Business Process Change: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals

by Paul Harmon, Business Process Trends

Every company wants to improve the way it does business, to produce goods and services more efficiently, and to increase profits. Nonprofit organizations are also concerned with efficiency, productivity, and with achieving the goals they set for themselves. Every manager understands that achieving these goals is part of his or her job. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (or BPM) is what they call these activities that companies perform in order to improve and adapt processes that will help improve the way they do business. In this balanced treatment of the field of business process change, Paul Harmon offers concepts, methods, and cases for all aspects and phases of successful business process improvement. Updated and added for this edition are coverage of business process management systems, business rules, enterprise architectures and frameworks (SCOR), and more content on Six Sigma and Lean--in addition to new coverage of performance metrics.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

592 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 2002

Reviews

[realNateCash · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is out of date. It's good to understand the really high over view of processes. There is a lot of focus on process development in the 80's and 90's but it fails to really talk about any of the newer tech enabled tools and processes. Really disappointing. If you need this for a basic overview or a history lesson, sure. But I would throw the money down on something better that focuses on newer concepts.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked it up as a BPM refresher. Not bad.

[Askorbinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive guide of enterprise process management

[Sourabh Gharde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview of business process management and change initiatives. Provides useful frameworks but sometimes feels a bit outdated. Helpful reference material for process improvement projects.

[Steve Whiting · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book characterises itself as ".. provid[ing] managers with an introduction to the concepts and techniques needed for business process change and to provide them with an overview of some of the options they will have...", and that's pretty much what it does. This edition is a little out of date - it pre-dates most of the enabling capability of the internet - but it generally strikes the right balance between business process concerns and the ability of IT to assist (or hamper) them.

So, a pretty good primer, though with a few odd notes - there's surprisingly little on Six Sigma and virtually nothing on Lean, and there's evidence of padding in places (notably the numerous lists of SAP modules) and while most of the IT content is fine, small parts of it are decidely muddled or just plain wrong. With those caveats, it's recommended, though I would look for a later edition than this 2003 one.

[Noor Afies]

it is good but need to update

[Omid Milanifard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book that covers both theoretical and practical fields of business process management.