INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 3 the UCAM was introduced in terms of the common elements relating to competency assessments that must be generated in order to set up and conduct assessments and are produced as outputs from assessments. But how and when are these elements produced and used? This chapter answers this question by looking at the processes that form part of the definition of the UCAM.

The importance of modelling

At the heart of the UCAM is a set of four core processes that defines what needs to be done in order to undertake competency assessments using the UCAM approach. These processes are described in the remainder of this chapter using a model-based approach to understanding processes that is described fully in Holt (2009). While this book does not aim to teach modelling, is it worth, before looking at the UCAM processes, considering the question of why bother with modelling at all?

Processes are complex entities, even those that appear to be simple. Identifying what has to be done does not give a clear picture of a process. How is the work that has to be carried out in a process to be broken down? Who is responsible for carrying out the activities of a process? In what order are the activities carried out and how does the person carrying them out know what to do next? What information is needed before a process can be executed and what information does a process produce? How are these process inputs and outputs related? Why is the process being carried out and how does it relate to other processes?

All of these questions highlight issues of complexity that are inherent in all processes. This complexity can make processes difficult to understand, often leading to mistakes in carrying them out. It can also make it very hard to communicate effectively about processes. This can be particularly problematical when such communication needs to take place between organisations. Different organisations speak different languages – each will have its own specific set of terms for the concepts surrounding processes that forms a barrier to communication and, again, can cause problems if such processes have to be understood and carried out cooperatively by people from multiple organisations. The same problem can even occur within organisations, particularly large organisations, where different business units may not even speak the same organisational language.

These three issues of complexity, lack of understanding and communication problems form a vicious triangle, feeding into one another. Unmanaged complexity will lead to a lack of understanding and communication problems. Communication problems will lead to unidentified complexity and a lack of understanding. A lack of understanding will lead to communication problems and complexity. One way to tackle these three ‘evils’ is to take a ‘model-based’ approach.

A model-based approach helps us when understanding, defining, documenting and deploying processes. This modelling allows us to identify the complexity in the processes, aid in our understanding of the processes and improve communication about them, and all in a way that uses an established notation within a defined approach to ensure that we are producing a complete, concise and, above all, consistent model of the processes.

Modelling is, in its essence, an approach that allows us to look at any system (in this case, processes) from different points of view, to simplify each view and to ensure that all of these views are consistent. The approach taken here uses a visual notation, in that it uses diagrams, to express any information related to a set of processes.