Business (Agency) Process Discovery and Documentation Workshop PeopleSoft Phase II Tuesday, October 23, 2007 9:00 AM to 12:00 Noon Concourse Theatre Oklahoma City, OK

AGENDA Business (Agency) Process Discovery and Documentation Workshop 9:00am -9:15am -- Kickoff, Introductions and Housekeeping 9:15am to 10:30am – Workshop Presentation 10:30am to 10:45am – Break 10:45am to 12:00noon – Questions and Answers

Why? This workshop will provide a BASIC GUIDELINE to assist you in documenting your “AS-IS” business (Agency) processes, in a format that will be capable of providing an "apples to apples" comparison (fit gap analysis) to delivered PeopleSoft Financials v8.9 functionality for Oklahoma Phase II modules.

PS Phase II Modules Quick Review (1 of 2) Grants Management Acquisition and tracking of Grant funding Project Costing Project Accounting and Tracking Contracts Management (Revenue) Establishes revenue contracts with external customers or sponsors. Billing (Invoicing) Creating customer invoices and drawing grant funding. Receivables (AR)

PS Phase II Modules Quick Review (2 of 2) Assets Management Tracking and depreciating capital assets. Inventory Tracking and re-ordering of inventory stock.

How does PS display its delivered Business (Agency) Processes? Generally Generic in Nature High Level Sequence of Functionality (or Features) designed to illustrate a generic business process. And yet, very specific to PeopleSoft delivered Functionality. Extensive Use of Swim Lanes Each Swim Lane consists of a Generic Organizational Role. Example: Financial Administrator, Approval Authority, Principle Investigator, Sponsoring Agency Activities (Boxes of Tasks) within each swim lane. Tasks are the lowest Level of Process Identified. Extensive Decision Points

PS FLOW CHART EXAMPLE (This is one of the apples)

Basics of Agency Processes AS-IS Discovery & Documentation Base Understanding Discovery Documentation

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Process Discovery starts by ASKING TWO QUESTIONS: What’s First? What’s Next? Very Important Questions And closely followed by: What goes in? (AKA, Predecessors) What happens to it? (Elements and actions of the Process) What comes out? (AKA, Deliverable) THROUGHOUT THE DISCOVERY, KEEP AN EYE OPEN FOR HOW “ERRORS” ARE HANDLED.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – How we deal with these questions is very important. While “discovering” the answers, there will be some Challenges.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Some of the Challenges Getting the Right People Involved. Getting the Right Information. Prioritizing the Information, correctly. Documenting the “As-Is” Process. Validation of Documentation.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – 5 Levels of Processes: Function(al) – Identify the Functions within your Agency. Functions are groupings of Activities. Activity(ies) – Identify the Activities within the Function. Activities are groupings of Tasks. Task(s) – Identify the Tasks that are within the Activities. Tasks are work packages that when grouped together create a unique task. Work Packages – Work Packages are groups of Work Unites. Work Units – The base unit of work. Functions Activities Tasks Work Packages Work Units NOTE: There are other Forms which are just as valid.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Manual and Automated Processes

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Identification of “As-Is” Processes Identify Apparent Processes: Existing Process Diagrams. Existing SOP (Standard Operation Policies) Existing Systems and Sub-Systems (Shadow systems) Key Personnel Search for Hidden Processes: Excel spreadsheets User developed Access DB Ad hoc – Note, verbal communications, Phone call… Email Manual papers What stamps are used? (Date, Approval, Denied, Posted, others) Existing manuals… (how accurate, maintained, outdated, written in notes??) Helpful Hint: You should always be looking for Hidden Processes. 1. Many times manual portions of primarily automated processes are the hardest hidden processes to find.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Identify Apparent Decision Points: Existing Process Flow Diagrams SOP (Standard Operation Procedures) Systems and Sub-Systems Key Positions (Personnel) Search for Hidden Decision Points: Generally become visible during errors. Identification of Decision Points (A.K.A Business Rules)

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Identification of the Bridges How do processes interact with each other? Identify Apparent and Hidden Bridges. Types (Basic Examples) Parallel Summing There are many others such as Timing, illustrated on the next slide. Helpful Hint: You should always be looking for Hidden Bridges.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Examples Delays Time to Acknowledge Time to Accept Time to Deny Time to Resolve Time to Process Identification of Timing items. This is a type of Bridge.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – The Most Common Discovery Process is: TOP DOWN and then BOTTOM UP Start with Top Down and work to the bottom. Then, turn around and work back to the top. Many times this will lead to hidden items not identified during the top down activity.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – SCOPE Scope = What are the borders of this discovery process? Our goal is to provide process documentation that closely matches PeopleSoft delivered process documentation. The lowest level of PeopleSoft Documentation is the Task. So, for this project we need to elicit and document information to the Task level. Scope for this Discovery Project is the TASK Level within the 7 Phase II modules.

Basics of Agency Process Discovery – Base Understanding – Review Of the 7 Phase II Modules SCOPE TOP Down Functions Activities Tasks Apparent Processes and Bridges IDENTIFY VERIFY Hidden Processes and Bridges Bottom Up

Basics of Agency Process Notation (Documentations) There are many ways to document Agency Processes. For this project we’ll closely match PS process flow by using: PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAMS.

DEQ’s Spaghetti

TEMPLATE

Review Business Process Discovery & Mapping Task List Identify areas of (Functions) business process that might be candidates for the Phase II deployment (Grants, External Billing, Project Tracking, Assets and Consumable Inventory). Schedule discussions with those resources that are responsible for the business processes in question 1, to document details of the process. Try and uncover general execution or flow, impact to other areas of the agency, other resources involved or impacted, decision points and outputs or deliverables of the process. Document any software that supports the business process. That should include any integration points with third party software (software not supported in-house). Using the business process documentation developed in question 2, begin to “map out” the sequence of business process, responsible resources and decision points in a flow chart format. Review the mapping done in question 4 with the resources that provided the business process details in question 2 for verification. Tweak the mapping as appropriate. This process is iterative.

Q&A

Additional Resources International Institute of Business Analysis www.theiiba.org Google “Business Analyst Resources” Over 173,000,000 hits…