I think we would all agree that BPM and business architecture set out to overcome the issues associated with silos. And I think we would also agree that the problems associated with silos derive from functional decomposition.

On BPM and Silos – Jaisundar

One of the most fundamental benefits of business process management (BPM) is the opportunity it presents for rethinking the process and breaking free of the grip of a decades’ old “silo” mind-set.
Another BPM benefit hinges on your ability to break free from this siloed thinking to foster the power of a perspective that de-couples processes from applications, while also exploiting the transactional competencies of applications

on BPM and Silos – Scott Francis

The challenge is that you have to get mindsets to change – software alone won’t do it for you. The software can make it easier to visualize the new world without silos, but there’s still a lot of heavy lifting to do with the organization and culture.

On BPM in the Cloud – Theo Priestley

A process is still a process no matter where you stick it, you could easily orchestrate it as efficiently on-premise, Cloud does not equal efficiency as an outcome. Let’s dispell some of the myth right here

On BPM Impact – Tom Molyneux

BPM has the very same problem nearly everywhere. Enormous resources are invested getting to the point where processes are agreed upon and ready for use by the employees. But how to truly affect the organization and get things done in new and better ways? This is a very real challenge that confronts all organizations at some point in their ‘process lifetimes’.

On Processes and Procedures – Craig Reid

The easiest way to think about processes and procedures is in the level of detail of the information. Processes can be described as being at a “high level” and operate across the organization’s varying functions, whereas procedures sit at a “low level”

On Process Change – Brad Power

Engaging workers as drivers of process changes may seem like it’s slowing things down, particularly in implementing a revolutionary enterprise system. But what’s your alternative? You either pay upfront and get worker ownership and sustainability of changes, or you pay later to get buy-in and overcome resistance

Aye cap’n, all the men are ready replied Skippy.
Process analysts, developers, project manager, account manager, project sponsor – everyone ready captain!
A good start to the project. There must be hundreds here.

Ok! Set Sail! barked the captain.
Hundreds hurrily left the boat.

Shiver me timbers! yelled the captain. Where is everyone going?
It’s quite normal captain, replied Skippy. Most of them were here to enjoy the excitement of a new project. Many of them will work from their comfortable desks on the shore. There won’t be many that are actually going with us to sea.
Well blow me down! So how many are going to sail with us?
A dozen or so, replied Skippy.

The following morning the captain awoke to find half of his crew missing.
Status Report! yelled the captain to his second in command.

Most of the men jumped off the boat during the night replied Skippy. Some said that they had finished their analysis, some said that their allocated project days ended. Some were transferred to other ships.

Arrrrrggghhh! growled the captain.
They’ll be walkin the plank if I catch them!

The following morning the captain awoke to find just a handful of his crew left.
Where’s everyone! roared the captain.
They jumped off the boat during the night replied Jack. The sea has never been friendly to IT projects. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”

Scallywags!! growled the captain.
They’ll be walkin the plank if I catch them!

The following morning the captain awoke to himself alone.
Skippy! Skippy! Where are you!
A silence echoed though the ship.

Arrrrrggghhh! growled the captain.
At least now I can take off this eyepatch. It’s been itching me like hell.

BPM isn’t the first or last three-letter acronym to suffer from some ambiguity. (ERP anyone?) Ambiguity may in fact be the key correlation to long-term survival as a category, rather than the Achilles heel, as he and others feel it is.

On the BPM Message – Theodore Papailiou

The surprising point here is that in most cases, those with whom I met were overwhelmed and timid about BPM, which made me wonder: “Have we overcomplicated our message?” If you looked around the exhibit hall, the vendor booths were decked out with fancy acronyms and aggressive promises, all touting advanced, seemingly, futuristic and complex capabilities, so I think in some ways, in an effort to differentiate and highlight our technology capabilities as vendors, we confused the very basic message that BPM really is a management discipline. It’s how an organization gets work done.

