VDML: Making Business Process Models Agile

Keith Swenson recently posted an assertion that Business Process Models are Not Agile.  I agree.  Business process models can be large and complex, involving multiple organizations, and the design and development of a process can be very remote from the people who actually manage and do the work.

The solution is not to throw out business process modeling, but rather to provide a more agile architecture and supporting business modeling capability to limit the scope of responsibility for each process change to improve local control and adaptation of processes. 

VDML (Value Delivery Modeling Language) supports development of a more agile architecture. A VDML model represents processes as "capability methods" (the implementations of  business capabilities). 

A line of business delivers a product or service as a value stream.  The value stream is composed of a network of capability methods, as services, delegating work to other capability methods to perform work of supporting specialties.  The scope of a capability method should be within the scope of responsible of the operational organization unit.  Recursive delegation forms a decomposition network.  At the same time, capability methods may be engaged as shared services across lines of business for economies of specialization and scale.   
A VDML capability method is a business process abstraction.  The focus is on statistical flow of deliverables and creation of value rather than flow control of individual transactions.  This significantly reduces the process complexity and enables attention to business requirements for performance and consumption of resources.  The delegation and deliverable flow networks define the dependencies between capability methods for resolution of changes with broader scope.  The value stream defines the impact of capability methods on customer value propositions.  This process architecture and abstraction enables business leadership to define clear business requirements and responsibilities for implementation of a business transformation.

The result is that each business unit has more focused responsibility, accountability and control for its capability methods both for incremental improvements and for strategic business transformations.