What differentiates the charters of a COE are the aspects surrounding business policy setting, strategic focus, governance, funding of cross-divisional initiatives, and project tracking. Are there two organizations that cover both strategy and execution or just one? In Mr. Akram’s article, BPM Center of Excellence, he suggests there is one and we suggest there are two.
Mr. Akram writes, "As the name suggests, it’s a center of excellence that sits in the middle of all the process initiatives and is run by senior management. Given the tasks to be undertaken to run COE, decisions to be made, and for securing buy in from various stakeholders, it is imperative that senior management take on this role on full time basis." My experience is that most BPM COEs are not established at this level. The process governance strategy is formulated outside the COE with participation by the COE. It is often done by a committee of executives that are part of a business initiatives steering committee. The head of the COE usually sits on this committee.
As Mr. Akram indicates, many COEs take on the charter to establish the rules, guidelines, methodologies, tools and standards to be used in changing business processes. We agree with this but they are not the executive committee making and prioritizing all business investments in process improvement initiatives. These latter objectives are the province of Process Governance and are the charter of the Executive Process Council, not the COE. Our experience with COEs is that their charter is more involved in HOW improvements are made and HOW BPM is applied on a consistent basis but not on WHAT should be done, in what order and priority and who funds it. Those policy-making decisions reside outside the COE but use the COE as an advisor.
There are a number of articles and presentations written on COEs that describe our member company's approach to establishing a BPM COE. What are your thoughts on establishing a COE? What has worked well in your organization and what approaches have proven to be a disaster? I look forward to your comments and recommendations.
Some recommended reads, discussions...
"BPM Center of Excellence"
"Establishing a COE"
"Case Study: Continuous Process Improvement: BPM the Motorola Way"
"Case Study: Building A Service Delivery Model for Enterprise BPM"
Establishing a BPM Center of Excellence