Case Study: How Business Process

Mapping Saved an IT Project

Garrett Hunter
Director, Information Technology
Sony Pictures Entertainment
[email protected]

IIR BPM Conference 2007

 Sony Pictures Entertainment's global operations encompass motion
picture production and distribution, television programming and
syndication, home video acquisition and distribution, operation of
studio facilities, development of new entertainment technologies and
distribution of filmed entertainment in 67 countries worldwide. Sony
Pictures can be found on the World Wide Web at sonypictures.com
Motion Pictures Group Sony Studios
Sony Pictures
Home Culver City, CA
Entertainment

Sony Pictures Television and Networks Sony Pictures Digital

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 Case Study Summary

• Explore how combining business process mapping

techniques with use case development helped to successfully
deliver an IT project
• Review how industry bodies of knowledge such as the
Business Process Model Notation specification and the APQC
Process Framework were leveraged to provide a common
business process vocabulary for both the IT team and the
business customers

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 Case Study Key Issues

• Explaining what a workflow is to business

• Translating workflows into system requirements
• Helping our business customers agree on the process
• Why "Good Enough" is OK

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 Project Background

• The “Automated System for

Ad/Pub Fulfillment” was to
manage the fulfillment of
marketing materials for all
international offices &
agents
• Marketing materials
– T-Shirts
– Keychains
– One Sheets
– And anything else a
marketer can imagine

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 Project Background – Scope

• Primary stakeholders were interviewed to determine system

features
– Online shopping Cart
– Product Master
– Receiving
– Inventory Management
• Additional interviews were conducted with users to generate
use cases for system configuration and customization
• The new system would be replacing processes executed with
spreadsheets, email, and paper
– Manually intensive processes

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 Project Background – Delivery Methodology

• Scope and features were defined in an unstructured

narrative style
– High level business modeling included via flowcharts
• Use cases were used to define development requirements
– A use case documents the step by step actions a user
performs to complete a specific activity
• Majority of rigor placed upon developers to produce class
diagrams and data models

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 Project Background – Primary Deliverables

Narrative Diagrams

Use Cases
Flow Charts

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 Missed Requirements

• After several months of analysis and development, the first

release date was missed because the customer would not
sign off on the system stating “IT does not understand our
business”
• Further analysis revealed multiple requirements that were
missed because business rules were not explored in depth
– Process for assigning order fulfillment was more complicated
than initially thought
– The number & complexity of business rules was
underestimated

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 Short Term Corrective Steps

• Focused on modeling the end-to-end business processes to

better understand what we were missing
• Conducted Bi-weekly meetings with customer to map their
processes
– Helped to both rebuild credibility & capture an accurate
understanding of all business rules
– Required the project to determine how much was “enough”
detail to capture
• Started the process for defining a long term solution to
ensure we would do better at understanding the business
problem

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 Process Mapping Success

• Able to describe the exact steps our customer performed as

part of their work
– This allowed us to better empathize with their current
challenges and demonstrate our intent to deliver a usable
system
• Able to call out specific areas within the application that
needed customization and which steps would be automated
• Customer VP personally expressed his gratitude that “IT
finally understands what we have to go through”

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 Tips for Ensuring Success

• Get them all in the same room / on the same call

• Focus on the person actually performing the work
– Not their supervisor / boss
• Get agreement on the start and end points of the process
– Helps to set the scope of the process mapping
• Get agreement on the inputs & outputs
– Critical to finding all handoff points and involved parties

• Be transparent, show them your models

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 Long Term Corrective Steps

• Create guidelines on how to link business processes to

system requirements
– Traceability is a powerful control to ensure the team is
delivering what the customer expects
• Develop business modeling as a discipline and not a
byproduct
– Traditionally, we emphasized delivering coding requirements &
not process requirements
• Expand Our business modeling to include the entire business
process, end-to-end, and not just discrete steps along the
way
– Focus on automation objectives rather than coding
requirements

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 Creating a set of Guidelines

• Projects were using numerous tools and diagramming

techniques to document business process models
– Quality of deliverables too dependent on the whims of the
analyst
• Needed an approach that would appeal to the widest
audience
• Needed something that was widely understood outside of
Sony Pictures
• It needed to be compatible with our current development
methodology based on use cases