On Process Improvement and Hype – Brad Power

Companies that practice process improvement have been victims of this hype cycle for decades. Fed by consultants, gurus, technology vendors, and academics, their enthusiasm for a particular process improvement method takes on a religious tone

On BPM in the Cloud – Matt Davies

The price point to enter BPM through the cloud is usually lower due to the “pay for use” subscription model. Also – customers can try BPM to see what it is all about and if it is right for them. Another advantage is that it is easier to orchestrate applications and data that reside in the cloud, so running BPM in the cloud makes processes more efficient.

On ACM and PCM (Production Case Management) – Keith Swenson

Production Case Management (PCM) is programmed by specially trained technical people (programmers) to produce a case management application. That application is deployed for use by knowledge workers to get their work done. The application offers collections of operations that the knowledge worker can decide to use or not use depending on the specifics of the case.

On Business Transformation – Sandy Kemsley

He (Max Pucher) maintains that you can’t start transforming your business with the process: you start with people, then planning, then programs, then projects and finally process. In understanding the systems of record, it’s important to start with business architecture to define objectives, map those to capabilities and end-to-end processes: the business language of process. Then, business information can be mapped to the underlying systems, and business transactions can be modeled as services against those systems

On Enterprise Social Platforms and Dynamic Case Management – Craig Le Clair

I think the killer combination is enterprise social platforms and dynamic case management. The former is a much discussed area today, and why not? …
Enterprise social serves goals like innovation, collaboration, and workforce productivity that few can argue with. Yet real productivity has to connect to core business processes and enterprise social has yet to do that. At the same time, growing interest in dynamic case management, to reform and transform processes, continues, with a growing interest in providing stronger human connection at scale — and this is where the two can help each other.

On Process Automation and Documentation – Gary Comerford

I think it’s important to understand where the market is at the moment. There are many tools out there to help document and automate, but if the end customer is more concerned with just seeing what they’ve already got (or want if they don’t like doing ’as-as’ documentation) rather than taking that documented state and doing something with it, then we have a different environment (and a different level of maturity) than if the market was interested in improving and automating their processes to gain efficiencies and ”synergies” (excuse the buzzword).

We need to teach organisations that it’s not bad practice to throw something away entirely in order to achieve the greatest gains. We need to educate the leadership that the retention of a process out of some nostalgic desire and misty eyed belief it works in today’s context is wrong and that it’s ok to say goodbye to a beloved one and make way for a newborn.

On Change Management – Elise Olding

First – stop using “change management.” It’s a myth, change can’t be “managed.” All of us certainly know we can’t change someone else and likely have learned this well in our personal lives. It holds equally true at work but somehow we don’t take this into consideration and continue to pursue managing change at work. What you can do is influence, entice, engage, suggest, mentor…

On BPM Survey – Anne Stuart

Seventy-five percent of those surveyed cite operational efficiency as the top driver for using, planning to use or considering investing in a BPM suite (BPMS).
Nearly half the respondents hope that BPM will help them reduce costs, while 44% are seeking to increase business agility. More than a third hope that BPM will improve service.
What about the organizations that aren’t using BPM suites and don’t plan to do so? Among those, 48% say they simply don’t see a need for the technology.

On BPM for C-suite executives – Connie Moore

CIOs, business technology leaders, and business process champions, don’t expect great results if you go into the C suite with process maps, process architectures, or “as-is” and “to-be” diagrams. Remember to keep it simple: 1) business outcomes, 2) customers, and 3) improved processes — in that order

On Process Change – Deb Miller

Perception is reality – if the process change is perceived as unfavorable then it will be so. To be successful then we need to design the user experience to serve each participant role, including focus on the all important customer role

On Process Mining and the Bicycle Riding Problem – Keith Swenson

The person may in fact have the ability to accurately perform the process, but can not explain how they do it. Many work behaviors are like this where people operate on tacit knowledge that they can not put into words. Finally, the person may have an accurate understanding of their part of the process, but they may not be willing to say exactly what it is. They may feel that the process as it is performed is broken, and so they will report instead what they thinks that the process should be. All of this gets in the way of discovering the real process. Process mining cuts through all this by analyzing the real evidence behind the process, and giving you an ego-free picture of the process as it really is.

