Human Centric BPM: What is it, its uses and 10 steps to apply it

Human-Centric BPM is a business management process approach that focuses on the tasks, activities and human skills in processes, to create other automated functions to support these human actions.

The reason for this is that there are in any business process, a range of activities that can only be performed by people, human beings just like us.

Some examples of uniquely human tasks covered by the Human-Centric BPM:

• Reviewing reports, data or measurements.
• Creation of texts, such as proposals, contracts or reports.
• Creation of images, such as design pieces.
• Judging.
• Evaluating.
• To decide between alternatives.
• Translating languages.
• Approving or authorizing.

And many others.

We can say that a human activity within a process can be translated as what the person does. But to be integrated into the process, a series of automated assistance activities carried out by the system will be used, such as alerts or warnings to inform that certain human activity was not carried out on time, for example.

The goal of Human-Centric BPM is to define these activities in “packages” that can be standardized and integrated into various processes. Meaning the creation of “work units” that can be more easily allocated by senior management of the company. The definition of these allocable human activities is the foundation of Human-Centric BPM.

So that you understand better, keep in mind the following:

Each of these “activities” is a description of a real human job that must be done and must involve:

• Notification
• Information
• Conclusion
• Deadline
• Alerts and warnings

Therefore, the Human-Centric BPM can be understood as a way to design process flows containing difficult to replace human activities, to provide better management and execution. Usually, they are complementary to Centric System Processes that are focused on replacing most human intervention, through automation.

Human-Centric BPM features

• More flexibility
• Adaptability
• Agility in response to events
• The ability to reassign work
• Possibility of placing jobs on hold
• Mobile access
• Easier integration with other systems

The benefits provided by these features typically include risk reduction, higher rates of compliance, increased management support and better interaction with customers.

10 Steps to Define a Human Activity

We uncovered a methodology for you developed by Professors Keith Swenson and Jim Farris that defines human activities and will be part of a Human-Centric BPM process

1. Set your goal

Before starting any project, you should be clear about what you want to accomplish.

2. Identify human labor

Start by listing the tasks that must be performed by individuals, i.e. which depend on human skill to be performed.
Typically they can be divided into three categories:

• Decisions to be taken.
• Tasks that could be automated but aren’t yet.
• Physical tasks such as wrapping, for example.

3. Determine the completion of the activity

It involves choices. Human tasks can result in more than one conclusion, like right or wrong, accepted or rejected, passed or failed, etc.

4. Put the tasks in order

The work and conclusions should be identified through a network diagram of human activities that must be performed properly. Make the conditions and the order of activities clear.

5. Determine who does what

After the tasks have been identified and put in order, it must be determined who will be responsible for performing the tasks.

6. Determine the information to be used

Here you must specify a scheme or a set of schemes to clarify the necessary information to carry out the activities.

7. Define the access to information for each activity

In some parts of the process, certain information can be read and updated. Elsewhere, the information can be read but not updated. There are also times in the process where information is completely hidden or not specified because it’s not relevant to the activity in question.

8. Determine deadlines

An activity may have to be performed in a period and this must be clear.

9. Designing the presentation of information

This will give a user the information and its visual presentation. It may be specific for each activity, or the same throughout the process.

10. Integrate information

Determine how the information needed in a process can be collected from various sources and sent to various destinations.

By completing these steps, you have defined one of the “human activities” to compose your Human-Centric BPM system.

Note that this will only be one of the approaches, there are others equally valid for managing business processes as well