The Met Office – Process modelling and maturity mapping as the foundation for operating model transformation

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Background

With more than 3,000 forecasts delivered every day, powered by cutting-edge technology and world-leading science, the Met Office has a wide and complex process landscape. They needed to fully ‘map’ those processes in preparation for an external ISO 9001 audit, and then understand whether their current processes were mature enough to support a re-organsation aligned to a new operating model with greater automation.

Delivery

Phase 1: Mapped the real As-Is processes end-to-end

With an imminent deadline for an ISO Audit, The Met Office needed to increase process awareness, mapping and ownership, across a very large number of processes.

As the project was about to kick off the country went into lockdown. i-Realise was accustomed to remote working and running engaging virtual workshops using Signavio’s process mapping software. With the Met Office we set up three teams of paired i-Realise + Met Office business analysts who then engaged with seven business areas to capture 99 processes.

Partnering closely with their Met Office ‘buddies’, creating engaging virtual workshops for our stakeholders and ensuring that the work was completed within the originally-envisaged timescales.

In addition to supporting their readiness for the audit, we also worked with them to improve their process governance; publishing, socialising and managing version control and access) to build firm foundations for the future phases in their ongoing development.

Phase 2: Mapped the new operating model and assessed process maturity against it

We worked with the Met Office to map out all the required elements of their new operating model – processes, organisation hierarchies, data and technology architecture and location maps. The key to this was engagement – building an understanding through the organisation of what an operating model is and each person’s responsibility in improving it.

We then built a 7-level Process Maturity Model (from 1; process awareness to 7: full value chain automation) and using process mining and simulation in Signavio we were able to highlight which processes were really good, which were good enough, and which would require greater improvement to facilitate the new operating model and increased automation.

We also built a real-time process performance dashboard which aligned the measures of process performance to the measures of success for the business area.

Outcomes

Despite going into lockdown, all processes were mapped and evidenced within the originally-envisaged timescales. The Met Office passed their ISO audit.

Process maturity began to improve throughout this project. Of the thirteen Level 1 process areas, 50% saw an increase in awareness maturity and 60% saw an increase in management maturity in just two months.

We also set firm foundations for next phases – with a real-time dashboard and business readiness for change –
positioning the client for operating model transformation.

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“I wanted an organization who first of all would work with us the way we work…so were prepared to come
and fit in with who we are and what we’re about. Would work to our modeling standards, using our modeling
techniques, and would use our technology. If you’re going to blend an internal and external team, and have
multiple partners, then the teamwork matters and that requires a fit with our values and purpose. We needed
people who have intellectual rigor, but also have a bit of humanity. I don’t want people who are going to come
into our organization and talk at us, or heaven forfend, talk down to us. I didn’t need advice, I needed a partner.
i-Realise work in a way that’s aligned with that.”

Lalage Burchall, Head of Business Architecture, Met Office

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