BPM360 Podcast - Covering Every Angle

The Process Hierarchy Dilemma – Functional vs. End-to-End Mapping

Russell Gomersall & Caspar Jans Season 3 Episode 4

 Is your process hierarchy helping or hurting your organization? In this thought-provoking episode, Caspar and Russell go deep into one of the most debated BPM topics—structuring process repositories. With no guest this time, it’s back to the dynamic duo tackling a pet peeve of process architects worldwide: the messy mix of functional and end-to-end process hierarchies. 

🚀 Key Takeaways: 

1️⃣ The Great Divide – Functional decomposition structures are great for modelers, while end-to-end views are crucial for business users. Mixing them creates confusion. 

2️⃣ Best Practices or Worst Practices? – Many companies blindly adopt frameworks (SAP, APQC) without understanding their flaws. 

3️⃣ Ownership Matters – Who owns an end-to-end process? It’s not always the function that executes it but the one that controls it. 

4️⃣ The Map is Not the Territory – Process maps should serve as navigation tools, not rigid representations of architecture. 

5️⃣ Time to Rethink Organizations? – Should businesses be structured around their processes instead of outdated hierarchies? A future podcast topic in the making! 

🔊 Tune in to hear the debate, the laughs, and a few lighthearted disagreements! And if you know an expert on organizational structures and process alignment, we want to hear from you! 

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