OK, so we're moving merrily along towards a "CPR" ("culture, process, results") approach to success with BPM and business knowledge management (BKM). Such an approach must address seven interconnected factors to succeed. These are processes, people, platforms, products, planning, projects, and portfolios – the seven Ps. Previous outings have addressed processes and people. Next up: platforms.
Platforms are more than particular configurations of hardware or operating systems. Where users are concerned, the applications they rely upon to do their jobs are the only platforms they care about. Which is exactly as it should be in almost all cases I've seen. In case you were wondering.
So the key questions that need answering are these.
1. What are the key application and service "platforms" that matter most to those who make the business go?
2. Are those application and service platforms "BPM/BKM-enabled?"
What "BPM/BKM-enabled" means can vary from situation to situation. However, at a high level, what it means encompasses things like the ability to audit usage patterns in ways that help to capture, document, and identify useful BPM/BKM elements. If BPM/BKM tools are in place, such enablement also means appropriate, bidirectional interoperability with those tools, and whatever tools are used to manage them.
This is also an area in which another potential "platform" becomes important – the so-called "common/configuration management database. This is often referred to as a "CMDB," although the definition of the "C" varies (as does the number of "Cs," at least in IBM Corp.'s case, which calls its permutation a "change and configuration management database" or "CCMDB." Sigh.)
Anyway, if there is a management database in place or under consideration, it, too, must be appropriately BPM/BKM-enabled. In this case, what that means is that the database must be sufficiently extensible and flexible to support easy addition of information that is more BPM/BKM-related than focused on particular technological minutiae. Eventually, such databases appear destined to become the central management points for all critical responsibilities, restrictions, rights, roles, and rules governing access to and use of business IT and intellectual property (IP) resources. This means that management and optimization of business processes and knowledge, and of the human interactions that surround and rely upon these, will likely rely heavily on such databases. This makes now the time to start thinking along these lines, whether or not your chosen solution vendors are doing so yet or not.
Finally, if BPM and BKM efforts are to work, they have to touch and be touched by every resource important to the business. This means that BPM and BKM solutions and processes absolutely must be technologically platform-agnostic, natively and/or through interfaces compliant with open, industry-supported standards.
More on platforms later and/or offline, if you'd like. Just let me know. Next up: products (and services) – and not (just) those you buy or sell, either…
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.
