I think is making a distinction between IS and OUGHT Activities within a process SHOULD add value but sometimes they don t Within BPR people often make a distinction between As Is processes and To Be processes Perhaps it would be useful to make this explicit within the article However complex processes may include activities whose value add is obscure or difficult to quantify For example a salesman carries out some social chat prior to demonstrating the product and this possibly converts the customer to a more receptive state A craftsman may play around with the materials before starting construction which may possible put him into a more creative innovative state But do we really want to engineer every business conversation or playful bricolage to optimize some desired state transition This is BPR not NLP