If you have not yet done so, please go read the full transcript of the fine Keynote Ken Vollmer of Forrester Research delivered during the ebizQ BPM in Action Virtual Conference held in March. You might even want to save a copy, for inspiration (with appropriate attribution, of course!) as you craft your own BPM plans. The Webinar featuring Ken's presentation is also available for your dining and dancing pleasure, but you may find the transcript more immediately useful or easy to assimilate into your own evolving plans.
As you may or may not know or suspect, industry analysts have almost as much trouble saying they agree with one another as competing vendors do when sharing the same stage. (My ebizQ blogmate Sandy Kemsley knows this well.) Nonetheless, I find myself largely agreeing with my learned industry colleague Mr. Vollmer. I think he got the critical success factors right, although I might quibble with the order of some of them. (I do agree that technology comes last, however.) I also agree with his assessment of best practices. You may notice as you read through his remarks some resonance with past diatribes you may have experienced in this space.
However, I am concerned about the distinction Mr. Vollmer and Forrester have chosen to make between human-centric and integration-centric BPM. To me, this is verbiage that violates some of Mr. Vollmer's own recommendations, as it really focuses on the technologies underlying various competing solutions, and not the business goals being addressed. So I guess I'm casting my lot on the side of human-centric (albeit business-driven) BPM, another view of what I've referred to here previously as "business knowledge management" (BKM).
I believe there are processes and workflows used by people, and processes and workflows used by systems and resources, especially in a service-oriented architecture (SOA).However, I also believe there is no real BPM until and unless these processes, and the interactions and processes that link them to one another, are treated in an integrated, holistic way. I further believe the processes necessary to achieve this admittedly elusive and slippery goal will vary from organization to organization, depending largely upon the cultural issues, people, processes, and technologies in place and in play.
In this regard, you may also find useful some of the comments and observations made by Phil Gilbert, CTO at BPM solution provider Lombardi Software. Mr. Gilbert, responding to a spirited discussion moderated by Ms. Kemsley during the BPM in Action event, argues that business agility, visibility, and better conversations among decision-makers are more important than digressions about human- vs. integration-centric BPM. He argues further that BPM is coming into the enterprise from a variety of sources, including enterprise applications and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. You may recall largely positive rants about these issues within previous outings in this space as well.
My point here is that when you see overlap, if not violent agreement, among multiple allegedly expert observers and practitioners, the common ground is likely worth your time and attention. And I think the common ground here is that BPM works best when it is supported by consistent, well-thought-out, business-driven processes. These must include a fair (if not unfair) amount of discovery, documentation, mapping, and measuring of what's going on now. You can't get anyplace good until you have a good idea of your starting circumstances – or, perhaps more bluntly, you shouldn't start running until you're clear about the specific directions of "away" and "toward." As always, your comments and responses welcome.
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.
