Sig has a good post mischievously citing this from a post by Gartner
…the hidden costs of unstructured processes: although a lot of focus of BPM efforts (time and money) is on structured processes, as much as 60% of an organization’s processes are unstructured – and probably also unmonitored, unmanaged, unknown and unruly.
This raises all sorts of heady questions, not least of which is how exactly do you get to measure things that you say can’t even be monitored and are unknown. Astrophysicists, stop what you’re doing because Gartner quantifies the unknown. Where’s Donald Rumsfeld when you need him?
Plus I have to laugh at the emphasis on the costs of the unstructured processes. What about the benefits, like when you find someone inside the bureaucracy who can short cut it for you, or the one that gets outside the call centre script and treats you like a fellow human.
And I love that final adjective, “unruly”. For me it’s where the grownup managerial mask really slips and we move into doilies-around-piano-leg territory.
Sig explores this with a nice analogy about cross-country skiing versus snowboarding.
