The strategic development of functional operational activities from higher-level business processes is a task that all organizations strive to master and continuously improve. The Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer has published the Department of Defense End-to-End Process Integration Framework in order to integrate and improve business operations that support national security.
The Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer (DCMO) is responsible for “synchronizing, integrating, and coordinating the business operations of the department and for ensuring optimal alignment in support of the warfighting mission.” To support this goal, the End-to-End (E2E) Framework serves as the basis for development of operational activities (OA) and further business process reengineering (BPR) efforts which focus on cost efficiency, integration and interoperability.
The Framework is also the foundation for organizing content in the Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA). The Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organization (FEAPO) defines BEA as “a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning and implementation, using a holistic approach for development and execution of strategies.”
Determining Operational Activities
Using The E2E Framework to develop individual agency operational activities allows alignment of everyday tasks to mission goals. Moving from business capabilities to specific activities for each process requires five levels of decomposition:
Level 0: E2E Business Processes are the business capabilities needed to fulfill the “Business Mission Areas.” The processes include both commercial best practices and DoD specific functions.
The DoD business process reference model includes 15 E2E business processes (Level 0):
- Procure to Pay
- Acquire to Retire
- Budget to Report
- Order to Cash
- Hire to Retire
- Plan to Stock
- Concept to Product (R& D)
- Environmental Liability
- Service Requisition to Resolution
- Service to Satisfaction
- Cost Management
- Proposal to Reward (Grants)
- Market to Prospect
- Prospect to Order
- Deployment to Redeployment/Retrograde
Level 1: Major Process Areas are determined by decomposing each E2E business process from Level 0 into broad areas that generically represent the “scope of the life cycle activities” that may happen for this specific business process.
For example, decomposition of Procure to Pay is defined at Level 1 as:
- Procure to Pay
- Create procurement requisition
- Develop procurement strategy
- Award procurement instrument
- Administer procurement instrument
- Perform receipt, acceptance and return
- Manage procurement entitlement
- Manage disbursements
- Perform instrument closeout
Level 2: Process Area Segments are the “scope of activities that may take place within a given process area.” They too are generic in nature and do not specify actual business scenarios or certain configurations.
Further decomposition of create procurement requisition is defined at Level 2 as:
Create procurement requisition
- Identify need
- Generate request
- Request approved
Level 3: Organizational Specific Processes are business flows specific to each agency and outline the scope of processes that the given organization needs to perform within each process area segment. These flows can vary greatly from agency to agency.
Level 4: Business System Specific Processes identify how Level 3 business flows are decomposed into specific activities that are either performed manually or by a given system. Level 4 business flows are the business processes mapped to solution capabilities and data objects used by a given organization in a given business system(s) environment.
Alignment to Mission Goals
Business measures are developed at the organizational level based upon Level 2 Process Area Segment Operational Activities. These measures track an individual program’s compliance with the larger strategic plan. The measures allow executive management to have a line-of-sight from organizational initiatives to the mission goals.
Conclusion
The DoD E2E Framework provides a roadmap for the strategic development of functional operational activities from higher-level business processes. Each stakeholder, whether at the executive or organizational level, has a centric, detailed view of what is needed to meet mission goals.
For more information, visit our other articles related to Business Process Reengineering and Enterprise Architecture.