My local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, picked up a story from The Washington Post today. (The link to the story in the previous sentence is to the Press Democrat version, in case you're interested; you'll need to register at the Washington Post Web site to read it there.) Based on that story and a bit of additional research, here's what we know so far.
1. A recent study indicates that dogs will imitate the same behavior in different ways, depending upon context. For example, dogs prefer to move things with their mouths, keeping all four paws underneath them. They only move things with a paw if their mouths are full. This study found that dogs will make the mouth-vs.-paw decision in response to what another dog does, AND whether or not that other dog's mouth is already busy (holding a ball, in the case of the study).
2. This context-sensitive decision-making process was recently discovered in human infants, research that inspired the study Above-mentioned dog study.
3. Dog advocates cite the dog study results as further evidence of the greater intellectual and emotional depth of our canine companions. Skeptics point out rightly that this all could be going on with no conscious, reasoned action on the dog's part.
After reading this, I came to two immediate conclusions.
1. However it got there, the apparently innate presence of this context-sensitive decision-making process, in dogs and human infants, demonstrates just how fundamental to survival and success process can be. (In basic behavioral research terms, if you don't figure out how to press the right button at the right time, you never get your treat.)
2. Every business process architecture must be agile and flexible enough to allow the context-sensitive fine-tuning of at least strategic and/or business-critical processes. This minimizes the negative effects of the "one size fits all" stricture that hobbles many BPM efforts. (Not to mention access control and security efforts, resource provisioning efforts, and other strategic and tactical IT efforts that require agile, flexible, context-sensitive, business-driven processes to succeed. So I won't.) But this "mass customization" approach enables businesses to adapt and refocus processes in rapid response to new opportunities or requirements presented by customers, partners, and/or prospects.
Of course, one would need both good processes and good technologies to achieve the above goals. And there would be many potentially valid approaches toward said goals, based largely on, well, context. But you probably already knew or suspected that. Your comments, experiences, reactions, and recommendations welcome.
(Oh, there was actually one more conclusion that occurred to me in response to the dog study mentioned herein. Who in the heck trained the border collie they used to model the behaviors to which the subject dogs were responding? I mean, I know border collies are smart, but...well, if you read the article and/or the study, you'll know what I mean.)
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.
