| Course | MT400 Business Process Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | Process governance charter |
| Length | About 1,390 words, 8 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT400 Unit 9
Rules, Not People: An MT400 Unit 9 Governance Charter for the Owner of a Window Installer's Contract-to-Cash Process
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT400: Business Process Management
Unit 9 Process Governance Charter
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The company, roles and decisions are composite; the governance concepts and sources cited are real.
1. Purpose and Scope
This charter governs the contract-to-cash process at Loess Hills Window Company, from the moment a homeowner signs a contract to the moment the final payment clears. Its purpose, written in the homeowner's terms, is that every customer receives a firm install date soon after signing, a crew that finishes the job in one visit and a clean close with no chasing. Eight departments sit on its path, from sales and measuring at the start, through order entry, purchasing, receiving and scheduling, to installation and, last, accounting. Every person in those departments who touches a contract-to-cash order is bound by the process rules this charter authorizes, whatever department they report to. Other processes in the architecture, including service request to resolution, fall outside this charter until a charter of their own is signed.
2. The Process Owner
The process owner is the director of customer delivery, who reports directly to the president. Reporting to the president is deliberate. A process owner placed under any one department head would be asked, sooner or later, to favor that department's targets over the homeowner's wait, and the Unit 6 seminar showed why the head of operations, who already runs four of the model's seven lanes, could not be neutral. Hammer (2007) describes the process owner as a senior manager with responsibility for a process's design and performance, separate from the line managers who supervise the people doing the work, and the role defined here follows that separation.
3. Authority Granted
The director sets order release criteria, and every department releases, holds or returns orders according to them. The director sets scheduling rules, including the maximum number of days between kit check and install, and scheduling applies them even when a route is not full. The director sets close-out standards, including the signed completion certificate at the walkthrough, and installation and accounting follow them. The director approves any departmental procedure that touches the contract-to-cash flow; a procedure issued without that co-signature has no force in the process. The director controls a process improvement budget of 60,000 dollars a year, spent on training, pilots and minor tools without separate approval. The director owns the six process indicators defined in Unit 5 and decides how they are calculated and reported.
These clauses use operative verbs on purpose. A charter that asks its owner to coordinate, encourage or support grants nothing a department head is obliged to respect, and the first dispute would reveal that the title carries no weight.
4. Limits on Authority
The director hires no one, dismisses no one and sets no one's pay; those decisions stay with the department heads and the president. The director does not supervise crews, technicians or office staff and does not assign their daily work. The director cannot overrule an installation lead's decision that a job is unsafe to start or continue, and no scheduling rule may be written to pressure a crew past that call. Purchasing keeps authority over vendor selection and price negotiation, and accounting keeps authority over credit decisions and collections policy. The director may propose changes in any of these areas through the council but cannot impose them.
Spelling out the limits matters as much as the grant. Department heads who cannot see the ground they keep tend to treat a new role as a threat to all of it, and resistance of that kind is quieter and more damaging than open disagreement.
5. Decision Rights
Eleven recurring decisions are assigned in a table modeled on the clear decision roles Rogers and Blenko (2006) recommend, where each decision has one maker, named parties who must be consulted and parties who are informed. In prose, the table reads as follows.
Order release criteria are decided by the director after consulting order entry and purchasing, with sales informed. Exceptions to release criteria on a single order are decided by the order entry lead within the director's rules. Scheduling rules are decided by the director after consulting scheduling and installation. The daily install schedule is decided by the scheduling lead within those rules. Approval thresholds for large or unusual orders, set at 25,000 dollars in the redesign, are decided by the director after consulting the sales manager. Kit check standards are decided by the director after consulting receiving and installation. Measure sheet content, including the notes field, is decided by the director after consulting measuring and order entry. Close-out standards are decided by the director after consulting installation and accounting. Invoice timing within those standards is decided by accounting. Remake approval on a single job is decided by the purchasing lead, with the director informed weekly. Changes to department targets that conflict with a process rule are decided by the president on the council's recommendation.
The last line of the table answers the seminar's open question: when a process rule and a department target collide, the rule holds and the target is revised.
The last of these decisions settles in advance the dispute the Unit 6 seminar left open. When a scheduling rule costs operations its crew utilization target, the rule stands for the current quarter, and the council recommends a revised target to the president at its next meeting. Operations does not lose a bonus because of a rule it did not write; neither does it gain a veto over the rule.
6. The Process Council
The council consists of the director, who chairs it, and the seven department heads whose staff work in the process lanes, with measuring and order entry represented by one head. It meets on the second Tuesday of every month. A quorum is the director and five department heads. The council reviews the six indicators and the two balancing measures, reviews orders that waited past their handoff standards, recommends target revisions to the president and hears proposed changes to process rules. Minutes and decisions are posted within two business days so crews and office staff can see what changed and why.
7. Escalation
A department head who disagrees with a process rule raises it first with the director in writing. If the two cannot agree within five business days, either may take the matter to the president, who decides within a further five business days. The rule in force stays in force while the dispute is open, unless the president suspends it. A crew lead's safety decision is never subject to escalation under this charter.
8. Change Control for the Process Model
The BPMN model of the redesigned process is the authoritative description of how contract-to-cash work flows. Any change to a lane, task, gateway or handoff standard is proposed in writing, reviewed by the council, approved by the director and recorded with a version number and date. Departments may not change how they hand work to the next lane without that approval. Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013) found that process ownership and documented process design are among the elements of process orientation associated with better firm performance, and change control keeps the documented design from drifting away from practice.
