BPM in Action

So I've gotten my first spam blog comment, and it reminded me that I've been thinking a lot lately about the connections between BPM and security. In a lot of ways, security is one of the most process-intensive IT-related areas in an enterprise. After all, there are processes, both implicit and explicit, for identifying, then authorizing or denying access to everything in the IT infrastructure, for everyone who tries to gain access.

Another BPM-security connection: both must be woven tightly into IT infrastructures, to be as pervasive and ubiquitous as necessary to provide enterprise-wide coverage. In addition, each needs to be non-disruptive to the point of invisibility.

Of course, security includes many important elements and "moving parts," not all of which are equally well managed by clearly defined and comprehensively enforced processes and policies. For example, spam is a threat to enterprise security, or at least to worker productivity. However, as my ebizQ colleague and "blog buddy" Elizabeth Book wrote a few days ago, truly effective enterprise-wide spam and malware management is, to say the least, a process-intensive set of challenges. Ditto for other security-related issues such as identity and access management (IAM) and network access control (NAC). Add in the triple threats of compliance, governance, and risk, and security becomes even more critical and challenging – as do the processes that define and enable it.

So, how best to address and perhaps take advantage of the various things that connect BPM to security? Here are a few high-level ideas and suggestions.

1. Assess current security practices and solutions for their effectiveness and pervasiveness.
2. Where successful security practices and solutions are identified, ensure that the processes used to define, deploy, and govern those practices and solutions are clearly defined and well documented.
3. Use these as elemental templates and models for other processes, in security and in other business and technology areas.
4. Ensure that all BPM efforts and supporting information are themselves adequately protected from IT and business threats.

Every BPM initiative should include comprehensive and detailed security features. In addition, every security initiative should be based on consistent, enforceable, and well documented processes which are aligned with those that support other critical IT-enabled business initiatives.

Everyone involved in BPM should forge a good working relationship with the chief security officer, chief risk officer, or equivalent person in their enterprise. Good security requires good processes, and good BPM requires good security.

For more, check out "Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Management and Business Alignment," "Managing and Measuring Security in the Enterprise," "The Business Drivers Behind IT Initiatives," and "Top 10 Tips to Minimize Risk" in the RFG section of the ebizQ Analyst Corner. And for goodness' sake, if you don't already, subscribe to the ebizQ weekly security update. And please let me know how BPM and security are aligned – or not – at your enterprise or your customers' sites.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Security  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

I've been writing a lot here recently about various approaches to capturing information that can and should drive business process definition and refinement. And there's a lot of interesting stuff in the special SAP Business Process Expert (BPX) Community section of the ebizQ Web site about what it takes and means to be a business process expert or manager. All of this has led me to the sudden, retrospectively blindingly obvious realization of what likely is or should be the largest first challenge facing those pursuing BPM initiatives.

Who owns the process of defining and prioritizing business processes?

Senior executives sometimes argue that they define critical business processes "by definition," since they set overall corporate strategies and business goals, and are held accountable for fulfilling these, at least in theory. Line-of-business leaders often argue with equal vehemence that they own responsibility for defining business processes, since they and their teams are the ones with the "feet on the street" and their "fingers on the pulse" of the marketplace, particularly customers, partners, and prospects.

There are even IT decision-makers who will argue that they and their teams own or should own business process definition. Their reasoning? The business runs on IT, and IT is where all the real knowledge about who does what resides, within IT management logs and databases. Therefore, only IT has the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to define processes accurately and effectively.

The right answer is more like "some part of all of the above, plus none of the above."

If enterprises managed IT based solely on "speeds and feeds" information, without taking into account business goals or user experiences, many enterprise IT deployments would look very different from how they look today. Similarly, effective business process definition and prioritization requires input from all of the stakeholders and influencers listed above.

However, no one group owns all of the processes used to define and refine business processes. In fact, the best roles for the three groups of stakeholders discussed here mirror the roles they play in the running of the business. Senior executives should define big-picture goals, and help to orchestrate more granular goals and processes supporting those higher-level goals. Line-of-business leaders and their teams should provide the information from the field necessary to make sure that both strategic and tactical processes are grounded in real life, and delivering real business value. IT decision-makers and their teams, meanwhile, should focus on ensuring that IT efforts provide maximum support for business goals, and engage business decision-makers when those goals threaten to disrupt IT or business operations unacceptably.

Broadly, business and IT teams are a lot like the cast and the crew on a movie or theatrical production. Frequently, neither camp can stand the other, but each realizes that ultimately, without both camps, ya got no show. (When Benjamin Franklin said "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately," he could easily have been describing the dynamic that governs IT-business relations at many enterprises.)

BPM is both an opportunity and a critical requirement to replace confrontation and conflict with collaboration and cooperation. A good starting place is to come together to define and prioritize core business processes collaboratively, and to build a framework for continuing refinement and improvement of those processes.

If you'd like to see some more relevant observations and recommendations, check out Part Two of the two-part RFG Research Note "Business Knowledge Management: The 'Missing Link' for BPM, IPLM, and SOAs?" Then, let me know what you think, and how processes are defined and prioritized at your organization.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration  |  Permalink  | Comments (1)  | TrackBacks (0)

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and SAP AG announced a broadening/deepening/expansion of their alliance that may or may not have implications for BPM pursuers and practitioners. As covered by ebizQ, the companies announced that HP will offer a range of new and expanded Enterprise SOA and SAP NetWeaver implementation services, intended to ease and speed deployments of SOA-enabled composite applications and services for SAP NetWeaver components. The services will leverage appropriate HP and SAP technologies to help enterprises with tasks ranging from assess and evaluation of processes and architectural decisions to business analytics, intelligence, and process improvement, innovation, and integration, the companies added.

This announcement is more than just the latest example of the continuing integration of BPM and SOA efforts, processes, and technologies being pursued by users and vendors alike. It is also a prime example of how the desire to maximize leverage of effective business processes can be a primary driver of fundamental decisions about IT infrastructures and architectures.

HP is, after all, the world's fifth-largest SAP implementation, according to the announcement. In addition, SAP is hosting a growing, vibrant online community focused on process improvement, innovation, integration, management, and optimization – the Business Process Expert (BPX) Community. An offshoot of its even larger and more vibrant Software Developer Network, the BPX Community is evolving into a real crucible of experiences and practices, available as blogs, forums, downloads, and online courses and materials. It is of course fairly SAP-centric, but the information I've seen is largely applicable and useful even in non-SAP environments.

