Starting a BPM journey means introducing a new culture of change that requires  vision and investment. Therefore, one key to a successful BPM project/program is to get buy-in at the highest executive level possible. Executive sponsorship should be obtained before the first BPM project is even started to ensure proper support  and organizational engagement and to assist in managing the scope of the BPM  journey.

The sponsorship of the top executive should be clear and publicized. IBM  suggests that the executive declare the BPM project as a top priority for the department, division, or company as appropriate. The executive should be physically present to kick off the initial project, even if it is on the other side of the  world. The engagement of the sponsoring executive establishes the priority of the transformational BPM projects among competing priorities and helps counter  scope creep (“just one more requirement”) that is typical within iterative  development efforts. Having the executive intervene and ask questions such as  “What is critical to this release?” and “What can wait for the next iteration?” can  be an effective way to reset project scope and expectations.

The first BPM project should deliver business value to the sponsoring executive and to the enterprise. In the top-down IBM approach, represented by the goal pyramid, the executive actively influences the project or program goals. The highest-level value metric for the project should be directly derived from these  goals and be a metric for the sponsoring executive (for example, total cost and cycle time of the employee on-boarding process.) At the end of the project, the  process owner reports back to the sponsoring executive on the project’s success  and the value delivered to the enterprise