45 reasons to inspect a business process

Jim Reardan offers us a list of 45 reasons to model business processes. He equates process modeling with process inspection and argues:

The discipline of inspection is what enables one to deliberately focus in on something. Often, that something has been in front of us, and taken for granted, day-in and day-out. But as soon as we stop, focus, and examine it, were able to see things about the object that weve never seen before.

Reading the hieroglyphs

I think it’s an interesting list. And although many of the mentioned reasons are overlapping, it does give an idea of the many motivations that drive organizations to map out their processes.

Now, reasons to model a business process are also reasons to mine a business process. After all, process mining is simply a faster and more accurate way of getting to the inspection step.

So, what would be my top 5 reasons to do process mining? Off the top of my head I chose the following from Reardan’s list:

  1. Improve Understanding

  2. Spot Bottlenecks

  3. Improve Accountability

  4. Support Compliance

  5. Provide Specifications for Automated Workflow

Anyone who thinks that there are important reasons missing in the list of 45? What would be your top five?

Anne Rozinat

Anne Rozinat

Market, customers, and everything else

Anne knows how to mine a process like no other. She has conducted a large number of process mining projects with companies such as Philips Healthcare, Océ, ASML, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, and many others.