Assessing Business Process Management Maturity Using the PEMM Method

Purpose of assignment:

The purpose of this assignment is to understand and deploy BPM Maturity assessment techniques in order to assess the state of Business Process Management for a company using the PEMM method. A completed set of data from a BPMM survey of a company has been provided. The student is required to interpret this data and make a first draft of filling out the two assessment forms attached at the end of the article by Michael Hammer titled “The Process Audit”. [note: these forms are available in the HBR article and also on the class system in an Excel version of these forms].

The two forms, when completed, will have red, yellow, green markings for the PEMM items that are appropriate for this company data… remember that not all PEMM items may apply to this company. [note: if you use the PEMM excel spreadsheets provided, just type ‘g’ ‘y’ or ‘r’ in the box and the appropriate color will appear].

Assignment Details:

1. Using the survey results summarized for you and the readings provided in the syllabus, you are to fill out the 2 PEMM assessment forms developed by Michael Hammer. [Note: do your best with what you know now. As the course progresses you will have a better understanding of this]. These forms are available in the Harvard Business Review article by Michael Hammer, and we have also provided excel versions of these 2 forms found in this Module– you will also note that we provided you another type of BPM maturity assessment form, the BPM Assessment Grid. Remember, there are many ways to assess BPM maturity and using the PEMM is only one way — in some situations, you may find that the assessment grid helps you understand your company better.

Please note: The questions in the completed Survey data provided are not all a one-to-one match to the categories in the PEMM forms!! You must look at the answers to each question in the survey and make judgments on how these answers FIT into one or more PEMM statements. There is no perfect BPM Maturity assessment… this assignment is giving you experience on how to make appropriate assessments… IT DOES TAKE SOME TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE CAPABILITIES AND BPM CATEGORIES

• The 2 forms are titled; “How mature is your enterprise?”, and “How mature are your Processes?”. NOTE: we have also made Excel Versions available to you for your convenience, just type ‘g’ ‘y’ or ‘r’ in the box and the appropriate color will appear.

• Be prepared to justify your assessment.
• Note: Make sure you read “The Process Audit” article by Michael Hammer.

2. For each Enabler and each Capability in these forms, assess what level of BPM maturity this company is in. Briefly justify each assessment. [place in a Word document]

E.g. what level of BPM maturity is this company in for:

1. i. Design
2. ii. Performers
3. iii. Owner
4. iv. Infrastructure
5. v. Metrics
6. vi. Leadership
7. vii. Culture
8. viii. Expertise
9. ix. Governance

3. Submit your 2 filled out forms (or Excel file of these forms) and your Word document with your process and enterprise Maturity justifications.

Assignment Notes:

• Not all questions in the survey have a one to one correlation of to the PEMM assessment. … assessing BPM maturity is an ART not a science and therefore it is not exact… the key is to understand the BPM maturity factors from a set of questions helps assess the level or “current state” for that maturity factor. This is the point of this assignment, to have you look at several issues of an organization, learn which were related to various maturity factors and learn how to assess the Current state of BPM for an organization — help you think of holistic factors, not just one dimension [e.g. just because a company may use Six-Sigma approaches does not necessarily mean they are process-oriented]. Many companies that have used this initial BPM maturity assessment were able to built a preliminary strategy, deploy that strategy and reaped substantial ROI within a year’s time.
• This method is used quite extensively in industry, worldwide.. yes it has room for improvement (as all things do). If a company waits until a better methodology is available, they could find themselves out of business… today organizations need to find ways to be more efficient, BPM methods have proven to do this (cases that will be presented in class are just a few of them).. we learn from successes and utilize critical success factors.

Be sure to follow the Assignment Rubric included below.