Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
One should be cautious of parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of such a sub-process and a lower efficiency. Applying this heuristic may result in faster processing times and less cost.
Especially Berg and Pottjewijd (1997) convincingly warn for parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of this "subflow" and a lower efficiency.
Note that this heuristic is in some sense similar to the triage concept. The main interpretation of the triage concept can be seen as a translation of the case type pattern on a activity level.
Applying this best practice may yield faster processing times and less cost. Also, distinguishing common subflows of many different flows may yield effciency gains. Yet, it may also result in more coordination problems between the business process (quality) and less possibilities for rearranging the business process as a whole (flexibility).
Foundational free Patterns
Combine small activities into composite activities
Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow
Move activities to more appropriate places
Avoid shared responsibilities for tasks by people from different functional units
Replace underlying resources with eco-friendly alternatives
Offer customers the possibility to serve themselves
First-contact problem resolution
Establish a one-contact resolution for customer issues
Preference-based task assignment
Let people do what they love to do
Delegate tasks according to resource cost
Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities
Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases
Establish a case-based mindset
Remove batch-processing and periodic activities from your business process