Southbound or Northbound?

Conducted a training “roadshow” last week in Denver.  I thought I had traveled northbound until I had dinner at the Yardhouse in the downtown plaza.  I took a look at the menu, which can be found at the site here...http://www.yardhouse.com/menus/house-favorites.aspx.  I had a vision of a buffalo steak or buffalo burger, but was surprised by the spicy jambalaya offering.  I had to try it, since it seemed out of place.  I was not disappointed…two large juicy charbroiled shrimp atop a scoop of dirty rice and other Louisiana goodies, such as crawfish and spicy andouille sausage.  The only thing lacking was the availability of some Louisiana hot sauce that I like to jolt on my food.  Anyway, I worried that I got on the wrong flight and had headed southbound and was actually in New Orleans!

While in Denver I taught were the Business Process Framework Distilled course and the Business Process Framework Implementer’s workshop.  During both, discussions about the ongoing work to decompose the process framework further occurred, and the students had an opportunity to practice this “southbound” expansion of the framework.

The discussions also headed “northbound” when some students asked where processes, such as Product Performance Management and Sales Force Administration were in the framework.  Both of these happen to be hidden away in the descriptions of the Level 3 processes, Support Selling and Support Customer QoS/SLA Management respectively, in the Level 2 CRM Support & Readiness.

As many of us travel around the world working with members, we often encounter questions such as these.  A set of these processes can be found at http://www.tmforum.org/Community/groups/the_business_process_framework/contributions.aspx?id=artf2385.  The candidate processes in the document are categorized as hidden, missing, or required expansion.  And, rather than representing a further decomposition of the framework, some of these candidates may make their way northbound into the higher levels of decomposition!

Off to the Philippines next week, my first visit there to do some consulting...so, I should have some food stories to tell in my next blog.  This starts a “east” tour for me through September, which includes separate trips to China, Vietnam, and Singapore.  Even more “food for thought” for future blogs!