We have developed a training program to get you up-to-speed to understand all important aspects of Continuous Business Model Planning (CBMP).
The training program contains both videos you have to watch and exam questions, answers and explanations.

It is about Planning innovation and/or transformation of your business, in certain scope, in a way that demonstrates the impact on your organization and Value objectives. Whereby your business is expressed in terms of an ecosystem of interacting Business Models (one or more), of yourself, and your Partners and Customers.
“Continuous” relates to the idea of a closed-loop Planning activity, like the PDCA or DMAIC cycle. CBMP can be considered “DMAIC at strategy level” or “strategic DMAIC”.

We defined a closed-loop method, consistent with PDCA and DMAIC approaches, as: Discover – Prototype – Adopt.

Discover

“Discover” covers the creativity part of the method to discover and build shared understanding of and consensus about:

• how things work, or may or should work
• how to address issues
• implement ideas
• what information / facts matter in this context
• etc.

Prototype

“Prototype” covers the more analytical work of transforming the results of “Discover” into a structured system. This structured system is a representation of the Business, and can be used to perform impact analysis. It functions also as basis for Dashboards, for decision making, that will be developed during the “Adopt” stage.

Adopt

“Adopt” is about development of Dashboards, to present the results of “Prototype”, in an interactive way. With focus on:

• demonstrating impact on the organization of the business and related Value objectives, for the various Participants/stakeholders that area involved
• moderate decision making about implementation and the actual business change
• initiate change

The actual change management is not directly supported by VDMbee Strategyplanner. Business operations can during and after implementation monitor the improvements. This is done by comparing the newly implemented baseline with “actuals” (performance metrics). “Actuals” can be imported into VMP to compare Plan versus actuals, and possibly identify reasons to initiate next cycles of innovation and/or transformation. This can result in new Phase(s) in the Plan.

Phases

Normally, one would go through the stages of Discover-Prototype-Adopt per each Phase in the Plan. Though it would be possible also, during a single cycle of Discover-Prototype-Adopt, to define more than one Phase.

Note that, technically spoken, it is possible to start working in “Prototype”, and to skip “Discover”, or to create Models that are typically created during the “Discover” stage, after you did Prototyping. It would also be possible to not create any “Adopt”-related Model.
But, logically, and for best results, it is recommended to follow the entire method, through the stages of Discover – Prototype – Adopt.

Three persona’s can be distinguished on the “delivery” side of CBMP.

Workshop leader.

The Workshop leader is the main actor during the “Discover” stage of CBMP. The “Discover” stage of CBMP is also the “creativity” stage of it. “Discovery” is done best via a series of workshops, with Participants/stakeholders involved. A Workshop leader is required to facilitate these workshops, in close connection with the client(s). Basically there will one or two workshop sessions per each sub-stage of “Discover”. For some sub-stages, such as Ecosystem and Value Creation, it may be required to organize more, intermediate, workshops, typically with less Participants involved (core-group).

Analyst.

The Analyst is the main actor during the “Prototype” stage of CBMP, but will often start earlier than that. As soon as, in a certain sub-stage of “Discover”, a Model reaches sufficient stability and consensus, the Analyst will generate structured model data (for “Prototype”), from Models (diagrams) as created during “Discover”). Initially just as much as is required to prepare for next workshop session(s) during “Discover”. The Analyst is supposed to also facilitate re-use of as-generated structured Model data, as a starter for Business Maps for next steps during “Discover”. After the “Discover” stage has completed, the Analyst will then proceed with “Prototype”, to finalize structured Models. This include Value impact as calculated (serving as basis for creation of Dashboards during “Adopt”).

Change agent.

The Change agent is the main actor during the “Adopt” stage of CBMP, and will start from the result of “Prototype”, by creating interactive Dashboards. The Change agent will facilitate decision making about future direction. For that purpose, the Change agent present “Prototype” results, especially based on Dashboards, to the Participants/client(s). The Change agent will also help to create Scenarios, to conduct what-if experiments, so that an transparent as possible view of future impact of possible decisions are visualized. After decisions are taken, change should be initiated.

The Change agent may then translate differences between As-Is and To-Be into change requirements that are input for change projects. This part itself is not supported by VMP. After implementation has been done, and business performance results become available, the Change agent can assist monitoring these, as well as feedback of these into VMP, and presentation of Plan versus “actuals” via a Dashboard. As a basis for considering the initiation of next cycles of innovation or transformation, and by that, continuation and extension of the Plan in VMP.

Participant

Other participants would also be served best by a short “Awareness” training, so that they learn about CBMP, its purpose, its promises, what to contribute, how to prepare and what to expect from participating in the CBMP process.

These persona’s all require training and certification. This is organized by providing a training program. Note that different parties could adopt the role(s) of these persona’s. For instance the role of Analyst could also be subcontracted to VDMbee.

It is the expectation that the roles of Workshop leader and Change agent would be more widely adopted by client representatives or service providers that serve clients, than the role of Analyst. But it is very well possible that they adopt all three roles. Or possibly one may start by adopting the Workshop leader and Change agent roles, but only adopt the Analyst role after more experience has been built up.

We deliver a dedicated training course for each persona.

Join our training to get hands-on experience in modeling and evaluating the creation and exchange of value for your business.

Anybody in need for skills, methodology and tools to innovate Strategy Planning and Execution like Strategy Consultants, Business Consultants, Transformation Agents, Business Architects and Innovators.