Organizations and individuals, across all industries, often applaud the idea of checklists – but have some reason why they are ‘special’ and should be exempt.

On Big Process – Brian Reale

I am often asked by analysts who our biggest competitor is. My answer is almost invariably “custom projects” or “custom code” or “specialized software.” Sure, we lose a few deals here and there to other BPMS vendors, but not really very often and not consistently to the same player(s). There are a few possible explanations for this:
1) The BPM market is much more fragmented than we think;
2) The BPM market is not nearly as well delineated as we think;
3) The BPM market is not as stable as we think.

On Process Mining – Neil Ward-Dutton

Because in this context, process mining techniques and technologies help to address an immediate pain point that an established community of industry practitioners have. Specifically, how to quickly discern the actual state of work in a given area of a business to provide a reliable foundation for analysis of improvement opportunities.

On Passive BPM – Christian Günther

Abandon the idea of “controlling” process execution, where constraints and rules are dictated from above to prevent mishaps in execution. Replace it by a “trust and check” model, where knowledge workers enjoy complete freedom. Through periodic process mining analysis, management can spot quality or efficiency problems reliably and early on, and then take appropriate action to prevent it from happening again.

On BPMS Acquisition – Scott Cleveland

What is cost of procrastination? You will learn far more attempting to implement a solution than you will researching the alternatives. You will never get back the dollars you spent while you were looking for that perfect solution. And, you will never find the ‘perfect’ anything. So, what are you waiting for?

On BPM and Delphi Exercise – Sanooj Kutty

Every first entrant to the world of BPM encounters 2 key terminologies without fail; As-Is Process and the Turn Around Time (TAT). By defining the As-Is process and identifying the current TAT, we can go ahead and model the To-Be processes and look at improving the TAT for a better customer experience

We’ve all been there before.
Hundreds of questions. Most of them ambiguous. Scoring.
Describe, write and explain. Keep it short. Keep it professional.
It usually means one thing – late nights.

The biggest problem in tenders is poorly defined requirements.

Given ambiguous requirements, most vendors will simply tick the “yes” box.
Given unfocused questions, most vendors will make the issue sound complex.

Given a well formed tender, vendors will think that it’s precooked for a competitor.
Given a badly formed tender, most vendors will think that there is no real budget.

Underpromise and overdeliver!… yes… but not in a tender.
So most vendors promise the moon, and a rocketship to reach it.
Once a vendor has been chosen, there is little chance that they will be “unchosen”.

Standard tender questionnaires don’t cover specific business pains.
Custom tender questionnaires don’t cover future business plans.
You’re going to spend a lot of money. So how do you get it right?

The best question that I’ve seen in a tender was along the lines of:
“The solution requires process modelling, execution, simulation, monitoring, optimization, documentation, collaboration and integration – Which components of the solution does your offering excel in”.
I liked it because it gives the customer a way to see strengths and weaknesses.
No solution excels in everything, so it also gives the customer a chance to see if the vendor is talking bull….

The best run tender that I’ve seen was when the customer brought in an external consultancy company with BPM expertise to run the tender, where the emphasis was less on the questionnaire and more on the POC. I’m a big advocate of “seeing is believing”.

The whole principle of the tender process is based on creating competition and achieving best value.
But most tenders put an emphasis on software features and functionality.
Its easier to score. Expertise, experience, professional services are harder to score.
We all understand the principle behind tenders, it’s just that the process fails on pretty much every level.

It would easy to mock the tender system, but it been used for decades, and will be used for decades to come.
Tenders are part of the sales cycle. There is no perfect tender. Each one needs to fit the customer level of understanding BPM and the business pains they are trying to solve.

Tenders, RFIs, RFQs and RFPs – Aren’t they fun!

I’d received a RFI,
That brought on a thought.
Does BPM fit every system,
Or am I causing distraught

And just before replying,
Before pressing a key.
I thought what would I reply,
If my mother asked me?

