Monthly Archives: May 2007

About Me

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I’m a business analyst and project manager. I’m currently in the
process of completing my Certified Process
Manager – Practitioner (CPM-P) certification through the Business
Process Management Group. 

After I graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Arts, I spent a year abroad.  I developed a passion for intercultural communication, and decided to pursue a Masters of Arts in Communication Studies from Arizona
State University.  It was an intense learning experience and I was able to refine my writing skills and develop my analysis skills.  I taught public speaking, conducted several anthropological studies, and absorbed new perspectives. 

Soon after graduating with my Master of Arts degree, I took on a role as a project manager for a large university.  My job was to manage the development of curricula.  From there, I moved to a position where I implemented an enterprise imaging and workflow application.  I managed the project plan, much of the analysis, and the actual implementation.  My expertise with the software allowed me to make the jump to a workflow and imaging vendor as a consultant.

As a consultant, I facilitated meetings with our customers, wrote functional requirements, and spent countless hours liaising between business and technology stakeholders.  I integrated our workflow and imaging software into Fortune 1000 companies’ HR, finance, and operations departments. 

After the travel got unbearable (around the time my daughter was born), I left the consultant role to help implement another workflow project for a legal network based in my hometown of Chicago.  My role was to direct, develop and implement the document automation aspects of the project.  To meet the strict deadlines I hired, managed and trained 17 analysts to convert and automate 20,000 legal documents.

Four years after I left the University, my old boss called me to ask if I’d return to help him start a new department called Office of Process Design (OPD).  Over the last 3 years, I’ve worked in OPD to help manage projects and do Process Analysis across the organization.  Today, I’m spearheading a project to refine the end-to-end process that develops and implements academic programs.

Graduating in the Flat World

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One of my cousins is graduating high school this month (yes, we are a generation apart), and I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy him The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman as a graduation present.  For me, the book was eye-opening, but for my cousin, it could help him make some important career decisions while he still has opportunities to explore.  I wish I read a book like this when I was his age!

This was the first book I had ever listened to on my MP3 player.  I downloaded it from audible.com, and I have to admit, I really liked the experience.  I listened to it on my Creative Zen Vision:M during my commute to and from work.  It took me about a month to listen to the 24 hours of reading.   The biggest problem with purchasing an audio book is that I do not have a tangible book with paper to refer to when writing this review.
Why I am buying this book for my cousin:

  1. To give him an idea of what types of skills will/may be important in the years ahead.  It’s not just about becoming an engineer, or a programmer, or lawyer.  It’s about understanding how to communicate, synthesize,  and innovate.  These are the types of things that will help him compete in the global job market.
  2. It will help him question some of the assumptions that he (probably) has regarding our (U.S.) role in the global economy.  My generation took/takes for granted that the U.S. is and will always be THE global force when it comes to economics, innovation, and education.  With the flat world we we have to suspend the above assumptions.
  3. He needs something to do over the summer–it’s not a short book.
  4. My Cousin is a smart musician type and is going to be studying in a fine arts department.  I think The World is Flat could really help him to see his talents and potential from a new perspective.

I think a take-away from the book is that this is an era of extreme opportunity, and we must take advantage of it.  If we do not take advantage of the opportunities, we will no longer enjoy the wealth and prosperity we have today.  Good luck, Cuz.

Finding the opposite of always

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I’ve been listening to Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big on the way to work for the last several mornings. The book is a compilation of some of his best blog posts, and there are some real gems! This morning I listened to a real short but totally useful post that can be applied when analyzing processes (or products or whatever). He says:

Figure what the always is. Then do something else.

In other words, identify your assumptions and suspend them. When analyzing processes, this is real important. It seems as though every interview, workshop, or discussion I have with a stakeholder includes mention of at least one thing that someone (or some system) always does. Sometimes these "always" items end up being vestiges of business rules or system limitation that no longer has relevance or value to the company. If they do not add value, get rid of them.
I’ve thought of a couple of ways to put this idea into action:

  1. In future workshops, I’m going to designate one part of the whiteboard (or flip-chart) as the "Always Space" . Anytime someone uses the word "always," I’m going to write it down in plain sight. I’ll dedicate some time toward the end of the workshop to revisit the "Always Space" to challenge participants to completely delete these "always" from the process. We may not always end up with feasible solutions from the exercise, but it will help participants to shift their perspective.
  2. When interviewing stakeholders, I’m going to keep my own "Always Space" in the margins of my notes. I’ll revisit them later on my own.

Thanks for the idea, Seth. I’m excited to give this a try…
If you want to read Seth’s original post it’s here.

Finding the opposite of always

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I’ve been listening to Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big on the way to work for the last several mornings. The book is a compilation of some of his best blog posts, and there are some real gems! This morning I listened to a real short but totally useful post that can be applied when analyzing processes (or products or whatever). He says:

Figure what the always is. Then do something else.

In other words, identify your assumptions and suspend them. When analyzing processes, this is real important. It seems as though every interview, workshop, or discussion I have with a stakeholder includes mention of at least one thing that someone (or some system) always does. Sometimes these “always” items end up being vestiges of business rules or system limitation that no longer has relevance or value to the company. If they do not add value, get rid of them.

I’ve thought of a couple of ways to put this idea into action:

  1. In future workshops, I’m going to designate one part of the whiteboard (or flip-chart) as the “Always Space” . Anytime someone uses the word “always,” I’m going to write it down in plain sight. I’ll dedicate some time toward the end of the workshop to revisit the “Always Space” to challenge participants to completely delete these “always” from the process. We may not always end up with feasible solutions from the exercise, but it will help participants to shift their perspective.
  2. When interviewing stakeholders, I’m going to keep my own “Always Space” in the margins of my notes. I’ll revisit them later on my own.

Thanks for the idea, Seth. I’m excited to give this a try…

If you want to read Seth’s original post it’s here.