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 Diagramming Candidates

• The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

specification
– Sponsored by the Object Management Group, it offered a way
to standardize our diagrams
– Notation similar to our existing use of swim lane / workflow
diagrams

• Unified Modeling Language (UML)

– The standard in object oriented development it offered a
number of related models for developing requirements
– Activity diagrams closest to what we would need

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 A Best-of-Breed Solution

• BPMN offered the best combination of flexibility and

standardization to link process models to software design
– Standardized diagram symbols
– Required the “who” in each diagram
– Easily understood by non-techies (for the most part)
– Already had BPM systems in house using the notation
• UML proved to be too focused on software development and
required more training to educate the end consumer
• We would add additional notations such as inputs & outputs
– Borrowed from IDEF0

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 A Best-of-Breed Solution

• Use cases would be derived from specific process steps and

continue to form the basis for system requirements

• Data models would be driven by inputs & outputs from the

process diagrams

• We would create a process modeling style guide that would

connect all the pieces together

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 BPMN from the Start

• Project analysis would begin with a Level 1 process diagram

using the BPMN 1.x specification
– Short list of core graphical elements meant a short learning
curve
– Just the core set of elements for our initial release were used

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 Business Modeling as a Discipline

• Using BPMN we started at a macro level and methodically

decomposed any step in the process that was unclear
• Divided into three levels, increasing in detail
– Level 1 = Handoff Level
– Level 2 = Milestone Level
– Level 3 = Logic / Task Level
• We took our guidance from the book Workflow Modeling:
Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
(A. Sharp, P. McDermott, Artech House, Inc. 2001)
• This rigor enabled the team to document the processes
without becoming lost in unnecessary details

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 Level 1 – Handoffs

• Map enough of the processes to understand what we missed

– Keeps us focused on what happens
• Start at a level where you can focus strictly on the handoffs
between people participating in the process
International Marketing

Explored in Level 2
Customer Sales & Service Rep
«printed» Distribution List

Aprimo Order Report

4.4.3.1.1
«global promotion» Shi pping Notice Create Di stribution
Li st

«standi ng order» Shipping Notice

Ad/Pub Picker
«printed» Distribution
List
4.4.3.1.5
Pi ck Order
«email» Shipment Priori ti es

Ad/Pub Packer
Work Order
4.4.3.1.6
Pack Order
Picked Order

«printed» Distribution L
«printed» Work Order
Ad/Pub Distribution

«printed»
Distribution Li st

I t ti lL i ti

1 Organize daily service order fulfillment schedule

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 Level 2 – Milestones

• Next we selected a process step & focused on documenting

milestones within that step
– Illustrates decisions that affect the flow in a significant way
• The process shown here is derived from a single step
Clerk

Customer Sales & Service Rep

4.4.3.1.1.7

4.4.3.1.1.1
Explored in Level 3 A ssign HOLD to w ork
orders that cannot be
shipped
Aprim o Order Create Shipping
Report

No
Lis t from Prem ium
Orders
4.4.3.1.1.6
partial Yes 4.4.3.1.1.5 Update item
shipment? Split Work Order quantities on each
4.4.3.1.1.2
«global promotion» order
Create Shipping

No
Shipping Notice
Lis t from Global 4.4.3.1.1.4
Prom otions V alidate
enough on Yes
Template quanity-on-hand
hand?
satisfies quantity
ordered
«s tanding order» 4.4.3.1.1.3
Receiving Report

Shipping Notice Create Shipping

Lis t from Standing
Order Tem plate

Ad/Pub Receiver

1.1 Create Distribution List

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 Level 3 – Logic / Tasks

• Depending on complexity we would further break down each

step to get to the how
– This is the first time we get to the procedural level
• This level of modeling maps closely to the steps within a use
case
• Naming convention tells the reader this was derived from a
higher level model
 Publicity

Publici ty

Customer Sales & Service Rep

Aprim o Orde r Create Ship 4.4.3.1.1.4
Add Country and
Report M aster from Add item orders Apply Country Validate
Code to Shipping
Prem ium Item s to Shipping List shipping rules quanity-on-hand
List
XLS tem palte satisfies qua ntity

1.1.1 Create Shipping List from Premium Orders

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 Process Step Naming Conventions

• Avoid using ambiguous terms such as process or manage

– The diagram being created is the process
• Always use a verb – noun combination
– Create distribution list
– Pick order
– Pack order
• Use only one verb at a time
– Using multiple verbs can hide your meaning an complicate the
diagram

