No prizes for guessing what this is.
Most people would say: This is the Mona Lisa … and they’d be wrong. The picture depicted someone who may or may not have looked like this 500 years ago. A picture showing what the lady looks like today would probably…well ashes to ashes etc.
The reason I mention this is that the same imprecision can found with regards to business process models. Many take such a long time to design that by the time they are finished they are already out of date. And just like old Leonardo depicted his view and perception of the lady, most process models are heavily influenced by the perception (or lack of) of reality by the modeler/business analyst. But while the artist had at least one person to validate the picture (the buyer), most companies rely on the analyst to validate/approve his own work. Why not let the people who will need to work with the process do the validation? At the end of the day what counts is the process and not the model, so get the process experts involved. Chances are that their verdict will be “We understand why you designed it this way but this is not how it works in practice”.
Gary Comerfords recent short posting on the Process Cafe seems to reflect a similar opinion, so you might want to take a look there as well.
Leonardo certainly knew what he was doing while the expertise of modelers seems to rest on brushes and paints – and not on results. Which is why the Process TestLab offers a unique way to validate processes before they are implemented. Process art is like Leonardos work…interesting in itself and usable. The rest is just expensive junk: process models for the sake of it!
(picture by artelista.com)
