Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business

Product Review

Every company wants to improve the way it does business, to produce goods and services more efficiently, and to increase profits. Nonprofit organizations are also concerned with efficiency, productivity, and with achieving the goals they set for themselves. Every manager understands that achieving these goals is part of his or her job.

In this balanced treatment of the field of business process change, Paul Harmon offers concepts, methods, cases for all aspects and phases of successful business process improvement. Updated and added for this edition are coverage of business process management systems, business rules, enterprise architectures and frameworks (SCOR), and more content on Six Sigma and Lean--in addition to new coverage of performance metrics.

* Extensive revision and update to the successful BPM book, addressing the growing interest in Business Process Management Systems, and the integration of process redesign and Six Sigma concerns.

* The best first book on business process, the most up-to-date book to read to learn how all the different process elements fit together.

* Presents a methodology based on the best practices available that can be tailored for specific needs and that maintains a focus on the human aspects of process redesign.

* Offers all new detailed case studies showing how these methods are implemented.

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review

(14 customer reviews)

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful

The Best Overall Perspective of BPM, August 12, 2007

Randy Sorensen (Phoenix AZ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals (The MK/OMG Press) (Paperback)

In 2004, I worked in a business unit at my company that had experienced a period of declining performance. Our senior management felt that one of the causes was work processes that had become cumbersome and inefficient over the years. I was asked to sponsor a process improvement initiative to try to simplify and streamline how we did work. I didn't know where to start, so I went on a crash course to learn everything I could about improving business processes. I read some great books by Geary Rummler, Roger Burlton, Michael Hammer, and many others. I learned about things like process modeling, process redesign, process improvement, process automation, BPM tools, swimlanes, value chains, CMMI, process owners, Six Sigma, Lean, process architectures--and the role of IT in enabling all of this.

This intense study provided me with a valuable foundation of knowledge, but I still didn't know how pull all of the pieces together. Organizations are extremely complex systems. To...Read more

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

The Second Edition in Virtually a New Book, July 31, 2007

Paul Harmon, Editor, Business Process Trends (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals (The MK/OMG Press) (Paperback)

Readers of the first edition of Business Process Change should know that the second edition is virtually a new book. It has been reorganized to emphasize enterprise level process activities, process level projects and implementation level activities. Major sections on enterprise frameworks, process problem diagnosis and BPMS have been added and most chapters have been reworked to add information about changes that have occured since the first book appeared in 2003.
Paul Harmon, author of Business Process Change

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

Very good discussion of business process - applicable to a broad arena of work, October 19, 2007

L. Atha (Rocket City, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals (The MK/OMG Press) (Paperback)

I think this is the best book that I have seen that allows an organization to consider business process at the enterprise and department level. I have been engaged in business process management in the government for years, trying to define the processes, trying to communicate them, trying to improve them. This is by far the best treatment and guide I have seen. This is what I have been looking for and couldn't find.