Business Process Discovery

Assume you are a business process analyst for a Fortune 50 financial firm. This firm has recently purchased a bankrupt mortgage company and one of the first steps in incorporating this organization into the fold is to determine how they perform work today e.g. determine their current state business processes. The eventual goal is to determine more efficient and effective future state business processes that all sites will follow.

You have been informed of the following:

• The processes of the organization are not documented, and many appear to be performed "ad-hoc"
• The employees of this organization are located in several states with about 50 offices spread throughout the territory. Management of these offices are currently decentralized.
• The management of this organization is in flux due to the recent bankruptcy and incorporation into your organization. It is difficult if not impossible to get all subject matter experts together at one time.

In chapter 3 of the textbook, three ways to approach process discovery are described. They are:

• Centralized vs. distributed
• Top-down vs. bottom-up
• Structured vs. free-form

You have been assigned to perform the above described process discovery to develop "as-is" process models. Your manager has asked you to describe how you plan to approach this discovery. Write a two page paper identifying your proposed approach and the describe thre reasoning behind your selections.