Eliminate unnecessary activities
Eliminate non-value adding practices
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
A common way of regarding a activity as unnecessary is when it adds no value from a client's point of view. Typically, control activity in a workflow do not do this; they are incorporated in the model to fix problems created or not elevated in earlier steps. Control activities can often be found back as iterations and reconciliation tasks.
The heuristic is widespread in literature, for example see Peppard and Rowland (1995), Berg and Pottjewijd (1997), and Van der Aalst and Van Hee (2002). Buzacott (1996) illustrates the quantitative effects of eliminating iterations with a simple model.
The aims of this heuristic are to increase the speed of processing and to reduce the cost of handling a case. An important drawback may be that the quality of the service deteriorates.
Foundational free Patterns
Consider automating activities
Eliminate unnecessary activities
Reduce the number of contacts with customers and third parties
Form cross-department teams for end-to-end case handling.
Establish standardized interfaces
Consider a standardized interface with customers and partners
Move activities to more appropriate places
Offer a green alternative with the same outcome, utilizing different steps, resources, or partners, while retaining the previous existing process
Offer customers the possibility to serve themselves
Expertise-based task assignment
Match tasks to experts' specialized skills for efficiency