What's required for success? The successful organization views transparent processes as critical to the
success of their strategies, thereby engendering management commitment. Frequently, transparent processes will
be viewed as critical to the success of multiple strategies, such as reducing risk, facilitating training and
expansion and/or process improvement.
Committed managements commit resources. The commitment of resources in turn leads to closer progress tracking
(e.g., attention). Process transparency is on the radar screen -- a priority -- and probably tied into managers'
individual goals and the reward system.
Regardless of how the organization resources the development of transparent processes, successful organizations
adopt a standard methodology. Whether the organization decides to set up a centralized group, a decentralized
structure or a combination, all stakeholders involved in developing process documentation are trained in the
organization's methodology.
Selection of a documentation methodology is based on several key factors:
- Is it efficient and easy to use?
- To what extent does it promote standardization?
- How easy is it to reuse documentation across the organization?
- How easy is it to maintain the documentation as processes and controls change?
Documentation methodologies which score highly on all of these dimensions accelerate the achievement of process
transparency across the organization. The organization begins realizing the benefits of process transparency
fairly quickly. The wins begin reinforcing commitment and enable assimilation into the corporate culture.
Organizations which either do not adopt a standard methodology, or which select a methodology that is difficult
to implement and scale, have a higher risk of abandoning the goal of achieving process transparency.
Success will require the dedication of more resources and more time before benefits will be realized --
a tough choice for most organizations facing growing competitiveness.