The BPX Process Design Slam 2009

[tbroek]

BPX Process Design Slam 2009

What was the idea?

• Marilyn welcoming us and explaining what BPX Process Slam is about
• Greg, who took his role as a major very seriously, explaining the process that needs to be modeled
• Twan telling about agile and the methodology to be used during the evening
• Marilyn introducing the business matter experts

The goal was to work in 3 iterations of 30 minutes on four deliverables:

• Process design
• UI design
• Rules design
• Data model/enterprise services

All deliverables had to be put in the wiki. And after the last iteration the solution had to be presented.

Lessons learned on the agile approach

• Two teams started working on the process design immediately, one team spent an hour on the business case. And invested a lot of time in talking to the product owner. Do NOT forget the business.
• People really need to get used to an agile approach in stead of an waterfall. And people are willing to collaborate within the new approach, if not that has to be addressed in order to change the attitude.
• If your team contains no subject matter specialists and business is only involved on a question base only - it really is a tough job. No one knows exactly what we are working on, nobody has the truth. We all looked like some kind of junior consultants looking for an expert.
• With no experts in the group it is hard to keep an overview on the big picture. What is the process we are working on, what part of the process are we now focussing on.
• Focus on what needs to be delivered. If that is not clear, make sure it gets clear. Create the backlog with use cases that need to be implemented. Let the product owner/business decide where to focus on.
• Focus the team on collaborating, sure everyone has his own expert area, but the whole team needs to be on the same page before you can break up in subgroups.
• Make sure that the team is formed with experts on the deliverables you have to deliver.
• The teamlead had to take a more directive and content role than a common facilitating ‘scrum master’ in an agile project.

The results are impressive with such a short timeframe. Imagine if this was a real project and participants really had time to collaborate on this -- Sustainability area - here we come 😉



In the end it was a fun evening and I am looking forward to the results of the next SAP TechEd in Bangalore.