I cannot imagine the HP-SAP BPM-SOA alliance not being a hot topic of discussion across the SAP BPX Community. I'm counting on it, in fact, because I fear that left to their own devices, HP and SAP would spend a lot of cycles talking about features and functions and speeds and feeds. And as I've tried to argue here previously, those things are not the point of truly effective, business-driven, human-centric BPM. People, their tasks and experiences, and supporting those effectively and consistently are what BPM is really all about, and I think many if not most of the most active participants in the BPX Community know or will soon realize this. And I think, and hope, that this will in fact result in processes that help HP and SAP align their offerings and services more and more closely to the human-centric constraints and goals that underlie most if not all of the things we call business processes today.

If you haven't yet checked out the BPX Community, a great introduction to it can be found, conveniently enough, at the special SAP BPX section of the ebizQ Web site. There's a wealth of stimulating information and opinion there, contributed by folks from ebizQ and SAP. There's even a link to this very blog there, but I'd enthusiastically promote it even if there wasn't. So check it out, then please let me know what you think, about the BPX Community, the HP-SAP relationship, or anything else recent BPM developments bring to mind. Meanwhile, keep an eye on HP and SAP, to see if they or their joint customers do or learn anything that could be valuable to BPM efforts at your own enterprise. I will, too.

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Unstructured Data: Yet Another "First Mile" Challenge to Effective BPM

OK, this is likely my last Lotusphere-inspired rant for this year, for those of you who have been waiting for me to stop harping on that event. However, I did see a fair amount of thought-provoking, BPM-related stuff there, especially related to the "first mile" problem of information capture...

One such item was a prototype "smart personal assistant" that "lives inside" a user's computer. In the demo and discussion presented to me by an enthusiastic chap from IBM Corp. in Ireland, I saw software "skim through" incoming e-mails and rapidly and accurately triage them in order of importance and urgency. Criteria included key words in subject lines and message bodies, as well as sender information. These were manipulated based on simple rules given to the "assistant" by the hypothetical user.

So what's this got to do with BPM? Well, software that can perform such analysis rapidly and accurately can do so because of its ability to navigate through what the buzzword-heads call "unstructured data." For the purposes of this discussion, "structured data" is data that is all but "computation-ready" without further manipulation – typically data already stored in or produced by a computer. "Unstructured data" is how humans typically communicate – e-mails may be on computers, but they do NOT all contain orderly rows and columns of text and digits.

Structured data is of course useful, in part because it is almost always easier to assimilate into and manipulate with automated, IT-based solutions for analysis, consolidation, sharing, visualization, and similar tasks. However, there's lots of unstructured data that could add immeasurably to such efforts, if it were easy to collect and integrate into the enterprise "data stream."

For example, the unstructured data contained in any notes that support providers make while solving specific user problems could be very useful in the analysis and refinement of support processes. Similarly, notes and e-mails captured and exchanged during almost any user or customer interactions could help process managers deliver processes that are more human-centric and business-driven.

Business processes are, almost by definition, made up of data that is difficult or impossible to "structure" in the ways traditionally employed by computers and software. So, until and unless you can figure out how to translate all process-related information into accurate and complete structured representations, you're going to have to figure out ways to capture and use unstructured data effectively. Technologies are evolving that can help (and the people running database management or analysis efforts at your enterprise may already have some). However, for the time being, there is no substitute for old-fashioned conversations, interviews, and surveys of representatives of all key BPM constituencies, from external customers and internal users to support providers and process managers themselves. You may have some mostly manual "heavy lifting" to do to get such information and to integrate it into your BPM efforts. But those efforts will have little to no business value without that information.

So, how do you and your colleagues deal with unstructured BPM-related information now, and how are you planning to do so, if at all? Do let me know, and we'll revisit this issue as your interest levels dictate.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Another "first mile" stumbling block in the path towards effective, human-centric BPM (and/or business knowledge management or BKM) is capture of information in ways that are easily usable by IT systems, yet easily used by humans. In this context, the printed form, filled out "by hand" with a pen or even at a computer, is at or near the top of everyone's list of very-favorite IT challenges.

So, let's say you've at least got online forms, created and stored as, say, Adobe Systems Inc. PDF documents, and you're also using IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes and/or Domino solutions. Let's say you've also got the great idea that the ability to capture information from and about those forms into Notes/Domino databases would be a nifty enhancement to your BPM/BKM efforts. But how to capture that PDF information into those databases painlessly?

Why, with a tool built atop Microsoft Corp.'s .NET, and delivered via software as a service (SaaS), of course. And no, you don't have to build said tool. The heavy lifting's already been done, in the form, so to speak, of FormRouter.NET from FormRouter, Inc.

It's a hosted service that charges annual subscription fees to its cadre of corporate customers. What they get in exchange is easy, painless transmogrification of PDF forms – or Flash, HTML, or InfoPath documents, or Microsoft .NET Active Server Pages or Word or Excel files, or OpenOffice.org spreadsheets – into Notes/Domino databases. File attachments, form data only, or complete forms, with all digital signatures intact, if users so choose. No programming. No servers to deploy or maintain.

And the FormRouter solution works with other databases, too. Microsoft Access, for example (and perhaps not surprisingly). There's a great success story at the FormRouter Web site about a company that used the company's solution to cut down on spam. The company stopped posting e-mail addresses on its Web site, and replaced them an online inquiry form. The form routes inquiries to the right people, and captures form information in an Access database for follow-on marketing efforts. Spam down, productivity, sales, and satisfaction up.

I met with the CTO of FormRouter, Jim Healy, and took a tour of the company's Notes/Domino integration during IBM's Lotusphere event in Orlando last week. The company is working with partners ranging from IBM to Intel Corp. With FormRouter, for example, field forces can use online forms based on the Mobile Forms Technology (MFT) FormRouter developed in partnership with Intel, then have those forms easily sucked up by Salesforce.com databases. FormRouter was the first service provider granted the right by Adobe to add extensions to the free Adobe Reader software, Jim said.

No matter what collaboration environment you're running, if you're dealing with forms, and looking for a way to deal with them more effectively, you should check out FormRouter. And whether you are or are not dealing with forms, you should still check out FormRouter, for clues about how the combination of forms capture and analysis can help you build and refine business processes more effectively. After all, in a lot of ways, forms, how they're filled out, and what happens after they are represent critical first steps in many business processes. So they might be a good starting point for your own BPM/BKM efforts. Or not. Either way, I'm sure you'll let me know…

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM • Microsoft • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

I've been reading some of the more recent postings in James Taylor's Decision Management blog here on ebizQ, and I find his insights refreshingly business- and human-focused and to the point. You might find them so as well.

So while thinking about how decisions affect processes and vice versa, I came across yet another interesting new techno-thingie...ok, ok, potentially valuable IT-based business tool at IBM Corp.'s Lotusphere event in Orlando this week. It's called "Many Eyes."

Many Eyes has its own Web site, where you can go and check it out, something I recommend strongly. You can also read IBM's news release about it, but nothing beats seeing and test-driving this fascinating tool. In brief, it lets anyone select, visualize, comment upon, share, and invite other comments upon information. Almost any information.

Sounds simple, and it is. But it's also extraordinary. You can, for example, comment upon another's visualization by revisualizing the same data, or selecting different subsets, and both you and others can compare not only the comments and visualizations, but the differences in the underlying data.

Okay, the idea doesn't leap off the screen as mere words, I know. But read the release, then go check out the site. Trust me, once you get what it's doing, you will quickly start to smile at the potential. If that doesn't do it, check out some of the visualizations already created and shared by others. (One of my favorites: "Bubble Chart of Breakdown of sex and specialty of guests on The Colbert Report" [sic], by Anonymous.)

Then, once you've been amused, consider the implications for business processes. If Many Eyes technologies could be brought to bear on information gathered about the tools and information people actually use at work, couldn't that help make processes more human-centric? If processes could be crafted and deployed, and their results visualized and collaboratively analyzed, couldn't that make process refinement more effective? (For that matter, couldn't it even help improve support processes and policies if applied to information about IT infrastructure failures and responses to them, too?)

Let's go one step beyond, if not further. What about capturing and tracking the frequency by which participants create, share, and comment upon visualizations by type? A dynamic version of such a list could help out a lot when looking for people with particular areas of expertise as potential project team members, couldn't it? (This is just a business-focused variation of the basic services provided by Web sites such as Yahoo! Answers.)

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. What, then, is the ability to turn complex, interrelated sets of information about human behavior at work into easily shared fodder for collaborative analysis and discussion worth to enterprise agility and responsiveness? (Whew!)

Many Eyes isn't yet available as a licensed, inside-the-firewall product. But I'm sure IBM is working on that, and/or a securely "private" version of today's publicly available version. But it's not too early to check it out, and to start thinking (dreaming?) about how the underlying concepts can be applied to management of business and human processes at your enterprise. I think the accessible, easy-to-use combination of visualization and collaboration could have significant effects on lots of business processes, and on their management. What do you think?

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM  |  Permalink  | Comments (1)  | TrackBacks (0)

OK, let's review. One way to make traditional BPM "disappear" is for BPM-enabled applications and services to appear and proliferate. This means vendors need to help to enable the easy construction, deployment, management, and revision of such applications, by independent software vendors (ISVs) and by enterprise developers (and users, where appropriate). Provision of this help via interoperable, open, standards-based technologies would also…well, help.

Salesforce.com, Inc.'s latest offerings and updates are poised to deliver such help atop its vaunted software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. And yesterday and today, IBM Corp.'s been unveiling multiple phases of its strategy to support similar features, in ways that integrate with incumbent applications and solutions, from IBM and other vendors. And IBM's latest announcements are built atop broadly adopted, open, standards-based Eclipse technologies. This means those announcements, as and when they become products, will "reach out and touch" multiple technology platforms with equal ease and functionality. This should appeal to corporate developers in heterogeneous environments (that is to say, all of them), and commercial developers seeking the broadest possible markets.

And what of Microsoft Corp., arguably the company with the offerings used by more enterprise users than those of any other vendor? Well, according to today's news reports, Microsoft chose the week of IBM's Lotusphere event to announce new tools and templates, intended to ease the travails of those seeking to migrate from Lotus Notes and/or Domino to Microsoft technologies. At least one of those same news reports indicates that Microsoft has outfitted a bus with demonstrations of and information about Windows Vista and its latest collaboration solutions. That bus is in Orlando, where Lotusphere is, this week, the report adds.

In other words, the very same week IBM announces a brave new world of openness and opportunity for its users and developers – a world that even embraces those committed to Microsoft technologies – Microsoft once again decides it's time to "help" Notes/Domino users to lock themselves into the Microsoft fold. To be sure, Microsoft is touting its alliances, partnerships, and standards support. But the argument just ain't as compelling as IBM's. Moreover, the timing and nature of Microsoft's announcements and reported actions risk making the company seem slightly less welcoming and confident in its abilities to compete on merits than, say, IBM.

Oh, come on, Microsoft. Creative marketing is creative marketing, but there's sometimes a thin line between "creative" and "spiteful-looking."

It would be very, very difficult for me to recommend that any IT or business decision-maker NOT look at the alternative approaches to BPM-enabled applications and services or unified communications and collaboration from both companies. And for those in environments already dominated by Microsoft technologies, there are likely strong arguments in favor of continuing and extending those investments. However, given that the imminent appearance of major new releases of just about every significant product Microsoft sells to corporations, "a change is gonna come" anyway. Given that, it should by no means be assumed that Microsoft's solutions and strategies are necessarily the best choice, even in currently Microsoft-dominated environments. After all, IBM brings a lot to the party, too, especially in terms of experience and proven best practices helping translate heterogeneous technologies into business-boosting solutions.

Besides, I don't care much for Microsoft's apparent attitude in this case. If it were my company, I'd much rather build BPM into my business applications using templates and technologies from a company "walking the talk" about interoperability, openness, and standards. At least as of right now, IBM and Salesforce.com each looks a lot like such a company – but the Colossus of Redmond does not. And the sad part is, it could, it really could. It just doesn't seem very predisposed to do so any time soon.

At least, that's what I think. What about you?

technorati tags: lotusphere2007, ibm

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM • Microsoft  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

"While it pains me to endorse the 'evil empire,' human-centric BPM technologies that leverage Microsoft Office really do have a leg up. People use Excel and Word. What's strange is that Microsoft itself doesn't own a human-centric BPM software [offering]."
– Steven, commenting on my blog entry "Why Workflow Doesn't HAVE to Suck" (which I read only after writing the entry that appears below, eerily enough).

So I'm in Orlando, at IBM Corp.'s Lotusphere event. And I've taken a look at the stuff IBM's announced. And I've decided that IBM – and at least some of its internal people and external partners, are moving rapidly towards delivering collaboration solutions that embody some advanced BPM and business knowledge management (BKM) features and concepts.

You should check out Lotus Notes 8, not only for its nifty features, but for how IBM built them. IBM used open source Eclipse technologies that make supporting Linux, Microsoft Windows, and other environments easier for IBM and its software developer partners. IBM did and is doing the same with its Lotus Connections tool, and kind of "MySpace for grown-ups with jobs," and its Lotus Quickr content-sharing and collaboration solution. This one is designed to let users easily create shared content repositories and invite other users to share in the sharing.

So instead of taking on Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange head-to-head again/still, IBM now can say it has interesting, useful tools that work seamlessly with those worthy competitors – and do things that they don't. And those building process- and BKM-enabled applications can reach out and touch Linux, Mac, mobile, Windows, and other users with equal ease. This makes such applications more attractive to build, because it expands their potential markets. It also makes them more attractive to those of us who care about BPM and BKM, because such efforts have to touch everyone to deliver maximum business value.

The Lotusphere Innovation Lab is showcasing more examples of BKM/BPM-enabled, human-centric applications built atop the new foundations IBM is sowing. "Activity-Centric Computing for Evolving Business Practices," a tool that supports ad hoc business practices and encoding of those practices into reusable templates. LiveBook, which combines Lotus Sametime instant messaging with shared content. Integration of Sametime with IBM's Rational Jazz tool for collaborative software development. All opportunities to build business processes and best practices into applications that focus on people, tasks, and information – the building blocks of "IT 3.0."

You'll likely hear, read, and see more about most of the above during the next few months, as IBM begins to deliver on the promise being unveiled this week. But the neatest things about all of this are things that aren't being announced, but are being quietly, excitedly discussed here in Orlando. IBM is doing things that are making Lotus technologies cool and exciting again, after playing second fiddle to Microsoft for too long. And aside from its pragmatic, business-driven use of open source technologies, IBM's latest moves are enabling others to build BPM and BKM features and concepts into relatively easy-to-build applications, and to deliver these to users across multiple platforms, each with a near-native look and feel.

IBM is increasingly in a position to compete anew with Microsoft where the rubber most meets the road – at the point of the user experience. And IBM has strengths to bring to that competition, including broad, deep experience with BPM and related issues – strengths that are broader and more mature than most of Microsoft's. So if IBM gets it like I think IBM gets it, it will be very, very interesting to see how the two companies manifest their respective visions of how to get to effective BPM, BKM, and truly human-centric, process-driven business computing. Stay tuned. I know I will. Do let me know if you see something to which you think I should pay (more) attention.

technorati tags: lotusphere2007, ibm

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

So Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks announced some slightly more specific offerings and plans regarding their Innovative Communications Alliance, a shared vision of unified enterprise communications. Of course, it will be at least 2008 before we see any actual products that matter to most of us. On the positive side, this gives both companies some time to try to make reality match their vision – or, perhaps, the real collaboration and communications needs of enterprise customers. Meanwhile…

Anyone else out there old enough to remember the term "last mile problem?" In telecommunications, the tricky bit isn't delivering fancy, powerful services to the local telephone switching centers, with their powerful computers and high-capacity data and voice networks. No, the hard bit is cramming any of those services down the single pair of twisted copper wires that still connect most people to that fancy, powerful networked world. In other words, the last mile problem. Hold onto the concept; a quasi-relevant analogy approaches…

Almost everyone at most enterprises uses e-mail. Almost everyone at most enterprises also uses some form of IT-enabled collaboration tools beyond e-mail. Examples range for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony to instant messaging (IM) to portals and online "workspaces."

Frankly, IT-enabled collaboration represents a significant "first mile problem" for those attempting to bring effective BPM to their organizations. That's because the collaborations among colleagues are the beginnings of the definitions of the processes that drive the business. Those collaborations also provide clues and signposts about how people actually do work, which means they can be essential to any efforts at business knowledge management (BKM) or human interaction management.

So how best to link collaboration to BPM and its follow-ons? Well, anything that helps to capture and analyze information about how people use collaboration tools and enterprise intellectual property (IP) can help a lot. (Of course, the privacy-minded among us should take care to ensure that only information about collaborations is captured and analyzed, and not the communications themselves. That's a separate, far sticker set of issues and challenges.)

Information about how documents are shared and routed, and to whom, can also speak volumes about incumbent workflows and processes. When combined with user input, solicited and collected via interviews and surveys, such information can speed a department or company toward better, smarter BPM, BKM, and human interaction management. (I'm resisting the obvious acronym "HIM," because the temptation is too great to make up a companion concept that has an acronym of "HER.")

Anyway, some things for you think about while I'm in transit. I'm on my way to IBM Corp.'s Lotusphere confab/revival meeting. I'll probably have more to say about BPM/BKM-aware, IT-powered collaboration after poking around at that event. Stay tuned, and drop a line with any relevant thoughts or suggestions.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • Microsoft  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

The "State of the Union Address" I'D Like to See

In light of upcoming events…

Announcer: "Ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the free world's most influential software company, Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation. Mr. Gates?"

Bill:

"Thank you. fellow citizens of the world, I come to you today to tell you that the state of Microsoft is strong and growing, but that we, our customers, and our partners face significant challenges. However, I am confident that together, we have both the strengths and the will necessary to face these challenges and to overcome them, to the benefit of us all.

"Key among these challenges is transforming Microsoft from a seller of bits on disks to a provider of dynamic, exciting, and profitable products and services, primarily online. I tell you now that Microsoft will make this transition successfully, in full partnership with its customers and business allies, and even in cooperation with our respected competitors, current and future.

"We are going to be joiners, not dividers. That means we are going to work earnestly and seriously with our respected industry colleagues to make and keep the OpenXML Formats standard truly open and compatible with other standards and products – including those that compete with us. We will not compete by exclusion, but will compete on our strengths – the ability to innovate based on three decades of learning about the user experience.

"The user experience is what will ultimately drive user satisfaction with and the business value of every IT investment. Microsoft likely knows more about this user experience than any other company on earth, and will use that knowledge to create and deliver great new applications and services. In addition, Microsoft will share this knowledge and experience with its partners, and through industry alliances and standards support, even with competitors. Specifically, Microsoft will begin immediately to incorporate into its enterprise offerings open, accessible features to enable and support user-centric, process-driven workflows and information sharing. We will basically 'BPM-enable' every document created with a Microsoft application, and ease and speed integration of incumbent BPM solutions with Microsoft applications and services."

"Similarly, we will strive to ensure that no user – nor device, nor operating environment – is 'left behind.' Instead, we will adopt and broaden what might be considered a two-tiered system of ubiquitous access. Microsoft online services will be fully functional and available to anyone who can get online, not just users of Windows or Internet Explorer. In addition, users of Microsoft Windows environments will have 'VIP' access to features and services to make the user experience consistent and seamless, even as users move from place to place or device to device.

Again, we will compete on our strengths, and deliver features and services that delight users, in ways that we and our business partners can translate into significant and sustained revenues. We believe that everything comes together online, and that we can leverage our historical strengths to create bridges between the past and the future. The "Windows in the cloud" metaphor popularized by my colleague and friend Ray Ozzie is, in this context, only the beginning.

Microsoft understands the burdens and responsibilities that come with its leadership position in the world of software, and the seriousness of the challenges facing us, our customers, and our partners. Whatever you may have thought of us in the past, rest assured, Microsoft faces the future eagerly, both excited and humbled by recent events and imminent opportunities. We invite and encourage everyone to work with us, to make us a better company, and to make the world a better, more connected and collegial place in which to work, play, and live. Thank you, and good night."

It's good to dream…your thoughts welcome, as always...

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Microsoft  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

I've been thinking a lot more about the issues raised in my posting on "business knowledge management" ("BKM"), "Why Workflow Doesn't HAVE to Suck," especially in response to a comment the posting received. That comment said that anyone seeking BKM should look at "Human Interaction Management," and came from the lovely and talented Keith Harrison-Broninski, who, it turns out, is in a strong position to claim paternal oversight of the concepts underlying human interaction management. Many of these basic concepts come directly from a 2005 book by Mr. Broninski, "Human Interactions: The Heart And Soul Of Business Process Management."

It also turns out that Mr. Broninski is part of what one might think of as a BKM/human interaction management/beyond BPM "syndicate" of thought leaders, or at least thought prodders. The emerging cabal also includes Jon Pyke of The Process Factory Ltd., whose ebizQ article "Why Workflow Sucks" got me thinking about BKM in the first place. And wouldn't you know it? The refreshingly informed and opinionated Mr. Broninski is also a(nother) blogger for ebizQ! And his postings are drawing some pretty interesting comments, including from the aforementioned Mr. Pyke!

So what does all this mean? Well, who knows? Here's what I think, though.

When multiple disparate people and groups arrive at similar, overlapping ideas and conclusions, the truth is likely some superset of these – all or parts of all of them, plus other stuff. So far, it seems that a number of people with opinions believe that BPM has not yet delivered on its promise, and that the mismatch between human and systems behaviors may have a lot to do with this. Forrester Research now has its new vendor category, "integration-centric BPM." Mr. Broninski has "human interaction management." I've got "business knowledge management." These are all, in effect, different views of different parts of the same elephant. In an age of business activity monitoring (BAM), business analytics (BA), business intelligence (BI), BPM, business performance management ("the other BPM?"), business performance optimization (BPO), and more alphabet soup, we're all grasping for ways to maximize the value of people, tasks, and information to the enterprise, using IT-empowered tools and IT-supported processes.

We can all agree, however, that none of the current niche solutions or vendors offers anything that addresses "the complete/big picture" completely effectively for all or even most enterprises. Instead, we're looking at a situation very much like that of attempts at information lifecycle management (ILM) or intellectual property lifecycle management (IPLM). Once upon a time, there were content, document, information, and knowledge management, and dedicated data stores for structured and unstructured data. Now, what enterprises want and need, and what vendors are struggling to deliver, are integrated solutions that consolidate management of disparate information types, across the enterprise. You know – so authorized people can get at the information they need to do their work. People, tasks, and information.

In addition, enterprises want and need consolidated, holistic views of the policies and processes that govern the performance of tasks. This so they can refine and revise those policies and processes in timely response to changing conditions, goals, and/or needs. And if these efforts are to matter, they need to address not only static processes and systems, but human behavior and knowledge as well. And that, I think, is why so many of us are flailing away at whatever this is.

I'll have more to say about BKM and almost all of the other acronyms mentioned above soon (and, if I know me, often). Meanwhile, though, you can get a bigger taste of my views by checking out Part One of a new, two-part RFG Research Note on BKM now playing at the ebizQ Analyst Corner. Part Two should be available next week. As always, your comments and thoughts welcome.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

I had an English teacher in high school who was particularly fond of the phrase "concretizing the abstraction." Say what you want about my formative years, but the underlying concept and goal seemed then and seems now crystal clear: make the abstract engagingly, tangibly real.

Yesterday, I attended "Apex Day" in San Francisco, an event hosted by Salesforce.com. You may have heard of them – first software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider to reach a half-billion dollars in revenue, most experienced and successful provider of "enterprise-class" hosted services, you know. Anyway, Apex Day was to celebrate the beta availability of Apex, the platform the company itself uses to build services, to its customers and partners. Executives said at the event that the company's goal is to enable its industry allies to become the next Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com's core solutions address tasks such as customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA). It doesn't take much to argue that these are two of the most process-driven task sets at any enterprise – at least when they're done right. So in a sense, Salesforce.com's services help to concretize interconnected sets of abstract BPM goals and tasks.

What happens, then, when you expand this to a platform that enables the creation and deployment of other services that are similarly process-driven? Well, according to Salesforce.com clients and partners ranging from Accenture to Wells Fargo Bank, you get faster time to deployment of and success with new services, and closer alignment with and clarity regarding critical business processes.

In other words, the Salesforce.com platform, particularly with the addition of the Apex technologies, allows businesses to build BPM into critical business applications and services -- and/or hide BPM behind these. It then becomes possible to achieve two things I consider critical success factors, for BPM and almost any strategic, business-driven IT initiative: ubiquity and invisibility.

Salesforce.com is also encouraging explosive growth of the universe of Apex-powered solutions. The company offers business-minded developers access to sales and marketing help, including an online "AppExchange," and even "incubator" space in facilities built for the purpose. The Apex technology also allows developers to run their applications on the hosted infrastructure Salesforce.com has built and refined to scale in capacity and performance without seriously breaking for some eight years now.

In other words, Salesforce.com is building upon its success in concretizing the abstractions behind the business processes driving CRM and SFA. The company is also providing tools and support services for those seeking to translate their own unique combinations of experience and knowledge into similarly process-driven applications and services.

What if such applications can be driven by best practices – which are basically proven processes – and delivered in ways that are easy to absorb for and well accepted by users, and updated easily as processes and goals change? What if you can even run some of these on an outsourced infrastructure you simply have to hold to service level agreements and don't have to manage "by hand?" What does that do to notions of and surrounding BPM as we know it today?

I'm not yet completely sure, but am pretty certain it concretizes some interesting abstractions, while perhaps generating new ones. I'm also fairly confident this could be pretty important stuff, within and beyond the BPM market, whatever the heck that is. More soon, I'm pretty sure. If you've got comments or thoughts to add in the meantime, by all means, let me know.

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Breaking BPM news: Business intelligence (BI) solution provider Business Objects SA and BPM solution provider Savvion, Inc. announced a strategic alliance intended to integrate their respective technologies and to help enterprises integrate their BI and BPM efforts. This is yet another example of the continuing consolidation reshaping the BPM marketplace I've mentioned in earlier postings here. Stay tuned; more to come…meanwhile, back to our regularly scheduled rantings…

One of my all-time favorite advertisements comes from the venerable and renowned language instruction providers, Berlitz. Perhaps you've seen it. If not, you can watch it on Google Video here, or on YouTube here. In the ad, an eager young German Coast Guard member receives an English radio message from a ship in trouble. "We are sinking, we are sinking," the radio crackles. "Vat are you sinking about?" asks the well-meaning but apparently entirely clueless young man from the German Coast Guard. "Improve your English," the ad says at its end.

Previously, I have alluded to the criticality of getting all of the right BPM stakeholders around the same table. However, it is at least as important (and tricky) to get everyone talking about the right things as it is to get the right people all talking in the first place. In other words, to answer your enterprise's own version of the question, "what are we thinking about where BPM is concerned?"

RFG research and client experiences have led us to believe that the term "BPM" itself provides a great "mini-agenda" for such discussions. The first major subject should be the business, and how and why you and your colleagues are trying to improve it. The second major subject should be about appropriate processes for achieving those goals, while the third should be how to manage your way toward them.

Like a lot of stuff related to BPM and enterprise IT generally, this sounds deceptively simple, and can instead be a big, complicated challenge – but does not necessarily have to be. So how best to navigate this thicket successfully?

Well, a good first step – or best practice, if you insist– is to make sure to tailor your messages about BPM efforts and goals to align closely with the things your audiences care about most. (The "seven Ps" I've written about previously – people, planning, platforms, portfolio, process, products (and services), and projects – can help significantly here. Others include deciding whether a message is informational or intended to engender actions, and to tailor accordingly, and keeping your messages focused and simple.

It is also important to support messages with credible, meaningful metrics. Again the seven Ps can help you to determine what metrics will best meet these criteria, by aligning what is to be measured with what constituents care about most. The framework can also help organize BPM effort elements into projects and portfolios that are similarly aligned. All good things regarding your BPM marketing and sales efforts.

The point is that whether you use the RFG P7 framework, guidelines such the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), industry-specific guidelines and recommendations, or those developed internally, use something to guide your messages and message-crafting, about BPM and your other strategic initiatives. Then, use the same frameworks and guidelines to help you craft and prioritize projects, and project portfolios, as well as meaningful metrics to evaluate your efforts – and to promote your successes credibly to your constituents. This interlocking set of processes can help you with every stage of every BPM effort, including what is sometimes the most important, the most enabling, and the most potentially limiting stage: getting and maintaining stakeholder support.

If you'd like to read more about these issues, check out "RFG's Recommendations for SOA Initiatives" and "Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Management and Business Alignment" in RFG's segment of the ebizQ Analyst Corner. Want more? Just e-mail me with your name, title, company, and a few words about what you're doing and how it's going. I'll send you some additional relevant RFG research in return, at no charge, of course. If you've got stories to tell or questions to ask, please send those along, too. Meanwhile, onward and upwards…

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes, the best things are right in front of your face -- or in my case at this Web site, just under and to the right of it...

One of the best things I've read recently related to BPM is the Feature Article by Jon Pyke, demurely entitled "Why Workflow Sucks." Once I stopped laughing at the title and read the article, I realized that Mr. Pyke makes several incredibly valid points, and some cogent arguments about what to do about the problems he describes. I'm not going to give away or perhaps inaccurately summarize his arguments; you're just going to have to read them yourself. I will, however, begin to deviate from Mr. Pyke's arguments, while being inspired by them.

You may have heard the term "Web 2.0." Instead of diving into the infinite downward spiral of attempting to define this vague term, let's just agree that it implies being community-oriented, forward-looking, and largely or entirely online. As I have written elsewhere, to be a "Web 2.0" enterprise requires an "IT 3.0" IT infrastructure. By my lights, "IT 1.0" was all about the systems. "IT 2.0" was all about the networks and the systems connected to them. "IT 3.0" is (or should be) all about three things:
1. people;
2. tasks; and
3. information.

This, by the way, is a version of the short list of the only things business people, especially senior business executives, care about. (Another is "bodies, dollars, and hours.")

How to align IT infrastructures to focus on these three things? Well, here's one potential approach.

1. Build a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to connect IT infrastructure elements together in flexible, manageable ways.
2. Implement consistent, pervasive business process management (BPM), including process monitoring and optimization.
3. Treat all enterprise intellectual property (IP) as the business-critical resource it is, and implement consistent, policy-driven IP life cycle management (IPLM).
4. Combine and leverage the above initiatives in ways that enable the consistent, effective, pervasive capture, leverage, retention, and sharing of human-based knowledge beyond stored enterprise IP – business knowledge management (BKM).

As ambitious and daunting as this may seem, there is relevant precedent. Remember when content, document, information, and knowledge management were all separate disciplines? Well, at many enterprises with which I'm familiar, the goal is a single, unified IPLM architecture, embracing all of those tasks and goals. And it's working. More recently, business analysis and intelligence efforts and solutions (and vendors) are consolidating, as are efforts, solutions, and vendors focused on business activity, performance, and process management, monitoring, and optimization.

However, to go back to a central point of Mr. Pyke's article, many of these efforts lack what might be thought of as a "human element." Most solutions and processes for the above tasks are too rigidly structured and/or technology- or process-focused to adapt easily to typical human behavior. (It's mildly analogous to the significant differences in the storage and management requirements for so-called "structured" and "unstructured" data – but that's a separate issue.)

Perhaps ironically, the most effective way to harness the power of that unpredictable, inconsistent human behavior may be to surround it with appropriate, albeit overly rigid and consistent, processes and technologies. Hence my use of the term "business knowledge management." It means to imply the goal of applying consistent, repeatable, scalable, technology-enabled management of perhaps the most valuable and elusive business resource of all – the experience-based knowledge inside of individual heads and hearts. Now there's a business process management challenge, about which I will have more to say soon. If you have something to say on the subject in the meantime, by all means, write to me! (Oh, and check out the RFG research in the ebizQ Analyst Corner for more thoughts on some of the issues surrounding BKM!)

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (2)  | TrackBacks (0)

Aside from BPM, there are few subjects that generate as much angst, confusion, debate, and posturing in the enterprise as the role of open source solutions. Yesterday, a consulting and systems integration company introduced something that could help with both BPM and open source initiatives.

The company is Optaros, Inc. What the company announced yesterday is what it claims is the IT industry's first independent, annotated catalogue of enterprise open source solutions. The catalogue offers reviews of 262 open source projects, out of the more than 140,000 known to Optaros. The reviews include Optaros' commentary on each solution's community support, functionality, and maturity, as well as predictions of future progress and assessment of overall enterprise readiness.

The Optaros Open Source Catalogue comments on whether the solution is enjoying are grouped into categories -- Application Development and Infrastructure, Business Applications, Infrastructure Solutions, and Operating Systems and Infrastructure. "Business Process and Workflow Management" is included in the Application Development category, while "Analytics, Reporting, and Data Warehousing," "CRM, ERP, and E-Commerce," and "Knowledge Management and eLearning" are all included under Business Applications. I might have grouped them differently, or "called out" BPM as its own Business Applications sub-category, but this a minor quibble, compared with the value of the entire document.

And what is that value? If you are pursuing or considering any open source initiatives, this catalogue can help you to overcome ignorance, resistance, and skepticism about enterprise-ready open source solutions -- your own and/or that of others. The Optaros catalogue can help you craft a short list of candidate solutions, and provide additional information about those you are considering.

If you are pursuing or considering any BPM initiatives, this catalogue can also help you. While it does not discuss in detail the open source BPM suite from Intalio, it does discuss that company's free BPMN Designer tool. This lets users design processes compliant with the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) industry standard, then execute these in the broadly adopted Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) specification, on any of a variety of application servers, according to Intalio.

The Optaros catalogue also makes no mention of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Those of you busy with other things may not recall that Sun acquired a company called SeeBeyond Technologies in 2005. Sun has integrated SeeBeyond's business integration and composite applications technologies into Sun's Java Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS), resulting in what Sun says Java CAPS is a powerful platform for both BPM and SOA efforts -- and is available under traditional commercial license or as open source technology.

But the point here isn't what's not in the Optaros catalogue, but that it exists at all. If you are considering integration of open source technologies into your BPM efforts -- or open source BPM solutions themselves, The Optaros catalogue (as well as this blog entry!) should provide a significant kick-start to your considerations. And if you're not considering open source solutions, for your BPM initiatives and more broadly, you should be. I'll make this argument more stridently in future outings -- don't say you weren't warned!

For those who are considering or pursuing open source deployments, the catalogue can also provide useful, independent responses to those who maintain there are no truly enterprise-class open source solutions worth serious consideration. And yes, those people are out there, likely even within your own organization. Unfortunately, some of them may sign your paycheck and/or authorize your budget, so ignoring them is not an option. Helping to educate and enlighten them is, however.

The Optaros Open Source Catalogue 2007 is available as a free download from the Optaros Web site. In addition, I wrote an RFG Research Note in October 2006 called "Open Source Solutions in the Enterprise: Best Practices" which you should also find helpful. If you've got a user ID and password for the RFG Web site, you can read the Note by clicking on its title above. If not, write to me with your name, title, organization, and perhaps a few words on BPM and/or open source at your enterprise, and I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy of the Note in return.

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (1)  | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of news this week -- Pegasystems Inc.'s update of its SmartBPM Suite, and webMethods, Inc.'s Fabric version 7.0, among other items covered at the ebizQ site.

But I think the news of the greatest immediate value to those of you involved in BPM was Apple Computer, Inc.'s new iPhone -- and the company's dropping of the word "Computer" from its own name. What do these have to do with BPM? Well, Apple's iPhone had been grist for the rumor mill for more than two years. Heck, Cisco Systems, Inc. was already selling another product with the same name, and has filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Apple after claiming an inabilty to reach amicable terms with the "former" computer company. And yet, Apple wowed even skeptical observers, by delivering more than was expected, even by the most optimistic acolytes. And the name change simply acknowledges the obvious and inevitable. Apple doesn't sell "computers," really. Even its Macintosh systems aren't just computers. They are marketed as life enhancers, and accepted and embraced as such.

If you're gonna succeed with BPM, you've gotta do two things. You've gotta deliver more than even the most hardened skeptics expect, and you've gotta sell. To expand on the hints I've been dropping about the importance of communications to BPM success in earlier outings, herewith, some thoughts on promoting BPM. (We'll spend more time on setting and exceeding expectations in the near future, I promise.)

Whether you are planning, building, or managing BPM initiatives -- and especially if you're in the early stages of such endeavors -- you will need to "market" and "sell" your efforts. You will need senior-executive support "from above," and buy-in among users and line-of-business decision-makers "from below." This means you're going to have excel not only in IT and BPM, but in Sales/Marketing 101:
1. Know what the customer wants and needs.
2. Deliver it in ways that meet or exceed customer needs and expectations.
3. Repeat.

As with anything related to BPM, this will require processes grounded in a clear, goal-oriented context. Fortunately, we at RFG happen to have one, referred to as our "P7" model or "the seven Ps." These are elements critical to the success of any strategic business or IT initiatives, based on the experiences of RFG clients and other companies. The seven Ps, listed alphabetically, are:
* People;
* Planning;
* Platforms;
* Portfolios;
* Processes;
* Products (and services); and
* Projects.

If every candidate BPM initiative addresses these points proactively, marketing and selling those initiatives will be a lot easier, because influencers and observers will see their concerns reflected in the planned effort, and become stakeholders. At least some will, anyway. Others will take a few repetitions of the cycle, but that's another way to look at the building of trust, another critical success factor with BPM and other similarly strategic initiatives.

How to apply this framework? Well, the most simple way is to look at each of the seven Ps, and come up with relevant, focused questions about each category and BPM at your particular organization. The questions you and your colleagues come up with, as well as the priority of importance assigned to each and its answer(s), will help you do everything from assessing BPM opportunities to developing metrics for evaluating the results of those opportunities you pursue.

To help you get started, you should check out the RFG Research Note "From Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to Business-Oriented Architectures" in the ebizQ Analyst Corner. That Note includes some sample business and IT issues related to BPM, and organized according to the seven Ps. I'd be thrilled to hear whether you find any or all of this useful (and/or entertaining), and especially if you have validating or contradictory real-life experiences to share (anonymously or with attribution). So try letting the seven Ps be your guide to beginning or furthering your journey into the often-remarkable world of BPM marketing and sales, and let me know how the trip is going.

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

As you may recall from my inaugural outing in this space, I believe (as do my RFG analyst colleagues and most of our user clients) that communication -- talking to all involved early and often -- is critical to success with BPM. Two follow-on questions leap immediately to mind: who should be talking to whom, and about what?

These questions can have several answers, some of which are (or should be) obvious, and many of which are not. Also, the list and prioritization of these questions and their answers can vary widely from enterprise to enterprise. Nonetheless, there are some high-level approaches to them that can be applied fairly broadly, with fairly high likelihood of success. One critical subject of BPM-related discussion at any enterprise is how business decisions, about BPM and other subjects, get made.

The November 2006 issue of the Business Performance Management Forum's Brainwaves newsletter includes an article that is (or should be) required reading for anyone involved in business performance or process management. It's "Decision Making: A Serious and Growing Problem," by Robert E. Cannon. Mr. Cannon is a consultant and creator of "The Cannon Advantage," which "helps visionary leaders make decisions that gain a competitive advantage," according to the mini-bio at the end of his article.

The piece is a compendium of indications from numerous sources. All appear to agree that business analytics, intelligence, optimization, performance, and process management efforts are doomed to failure, from the same cause – consistently bad decision-making. A sample cheery bit: a quote from Paul C. Nutt, author of the book "Why Decisions Fail" and a decision-making process wonk (my description entirely) for more than two decades. Mr. Nutt says "decisions fail half the time."

So this means no more than half of everything dependent upon decisions made by businesspeople – including, presumably, enterprise IT decision-makers and staff – is likely to work. No better attitude with which to begin a new year, eh?

Fortunately, the Brainwaves article includes some glimmers of hope. One is the citation of a November 2005 Business Week Online article entitled "Why Decisions Need Design." The short answer includes fundamental historical and continuing changes in the nature of work and workforces. But there are two take-aways that matter most.

1. Business analytics, intelligence, optimization, performance, and process management efforts require foundations built upon the best possible business and technology decisions.
2. Consistently good business and technology decisions absolutely require foundations built upon consistent, enforceable, well-defined, and well-documented business processes.

So effective BPM (which can stand for business process and/or performance management in this case) requires consistently good decisions, which require effective BPM. Sounds impossibly cyclical, but in reality, this dynamic is simply recursive and iterative. In other words, discuss the decision to be made, make decisions about the underlying decision-making process, test it, grade it, refine it, document everything, learn from experience, then lather, rinse, and repeat.

All of this points out that effective BPM discussions must include both IT and business decision-makers, as well as senior, strategy-focused executives and line-of-business (LOB) leaders who focus more on day-to-day and immediate concerns. And initial discussions should focus on business goals, including how best to make good business decisions, before even considering "drilling down" into any BPM specifics.

At many enterprises, IT decision-makers should -- and perhaps may have to -- initiate these discussions. After all, BPM, like almost all important enterprise activities, is an IT-supported set of functions. Also, whether it's fair or not, IT folks could wait a long, long time before being invited to or included in any serious BPM discussions initiated by their business colleagues, many of whom are, shall we say, often unclear about the critical links between BPM and IT.

So now we have a few clues about who should be talking to whom, and at least some starting topics. Next: some thoughts about how best to engage and "get the word out" to stakeholders and observers, to expand these critical conversations. Stay tuned...and send along any thoughts or experiences you'd like to see included in this conversation!

Posted by mdortch in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings, and welcome. This blog is intended to stimulate thought, discussion, and maybe even action, in this forum and among you and your colleagues at work. In my three decades of IT-watching, I've learned that no one has a monopoly on good ideas, and a great way to unearth some is by, welll, stirrin' things up a bit. So, without further ado...

There is barely an enterprise left that is not planning, building, or managing some BPM or BPM-related initiative. My company, RFG, and other industry observers and advisors have identified BPM as a driver of other high-profile efforts, most notably service-oriented archictures (SOAs), as you can read at the ebizQ SOA in Action and Analyst Corner online resources.

All well and good. But the experiences of my company's clients and other enterprises, as many as half of those well-intentioned BPM efforts are in danger of failing outright, or never fully meeting what initially seemed like perfectly reasonable expectations. (How's that for provoking some thought?)

There are a lot of reasons why this is likely true. Fortunately, many of them are avoidable, and some of those that are not avoidable are correctable. In this case, to paraphrase a criticism often leveled and governmental and military agenices, there may not have been sufficient resources to do it right, but there may still be opportunities to do it over -- and better.

Since this is an inaugural blog, it makes sense to start with first principles. The very term "business process management" is fraught with implicit assumptions and opportunities for friction, if not outright conflict.

After all, those are business processes supposedly being managed, but they're being managed and supported by IT-based tools. The people runing them often have their own incumbent processes, many (but likely not all of which) are already proven and documented. Those people also often have their own ideas about who owns what aspects and elements of BPM initiatives.

Meanwhile, a lot of business people still have ideas about IT that are throwbacks to those popular in the 1970s and 1980s -- a lot of doubt and suspicion about what all that money's really buying, and what those IT people are really doing.

This situation is not helped by the fact that a lot of critical business processes are poorly documented or entirely undocumented, and rarely if ever tested or refined regularly or in response to changes in business conditions or goals. At too many enterprises, "BPM" is still conducted largely anecdotally, and "supported" by sticky notes and spreadsheets.

So what's the good news? Growing numbers of enterprise IT and business decision-makers are "getting it," and figuring out how to tackle BPM effectively. At some companies, BPM efforts are informing and being integrated with efforts to address compliance, risk, and security, often under the aegis of a Chief Risk Officer (CRO) or similarly senior executive. At some enterprises, IT executives and teams with proven, successful experience in process, project, and project portfolio management are becoming ambassadors and advisors to colleagues beyond IT striving towards BPM that delivers real, measurable, and repeatable business value.

Future outings in this space will offer guidance and encouragement to all who are seeking to plan, build, or manage effective BPM initiatves at their enterprises. Meanwhile, though, some early-stage observations and recommendations those involved in such initiatives may find useful.

1. Talk early and often. BPM is a big deal. For every initiative, there are multiple stakeholders and influncers, each with agendas, desires, fears, and goals. Leaders of effective BPM initiatives identify these people and their agendas, then work with and/or around them to get the most important and influential on board and spreading the good word.

2. Think globally, act locally. Every critical business challenge, from business analytics, intelligence, and performance optimization to litigation support, is an opportunity to push BPM a little bit further into and across your organization. The goal is to identify and put out fires in ways that eventually fireproof the building, so to speak.

3. Measure twice, deploy once. BPM requires effective, proven, repeatable processes, too. And since everything related to BPM has significant effects on the business, everything related to BPM is subjected to intense scrutiny. Business-driven, clear metrics and performance indicators are critical to the effective "marketing" and "sales" of BPM initiatives -- and to maximizing their business value.

4. Be inclusive. The "business" in "business process management" includes everything and everybody at some point in the "value chain." BPM must be similarly inclusive and holistic, with no business element, resource, or user left behind.

Tall orders, all -- and just the beginning. However, as mentioned earlier, it's all as possible as it is necessary. All you need is budget, senior executive sign-off, and business unit leader and user buy-in. Oh, and a great plan, and a great team. And great technologies from vendors that understand your business and are committed to your success.

Sure, it's daunting. But you're up to it. You see the needs and the opportunities, and you're ready to pitch in. And there are companies succeeding with BPM, and vendors and technologies helping them do it. I hope to contribute, by providing some analysis, observations, and recommendations -- and provoking those thoughts and conversations I mentioned earlier. So feel free to write, and let me know what you think, and what kinds of conversations you're having about BPM at your place of business. Let's see what happens.

Posted by ebizQ in BPM  |  Permalink  | Comments (1)  | TrackBacks (0)