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 Connecting to System Requirements

• Our process diagrams became the agreement (aka

requirements) between project and our customer
– Each step in the process diagram had the potential to be a use
case
• Use cases continued to be the requirements between
business analyst & developer
• Use case packages (in keeping with UML) were driven by
how we organized our proess models

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 A Style Guide to Bind Them All

• To be truly successful this needed to be a sustainable

process
• Tool agnostic process modeling style guide developed to
reduce complexity by limiting which elements from the
BPMN spec would be used
– Our team lacked experience modeling processes and needed
guidance before descending into analysis paralysis
• Topics covered include
– Acceptable graphical elements
– Diagram naming conventions
– Process step naming conventions

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 Traceability

Process Foo

Input Step 1 Step 3 Output End

Process Models Start

Deliverable

Step 2
Actor 1

Data Models
USE CASE

Basic Flow
1.Do this
2.Do that
3.Stop here

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 Explaining Our Approach to the Customer

• Never used technical terms such as BPMN, use case, or

activity diagram
• Interchangeably called our BPMN diagrams “process maps”,
“workflow diagrams”, and “process models”
• Explained the diagrams as step-by-step pictures of who in
their organization does what
• Kept the diagrams as uncluttered as possible to keep the
discussions focused on the work being performed

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 Business Process As Release Driver
Customer Sales & Service Rep
«printed» Distributi on List

Aprimo Order Report

4.4.3.1.1
«gl obal promotion» Shipping Notice Create Distributi on
List

«standing order» Shipping Notice

Ad/Pub Picker
«printed» Distribution
Li st
4.4.3.1.5
Pick Order
«email» Shipment Priorities

Ad/Pub Packer
Work Order
4.4.3.1.6
Pack Order
Picked Order

«printed» Distribution List

«printed» Work Order
Ad/Pub Distribution

«printed»
Distri bution Li st

International Logistics
Distri bution Li st w/o Hold &
Domes tic 4.4.3.1.7
Create Shi pping
CSV Summary List Order

CSS Management

Shipping
Packed Order
4.4.3.1.8
Ship Order

10/1 10/8 10/15 10/22 10/29 11/5 11/12 11/19 11/26

Release 1.4.0 (Clients)

Release 1.5.0 (Work Orders)

Release 1.6.0 (Pick / Pack & Logistics)

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 When is “Good Enough” OK?

• Good enough is OK when…

– Lives are not at risk
– Financial statement accuracy is not at risk
– Business processes are vaguely defined
– The business is undergoing radical change

• The very act of implementing a new system and automating

numerous manual processes would change the business in
ways we could not predict
– Better to release early and often if possible

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 Organize and Baseline the Models

• We used the APQC Process

Classification Framework to organize
our business processes
• The taxonomy provided us a
structure to catalog each process
such that we could baseline them
against other business units within
Sony Pictures
– For example, the distribution of DVDs
in our Home Entertainment division
© 2006 APQC (www.apqc.org)

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 After Applying the APQC PCF

• 4.0 Deliver Products and Services

– 4.4 Deliver Product Service to Customer
• 4.4.3 Provide the service to specific customers
– 4.4.3.1 Organize daily service order fulfillment (Level 1)
– 4.4.3.1.1 Create Distribution List (Level 2)
– 4.4.3.1.1.1 Create Shipping List from Premium Orders (Level 3)

• Notice the concept of levels is subjective

– This challenge never goes away
– Always important to pick your perspective and be consistent

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 Benefits of a Classification System

• Standardizing process names enables us to compare

processes across the enterprise
• Enables us to see repeating patterns across business
divisions
• Helps to normalize technology portfolios by consolidating
systems when possible
• Allows us to compare ourselves to external organizations

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 The Live System

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 References

• Sharp, A. & McDermott, P. Workflow Modeling: Tools for

Process Improvement and Application Development, Artech
House, Inc. 2001
• BPMN 1.0, BPMI.org, 2004, Object Management Group,
2006, (www.bpmn.org)
• Rational Unified Process, IBM, 2006 (www.ibm.com/rational)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology, Integration
Definition For Function Modeling (IDEF0), NIST FIPSP183,
1993 (http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/idef02.doc)
• APQC, APQC Process Classification Framework v4.0.0, APQC,
2006 (www.apqc.org)

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