9. Monitoring and Annual Review
The director reports the six indicators to the president monthly and presents a full review each October. The annual review compares results with targets, examines the balancing measures for signs of gaming, considers whether the charter's authority has proved sufficient or excessive, and recommends the next redesign cycle. Monitoring in this sense is the start of the next round of discovery rather than the end of the project, which is how Dumas et al. (2018) present the process lifecycle. Trkman (2010) lists the alignment of measures with process goals among the factors that most often decide whether process management survives, and the annual review is where that alignment is checked.
10. Effective Date and Signatures
This charter takes effect on the first business day after it is signed by the president and acknowledged by each department head. It remains in force until replaced or withdrawn by the president. The next review date is the first Monday of October.
References
Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J., & Reijers, H. A. (2018). Fundamentals of business process management (2nd ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56509-4
Hammer, M. (2007). The process audit. Harvard Business Review, 85(4), 111-123.
Kohlbacher, M., & Reijers, H. A. (2013). The effects of process-oriented organizational design on firm performance. Business Process Management Journal, 19(2), 245-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/14637151311308303
Rogers, P., & Blenko, M. (2006). Who has the D? How clear decision roles enhance organizational performance. Harvard Business Review, 84(1), 52-61.
Trkman, P. (2010). The critical success factors of business process management. International Journal of Information Management, 30(2), 125-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2009.07.003
Reading the MT 400 Unit 9 instructions
For MT400 Unit 9, the redesigned process needs a standing owner, and the charter is the document that creates one. Instructors expect the process owner's authority to be stated in words that bind, such as sets, approves and releases, rather than coordinates or supports. Limits on that authority should be just as clear, so department heads can see what they keep. A decision-rights table, often in RACI or a similar format, assigns recurring decisions to one maker each. Most prompts also ask for a council or review body, an escalation path with time limits and a way to control changes to the process model. Monitoring should continue after the charter is signed, usually through an annual review. The charter should say who signs it and when it takes effect.
Inside the MT400 Unit 9 example
This sample is laid out as an internal charter in ten numbered sections. Scope and purpose come first, in the homeowner's terms. Section two places the director under the president and cites Hammer on process owners. Authority is granted in operative verbs, and a note explains why. Limits on hiring, pay, supervision, safety, purchasing and credit follow. The decision-rights section, modeled on Rogers and Blenko, gives each of eleven decisions a maker and consulted parties, under a highlighted line on the rule holding when it collides with a department target. Council membership and quorum, a five-day escalation to the president and change control for the BPMN model come next, the last citing Kohlbacher and Reijers. An October review, after Dumas and colleagues and Trkman, and the signatures close it.
Reading the MT400 Unit 9 grading rubric
Governance charters are generally graded on clear authority, stated limits, a complete decision-rights assignment and mechanisms that keep the process managed after the project ends. Graders read the verbs closely, and an owner who only coordinates earns little because nothing binds the departments. Rubrics reward limits stated as plainly as powers. Credit goes to a decision table in which every decision has exactly one maker. Settling a known conflict inside the table, such as a rule that costs a department its target, shows the charter was tested against a hard case. Escalation with time limits and change control over the model earn points for durability. An annual review tied to the next improvement cycle shows lifecycle thinking. Format, signatures and APA 7 citations complete the marks.
Common MT400 Unit 9 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Many charters name a process owner and stop, giving a title with no powers attached. Others grant broad authority with no limits, which department heads would resist on the first day. A frequent gap is the decision table in which two roles share the decision, so disputes have no answer. Escalation is often left out, or sent to a committee with no deadline. Change control over the process model is rarely mentioned, so departments drift back to old habits without anyone approving it. Charters also tend to end at the signature, forgetting the monitoring stage. Before submitting, pick the hardest dispute your process is likely to produce and walk it through your charter. If the document does not say who decides, by when and what happens meanwhile, add the clause that does.
Get an MT400 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
Governance charters differ by organization and by how much authority a section expects an owner to hold. Name both, as your Unit 9 prompt sets them, and a free first charter follows within 24-48h: the owner's authority, its limits, a decision-rights table in RACI or the format your instructor names, and review mechanisms matched to the rubric. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT400 Unit 9 questions, answered
Who should sign a process governance charter?
Someone senior to every department the process crosses, usually the chief executive or president in a company this size. A signature from one department head cannot bind the others. In your paper, say who signs and why, because the signer's reach is what makes the owner's authority real rather than advisory.
Is a RACI chart required in an MT400 governance charter?
Not always, but some decision-rights format generally is, and RACI is the most familiar. What matters is that each important decision has exactly one role that makes it, with consulted and informed parties named. A table of eleven specific decisions persuades more than a chart of vague duties, and it gives the council something concrete to revisit when a dispute arrives.
Is a governance charter the same thing as a project charter?
A project charter authorizes temporary work with a scope, budget and end date. A process governance charter creates standing authority over an ongoing process that has no end date. If your prompt uses the word charter, check which kind it means; in this course it usually means the second, and the paper should read as permanent arrangements rather than a plan with a finish line.
Where can I find a free MT400 Unit 9 sample paper?
This page carries the complete MT400 Unit 9 governance charter, giving a window company's director of customer delivery authority over eleven order-flow decisions.
How does the MT400 Unit 9 sample handle a rule that costs operations its utilization target?
The rule stays in force for the quarter, and the council recommends a revised target to the president, so operations neither loses a bonus nor gains a veto.