I sat there quite worried,
Swaying between gloom and slight hope.
The customer needed a solution,
That was out of BPM’s usual scope.

CRM manages customers,
ECM is for content obsessed,
BI for management portals,
So what does BPM do best?

The sales teams say we’ve got to make noises,
in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad!
For every voice counts!”

But my conscience said, “No! No!
Make that customer go away!
Tell that customer,
You do NOT want to play.

Tell him he should not be here.
You should never commit.
You should not be answering,
If the solution doesn’t fit!”

I sat there, and sat there,
And thought to myself.
Why should answering an RFI
cause inconveniencing oneself.

So I answered all of the questions
And I wrote what I meant.
(One should always feel comfortable with the answers
One hundred per cent)

I’ll keep away from RFIs,
For a bit and a while.
So I can live with my conscience,
And walk along with a smile.

So my question is simple.
Take a second or two.
Well…what would YOU do
If your mother asked you?

Big process is when senior-most business and technology leaders embrace business process change by shifting the organization’s focus from isolated BPM and process improvement projects to a sustainable, enterprise-wide business process transformation program that is then supported and driven by top executives.

On Big Process – Theo Priestley

Big Data…Big Process….Big Deal I say. We’re now expected to ignore the people who matter most and drive BPM solely from the upper echelons, which to be fair works as a general approach to BPM buy in, but completely ignores the connected and social enterprise which is gaining momentum.

On Process Mining – Anne Rozinat

Overall, my experience is that if the business is determined to use process mining, getting the data is not an issue at all. Typical drivers are that they want to understand and improve their processes, either because they have the perception that something is broken, or because they need greater transparency of what is going on to be able to react faster and become more pro-active

On BPM and BPO – Scott Francis

To the BPOs out there: invest in people and process, it is the best way to add value for your customers. But to the customers of BPO vendors – own your own processes. Improve them. Don’t let all the benefits of process improvement accrue to someone else.

Adaptive Case Management – Global Excellence Awards 2012

You’re invited to submit your case study to a panel of your peers.

The case study doesn’t need to use an bona fide ACM product as long as it shows how the solution supports knowledge workers, in an adaptive case management way.

The emphasis is on Innovation, Adaptability and Impact.

The case study then gets judged, presented and published in a book.
The idea behind the awards is to gather the best ACM examples and show their value.

The readers of your case study are looking for information on how to best implement Adaptive Case Management in their organizations. It is a new and fledgling field, and the purpose of making such information available helps the entire market by reducing the incident of failure. Most of the ideas on how to organize people, and how to structure the information, are applicable in many products, yours included.

Awards Guidelines
Submissions are open to entrants worldwide and a vendor /consultant may nominate a customer and any company may submit their own case study.
There is no limit to the number of entries you can submit. Each entry requires a separate entry form and $250 handling fee.
Winners receive recognition by having their case studies published in the new book on Adaptive Case Management to release in the Fall.

Submission deadline: End of February.
The Awards Ceremony will take place at the Adaptive Case Management Virtual Summit on June 6, 2012.

Disclaimer:
I have no connection to the awards, but I’m always super supportive of initiatives in our industry, so go and have a peek at the information and registration details here Global Excellence Awards 2012 and make your own decision.

We have been together for some years now.

You are never a hands length away from me.
I’m always conscious about your whereabouts.

Without you – a part of me is missing.

Its funny how the simple things in life mystify you..

Your ability to get the hang of even the most simple ways to use the internet
- is surprisingly limited. And that truly is an understatement.

Yes, you are not as attractive as before. Ageing has taken a toll on you.

But I still find you useful, and I haven’t strayed off to prettier models.
You wake me up on time, help me with my emails and keep me in contact with the world.

So what can I say to you, my dearest Blackberry, on this valentines day.

I can truly admit that you are a piece of @#**!#!! !**!#@#*!! *@#*?#!!
And may you *@#!?!#* !#**@* !*@#!?!#!!

Yours,
Adam