"The Process Audit"

Michael Hammer

Harvard Business Review

April 2007, pp. 111-123

Though process redesign has become a well-known approach to organizational change, many of these attempts to redesign major processes have foundered. Five years ago, the author of this article began working with a consortium of organizations "to create a framework that would help executives comprehend, plan, and assess process-based transformation efforts." The result of this work is the identification of a set of "process enablers" that determine how well a process can function over time, and a set of "enterprise capabilities" that allow processes to take root in organizations. Five process enablers and four enterprise capabilities together form the author's Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM), which can be used to assess an organization's current strengths and weaknesses for process-based transformations.

The five process enablers are:

• Process design—"The comprehensiveness of the specification of how the process is to be executed"
• Performers—"The people who execute the process, particularly in terms of their skills and knowledge"
• Owner—"A senior executive who has responsibility for the process and its results";
• Infrastructure—"Information and management systems that support the process"
• Metrics—"The measures the company uses to track the process's performance"

The four enterprise capabilities are:

• Leadership—"Senior executives who support the creation of processes"
• Culture—"The values of customer focus, teamwork, personal accountability, and a willingness to change"
• Expertise—"Skills in, and methodology for, process redesign"
• Governance—"Mechanisms for managing complex projects and change initiatives".

The article includes two useful tables (one for assessing the maturity of a business process, and one for assessing the maturity of the enterprise to begin a process-based transformation). After conducting the assessment, the organization can identify areas they need to strengthen in order for their planned process-based transformation to be successful. Blanks versions of the tables can be downloaded at www.hbr.org.

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