The Business Process Detective: Uncovering How Work Actually Gets Done

Greetings, architects and sleuths of operational chaos!
This week, we don our metaphorical trench coats and fedoras as we enter the shadowy world of business processes—the place where documented workflows go to die, and the real flow of work wanders off like a suspect with no alibi.

The Main Story: A Case of the Missing Process

You’re called into a meeting because “something in Order-to-Cash feels… off.”
No further details. Just vibes.

Armed with a whiteboard marker and misplaced optimism, you begin interviewing stakeholders. On paper, the process is crisp, elegant, the very definition of BPM paradise. In reality?

• Sales starts the process… unless finance starts it first.

• IT maintains the workflow… except when Operations updates it directly in Production “just this once.”

• Approvals happen automatically… unless Marketing overrides them by emailing Todd.

And Todd always approves. Todd is the anti-governance singularity.

Welcome to the Process Noir, where every diagram has a doppelgänger and every team swears they follow the official version—“minus a few practical shortcuts.”

TOGAF Insight: Enter the Architecture Detective

TOGAF’s Phase B (Business Architecture) doesn’t give you a magnifying glass, but it may as well. It gently reminds you:

• Reality beats documentation every time

• Processes must reflect how value actually moves, not how we wish it moved

• Stakeholders are your clues, not your suspects—most of the time

Using capability maps and value streams, you can finally show leadership where the “official” process ends and the “real” process begins. Spoiler: there’s a canyon in between.

Educational Twist: Practical Process Sleuthing Tips

• Follow the artifacts, not the org chart. They tell the truth.

• Shadow real users. Preferably with consent.

• Catalog variants without judgment. Every deviation has a motive.

• Use value streams to identify where “mystery work” hides.

Humor in Diagrams

Reader Engagement

🎤 Detective’s Poll:
Which undocumented process variant have you uncovered this year?

• The Secret Spreadsheet

• The Shadow Approval Chain

• The Todd Override

• The “We’ve Always Done It This Way”

Next Week’s Tease

Episode 47: Future-Proofing Fallacies — Why predicting technology trends is hilariously hard.