Engage in career development and advancement strategies, including effective networking, mentoring, and creating a personal brand.
Mentors and Shadowing
In this Assessment, you are going to evaluate a specific business process based on the criteria detailed below. If you already have selected a business process, continue using that and skip to the next paragraph. If you have not yet selected the business process you will use for this Assessment, then begin by selecting one. Email your instructor and clearly describe the objective of this process, the participants, and the strategic significance for the company. The business process you select must have a clear beginning and an end with identifiable, specific steps. Your instructor will confirm that the process you selected is suitable, or will ask you to select another one.
As the BPM nears completion, the process team must be concerned not only with the best-fit roll-out option but also with providing information to the work team that will handle the completed process or process change to ensure their success. This often takes the form of mentoring.
Mentoring is most often a one-on-one activity in which an experienced individual (the mentor) provides guidance and advice to someone with less experience (the mentee). Any mentoring relationship is, by nature of the process, a close one in which experiences, knowledge, and skills are shared.
The best way for mentors and mentees to share information is through a process called shadowing. Shadowing occurs when the mentee actively watches, follows, and participates in the activities, processes, or actions that are completed by the mentor. This provides a visceral and active learning environment.
Consider the BPM process you have been designing and answer the following questions (support your answers with research on mentoring and shadowing through the Library and the Internet):
1. Should all members of the BPM team be considered as possible mentors? Explain and justify your answer.
2. Who within the organization would be the mentee(s) for the institutionalization of the new processes? Make sure you fully support your conclusions.
3. Identify ways in which mentors and mentees can use shadowing as a method for tracking and assessing the ongoing changes within the company after completion of the BPM project.