Getting Back on Track: A Recipe for Continuing Success After Continuous Failure

So, you’ve started your Process Mining implementation... and after listening to scores of success stories from companies saving tens of millions of dollars, you thought everyone would see the path to value and that this would be a smooth sailing project with an obvious value proposition. However, like many other software implementation projects, not everything has gone to plan. Perhaps you and your teams have not realized the value you had anticipated as quickly as you would have liked. Maybe your process owners and leadership do not understand the vision, or you lack the resource capacity you need. Your data is messier than you’d like and building out a custom process is proving more difficult than anticipated. While Process Mining software can provide ample opportunity for delivering value, it can also become an albatross to your organization and your career if results can’t be delivered. So, what are symptoms to look out for? Why do these problems occur? And what are some steps you can take to get back on track? 

1. Assess The Current Situation 

When a program team finds itself deep in the mire of organizational bureaucracy and middling results, it can be tempting to chop and change the approach looking for new ways to realize value and continue meaningful activity. While the intention is commendable, the effort can sometimes be misguided. Depending on the situation in which a team finds itself, it is often better to take a step back and understand the environment in which one operates before planning the next steps. Some important questions to consider include: 

• What are the goals and expectations of my leaders or of myself? 

• What are my organization’s strategic objectives? Do they align with my team’s objectives? 

• What software am I leveraging and what are its capabilities? 

• Do I have the correct resourcing allocation? 

• What is the situation for data availability? Data strategy? 

• What processes am I mapping? 

• Who are the important stakeholders and what do they want? 

In this first step, communication is KEY. So often, the initial instinct is to blame somebody or something for lack of progress. It’s easy to point fingers at a process owner or a vendor for failure to realize value, but there is usually much more to the story. This is the step where we gather all available information and understand everyone’s perspective. Notice as well that we are not yet asking “Why…?” Step 1 is a fact-finding mission so that we can accurately and objectively… 

2. Identify Root Causes 

Once we have our “what’s” and our “who’s,” we then can begin to ask and understand the “why’s.” The good news is that the “why’s” often reveal themselves easily from the “what’s” and “who’s.” Consider some of the following “Why” questions and some sample answers to help us get to root causes. 

Q: Why am I not realizing value from this easy and high value use case? 

A: It is not a priority for the business or stakeholders. 

Root cause: While the use case is high value, our stakeholders are not feeling significant pain from the current state. 

Q: Why is my IT Security Team or CDO not supportive of this initiative? 

A: They are hesitant to copy data to a new system and don’t understand why it is necessary to improve business processes. 

Root cause: The Process Mining initiative is not (yet) fully aligned with the data strategy of the organization. 

Q: Why are process owners not embracing the value potential of process mining? 

A: They are unaware or uninterested in results that don’t directly impact their department or initiatives. 

Root cause: There is insufficient support or investment from leadership in finding success with process mining. 

There may be several root causes that need to be addressed as a result of the necessary introspection. With these issues identified, understood, and documented, though, the team can work together to… 

3. Develop & Execute a Corrective Action Plan 

After the situation has been assessed and root causes identified, it is now time to plan and act while keeping these learnings in mind. Gathering feedback from the relevant stakeholders and evaluating together with the program team should not be a very lengthy process so we should arrive at this point quickly.   

The most critical point is to make sure that root causes are being addressed head-on. If leadership buy-in is lacking, there should be a plan put in place to garner the required support. If the wrong use cases or processes are being analyzed for improvement, it may be time to shelve those and go after high-value processes or lower hanging fruit. The plan(s) are entirely dependent on the earlier steps in the process, and ideally your stakeholders will feel heard as a result of the fact that you have built a corrective action plan that seeks to address their concerns directly! 

4. Maintain Flexibility 

Less an independent step, and more so words-to-live-by, it’s important to maintain flexibility throughout this process. Sure, a plan has been developed to ensure that the program gets back on track. However, this entire effort is an attempt to redirect your entire Process Mining program. You probably took big swings in your action plan(s) and it’s possible that some missed the mark. Most failed programs are a result of a lack of stakeholder alignment so taking some extra steps to adapt to the changing needs of stakeholders never hurts. 

From a project management perspective, Process Mining may even fit better into an agile framework anyway – where flexibility is key. When building analyses and automations, ingesting and cleansing additional data tables and fields, and considering new use cases, agility is critical for success and is well-suited for continuous improvement initiatives. 

5. Evaluate and Learn 

After the corrective action plan has kicked off and your Process Mining initiative is getting back on track, there should be periodic check-ins to understand the current progress and see if there are continued opportunities for improvement. In the Scrum methodology, there is typically a Sprint retrospective that happens on a regular basis to help determine what went well and what went poorly in the most recent sprint. Even throughout successful projects and product lifecycles, lessons can continue to be learned and documented to further shorten time to value. Many of these lessons can be universal among various organizations or various technology implementations.  

Hopefully, at the end of this process, you and your team are moving once again in the right direction with the proper buy-in and realigned expectations based on decisions made throughout. However, this is not the end of the line. The process outlined above should be cyclical. Once you have made adjustments and worked hard to get your program back on track, there are still other opportunities for improvement within your Process Mining deployment. Even when value is being realized, expectations are exceeded, and your next promotion is imminent, the shifting landscape of shrinking budgets, enterprise reorganizations, and evolving talent means that it’s time again to go back to step number 1 on your endless march toward progress.