I Lionel, First let me state that your situation more common then not so you are in the middle of a crowd.
>The problem I am running into, though, is that our department has no >defined processes. In my research, I have found that, until we define our >processes, the CMS cannot really help us. You do not need to tell that them processes need to be defined (or re-defined) they know it (you are not the only one knowing it in you company for sure), that is a natural consequence of automation. What you need to do is to show how an environment can be established were implementation can take place and then evolve. Once that environment is established and players are in place, process definition is a natural consequence, but note that people will probably not notice that are defining an abstract entity called process rather then they are telling the information system how to behave for their benefit (this is the most critical point). >Does anyone have any experience in explaining this to management? Or >maybe I am off base here and it can be implemented so that we just >create a new workflow for every project? Well I do not know how both questions are related. On the second, you will know the answer when development takes place (analisis?), on the first management usually cares more for the benefits/cost and ultimately how it can be implemented sometimes, telling them that processes need to be defined is redundant so politically the argument can and should be voided. >We're a very hierarchical company and managers generally don't take >kindly to being told how to run their businesses. Well that is because it would be an inefficient approach to a business discussion. They know much more about their business then us most of the times (they have more info then us period). What you can do is make sound suggestions and expose benefits, but usually filter those suggestions so that only the ones that do not need complex business re-engineering and show immediate business benefits within the buy in users mentality. It's very easy to get over excited about exciting process definitions that do not ring a bell to managers, which is basically inefficient to say the least. Hope it helped, best regards, Nuno Loped Independent Consultant. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
