Order knock-outs by least effort and highest termination probability first.
Prioritize checking conditions that balance high termination probability and low effort to minimize cost and maintain efficiency.
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
The knock-out pattern is a strategic and practical approach to improving operational efficiency. At the core of a typical business process are numerous conditions that must be met to achieve a desired outcome. However, if any of these conditions fail, it could lead to a premature termination of the process segment, termed a 'knock-out'.
This pattern works by analyzing and sequencing the order in which these conditions are checked. The flexibility in this ordering allows for a smart strategy where the conditions with the most favorable balance of high termination probability and low effort are checked first, followed by the second most favorable, and so on.
In other words, we aim to verify the conditions most likely to fail and least costly to check before the others. This methodical ordering minimizes the overall cost and effort of executing the business process by terminating any potentially unsuccessful paths at the earliest stage.
It's important to note that implementing the knock-out pattern requires a level of autonomy in the ability to order these checks. Also, while this approach generally leads to cost-efficient processes, it might potentially increase the total time taken to complete the process compared to simultaneous verification of all conditions. This is a factor to consider based on the specific needs and constraints of your business process.
Adopting this sequential checking strategy usually leads to the most cost-effective operation of a business process on average. While there isn't any clear downside to this approach, its application might be limited in scenarios where the order of checks can't be freely adjusted. Furthermore, while this method optimizes cost, it may prolong the total processing time in some parts of the workflow, compared to a scenario where all conditions are verified simultaneously.
Foundational free Patterns
Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases
Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes
Form cross-department teams for end-to-end case handling.
Consider whether activities may be executed in parallel
Collect similar work items and work in batches
Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to
Explore whether a process can easily be used for additional products or services
Allocate task based on past feedback or quality metrics
Allocate task based on collaborative experience: handover time, interactions, diversity
Move activities to more appropriate places
Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow