I spend a fair amount of time talking with acquaintances about their workplaces. Specifically, problems in their workplaces. It turns out that a large majority of these problems are caused by, involve, and/or are related to business processes and/or IT.
In my experience during the past three decades, I have come to believe that these problems are often the root causes and/or amplifiers of almost every other process- and/or IT-related problem I've seen. So, I've decided to try to help anyone visiting this space to try to recognize and solve these problems, before they become any bigger.
If there are two fundamental problems that cause more follow-on challenges than any other, I believe they are these.
1. No one is given time, training, or support specifically designed to help them learn and understand the critical processes that drive the business, and define their contributions to its larger goals.
2. No one is given company- or task-specific training or orientation to help them master the specific IT tools and skills they are given to do their jobs.
You can list these in any order you want. But I'd be very surprised if you could argue that once someone is hired or otherwise embraced by the business infrastructure, the majority of challenges that face that person can't be traced to one or both of these fundamental problems.
And yes, each is basically a BPM failure. Either there are no processes to guarantee that each of these shortcomings gets its bud nipped proactively, or there's no enforcement of or penalties for failing to comply with policies that do exist.
And the worst part? Each of these fundamental challenges could be addressed effectively in as little as a few hours of set-up effort, and an hour of initial self-paced work per user, bolstered by a few minutes each day or so.
I know, I know – sounds like a pitch for exercise equipment or weight reduction pills you see pitched on late-night TV. But I will, over the course of my next few entries here, argue to the contrary, and offer some specific steps and suggestions applicable at almost any enterprise, no matter how small in size or limited in IT budget or expertise.
If you work in a large enterprise that already offers/requires IT and/or process indoctrination of new affiliates, well, congratulations. You can use my observations and recommendations as points of comparison with your incumbent processes, and let me know if I'm missing anything important. For the rest of us, though, I'm hoping to begin a continuing dialogue about how and why BPM efforts fail (or never really get started). Frankly, I'm pretty convinced most of the reasons are more about people than process or technology, and equally convinced that as such, most people and organizations can jump-start fixing what's broken relatively easily, cheaply, and quickly. This will let us get to a stage where discussions of larger BPM-related issues are more meaningful to more readers and visitors.
So, next stop: IT orientation and support for everyone, on almost no money at with minimal disruption to operations. Especially compared with the disruptions caused when someone accidentally breaks something or can't do a required task in a timely fashion. Which usually happens because they don't know how, no one knew they didn't know how, and there was no one available or willing to educate them on demand. Which is, in fact, a class of stupid BPM tricks. Stay tuned, watch this space, and let me know how I'm doing – and how your organization is or is not dealing with the challenges on which I'm going to focus.
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
