Rummler-Brache Framework Description

The following is from Paul Harmon's book, "Business Process Change"

In 1990 Rummler and a colleague, Alan Brache, published Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. Unlike the other popular business process theorists, Rummler didn’t emphasize IT, but focused instead on the specifics of how to analyst processes, how to redesign and then improve processes, how to design jobs, and how to manage processes once they were in place. The emphasis on the white space on the organization chart stressed the fact that many process problems occurred when one department tried to hand off things to the next. The only way to overcome those interdepartmental problems, Rummler argued, was to conceptualize and manage processes as wholes.

One of the most important contributions made by Rummler and Brache was a framework that showed, in a single diagram, how everything related to everything else. They define three levels of performance: (1) and organizational level, (2) a process level, and (3) a job or performer level.

Rummler and Brache also introduce a matrix that they obtain by crossing their three levels with three different perspectives. The perspectives are goals and measures, design and implementation issues, and management.



The Rummler and Brache framework describes an organizations that is mature and capable of taking advantage of systematic processes. Also stresses that we must be concerned with not only the design of processes themselves, but also with measures of success and with the management of processes. In effect, the CMM diagram (NOT DESCRIBED HERE) described how organizations evolve toward process maturity, and the Rummler-Brache framework describes all of the things that a mature organization must master.

Mature organizations must align both vertically and horizontally. Activity goals must be related to process goals, which must, in turn, be derived from strategic goals of the organization. Similarly, a process must be an integrated whole, with goals and measures, a good design that is well implemented, and a management system that uses the goals and measures to assure that the process runs smoothly and, if need be, is improved.

The Rummler-Brache methodology has helped everyone involved in business process change to understand the scope of the problem, and it has provided a foundation on which all of today’s comprehensive process development methodologies are based.

Descriptions of a Process Analyst

Paul Harmon at bptrends.com identifies the responsibilities of a Process Analyst:

"It's the business process analyst who needs to understand the steps in the customer's "process/service" lifecycle. The analyst needs to understand each step in the customer's process because he needs to define exactly how the business will support that step, how the business process's employees will interact with the customers, and how each of those interactions will be evaluated. A common understanding of the customer process interface, throughout the customer process lifecycle, is required by everyone in the organization - by finance and operations and marketing.

A process analysis should help everyone in the organization reach an integrated understanding of how the organization creates value. That isn't something that occurs exclusively within operations, and it isn't something that can be neatly divided into "process" measures that are somehow separate from "customer" measures."

Failure of Business Schools to Understand Business Processes in Service Organizations

Paul Harmon at bptrends.com observes that Business Schools teach processes functionally...

"Business schools are organized around functional departments, just as most organizations are, and they teach courses along those functional lines - marketing, strategy and planning, finance and accounting and operations. Most business schools regard "processes" as an element within operations, reflecting the history of processes
and manufacturing."

and

"Recall our business school with its functional organizational structures. The idea that a modern business school would try to analyze "process" as an element within operations, and somehow separate from whatever it is that we do when we analyze customers, is not only out-of-date, it leads to error."


I would postulate that given the very nature of education (specialist driven) that there exists weakness to teach about cross-functional or cross-operational synergies. At the very least there is very low exposure to cross-functional view of organizations.

Process Analysis in a Service Organization and Healthcare

Paul Harmon comments on "Lean Solutions" and makes an observation about the difference between Taylor's Scientific Management processing vs service process managing:

"This underlies the point that we are NOT talking about producing a "product" (the repaired car) when we focus on services - we are talking about supporting a customer throughout the lifetime of the product/service that the customer is purchasing."

To me this sounds a lot like what Michael Porter says in "Redefining Healthcare." Porter talks about introducing competition back into healthcare by enabling and creating competition on medical conditions over the "full cycle of care."

I believe that effective process analysis in healthcare can produce lower costs and higher quality of care.

Links for HPT & BPI

Business Process Institute

International Society for Performance Improvement


Business Performance Improvement Resource

BP Trends

Apgar Score

Great example of performance improvement... the Apgar Score.

Rummler's Book, "Improving Performance"

Great points here in Rummler's book.
- Three levels of performance in an organization
1. Organizational performance,
2. Process performance and
3. Job performer performance.

Also Rummler notes that process re-engineering is not simply moving boxes around on a process flow, but also changing the job environment or the human performance system.

I also appreciate the description of performance improvement through, "identified five or six variables at each performance level, but the most critical factor is setting clear expectations, which are linked to the company's goals, and then linking the processes to goals all the way down to job performance. These variables are linked and they are cumulative--you need to keep building on them. Next, it's important that you are able to measure performance at each level to see if you've attained the desired level."

Another key aspect to improving performance is working effectively across functions.