Methodology

The Business Reengineering Methodology is a complete life cycle approach to identify and implement business process and infrastructure support redesigns for business processes of a company. It is comprehensive and complete, addressing such activities as organizing the project, assessing the current business process, designing the reengineered business process, planning the implementation and implementing the business solutions.

The methodology is divided up into five phases, comprising thirteen methodology processes, forty-two activities, and over 250 tasks. Sixteen major deliverables are defined, and over ninety outputs comprising those deliverables are outlined, and supported by over 150 examples from actual business reengineering projects. A brief overview follows:

PHASE 1 - MOBILIZATION
The Mobilization Phase contains three methodology processes:

The first process, Organize Project, ensures that a clear understanding as to the project scope, objectives, deliverables, and other areas exists between the client and the project team.
The second process, Establish Enterprise Reengineering Program is used to develop an overall plan for business reengineering in the company, establishing a case for action, a governance structure for subsequent projects and partitioning the enterprise into manageable, prioritized projects.
The third process, Develop Change Management Program, recognizes that the management of change is a critical factor for the successful implementation of business reengineering recommendations, and develops the change management program early in the overall project life cycle.

The major objectives in performing this phase are to lay the groundwork for managing client expectations, gain early definition of the business process under review, gain early client commitment to the business reengineering process, identify the areas of greatest need and opportunity for reengineering, address any critical issues, and begin preparing for the impact of change.

The phase ends with a management sign-off of the overall project definition, project and plan, the enterprise reengineering plan and the change management program.

PHASE 2 - BUSINESS SYSTEM EVALUATION
The Business System Evaluation Phase contains four methodology processes:

The first process, Measure Service Quality, addresses customer and supplier service quality levels and their impact on the business process.
The second process, Evaluate Current Processes, looks at the business process itself, and develops the detailed documentation and analysis that forms the basis for identifying process-oriented reengineering opportunities.
The third process, Assess Information Technology, identifies the impact on the information technology infrastructure on the business process.
The fourth process, Assess Infrastructure, identifies the impact on the business process of external and internal factors ranging from the regulatory environment to business policies to organizational and human factors.

This phase essentially performs almost all of the data gathering required to address the subsequent reengineering of the business processes. The four processes are not conducted sequentially, but are conducted in more of a parallel fashion. They are brought to a conclusion simultaneously in a major milestone, the Phase 2 management review.

PHASE 3 - BUSINESS SYSTEM REDESIGN
This phase essentially performs all of the reengineering activity and produces the recommendations to establish the new business processes and effectively support them with information technology and internal infrastructure capabilities.

The Business Redesign phase contains three major methodology processes:

The first process, Redesign Business Processes, utilizes the redesign workshops and information gathered in Phase 2 to develop change ideas, analyze change feasibility, and create the new business process.
The second process, Redesign Information Technology, identifies the information technology components required to support the reengineered process, and maps those requirements against the current level of IT support to identify the magnitude of IT change required.
The third process, Redesign Infrastructure, maps the reengineering recommendations against the internal infrastructure (jobs, organization, policy, management systems, recognition and reward systems) to determine the recommended changes in those areas.

Phase 3 concludes with an important management review in which the recommendations are reviewed for implementation approval.

PHASE 4 - IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING
The Implementation Planning phase contains three methodology processes:

The first process, Establish Performance Requirements, identifies the resources required to perform the new business process, and establishes the business performance objectives of the new process.
The second process, Plan Continuous Improvement, addresses the need to establish mechanisms to sustain the reengineering gains, and make additional gains.
The third process, Develop Implementation Plan, addresses the cost/benefit aspect of the reengineering recommendations, defines the implementation projects, and defines an overall implementation plan.

The phase concludes with an important management presentation, presenting the overall implementation plan with defined reengineering projects and anticipated benefits.

PHASE 5 - IMPLEMENTATION
The Implementation phase contains two methodology processes:

The first process, Implement Business Solution, initiates, conducts and manages the implementation of the reengineering recommendations through a defined plan of implementation projects, including prototyping, piloting and roll-out.
The second process, Conduct Post-Implementation Review, conducts an assessment of the results of completing key projects to identify what further changes may be necessary to fully achieve targeted benefits.