stakeholder engagement. Working with your sponsor Working with your Project governance team, you really want to

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be forceful advocate for

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the time it takes to really do a proper business model.

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Understand what your processes get your arms around and get the team all on the same page. So you're looking at the same set of data and then take the next step

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of looking at where efficiencies can be gained in that model. Before you start developing whatever your new system is going to be

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and again and system is those five things. So I'm not necessarily just talking about i t I'm talking about all five elements

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oven enterprise system. So

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really, really