Thanks,
AS

Sure we would like to have BPM as good as an applied science, but as the current BPM is vendor-driven — BPM looks like a religion.
Again, this is the raison d’être for a BPM reference model as a step toward customer-driven BPM.

Thanks,
AS

No! Why? I just dive deeper into BPM.

Why do we always pull everything to our place? BPM people pretend to have their own methodoly. Lean and Six Sigma books devote half of their space to what essentialy is general project managment not even mentioning the term.

I wonder: is BPM science or religion? If it’s science then we should split the knowledge domain and collaborate with neighbourghs rather then invade into their territory. “Stand on giant’s shoulders”, not beat them or replace. It’s religion adepts who say “abandon wrong churches and come to us”.

To be successfull BPM should use SOA and corporate applications and get used by process methodologies and methodologists.

Did you reach your “Trough of Disillusionment” with BPM?

I consider BPM as making business processes the “first-class citizens” within an enterprise (i.e. explicit, systematic, with one master description for all phases in the life-cycle, flexible, etc.). BPM (as a tool for improving enterprise business performance) is an enabler for mentioned old schools — BPM may give them a set of real business processes and the real performance data to apply different improvement techniques. At the same time, BPM requires its own methodology, software products, reference architectures, reference model, etc. to move to “Slope of Enlightenment”.

Thanks,
AS

Thank you for sharing your experience. Well I have seen such projects too. Actually not just seen but performed. It’s easy to be successfull with “greenfield” pilot BPM project (not connected to any application) but our experience shows that you can’t go far this way. However the other extreme - putting application integration upfront - is more dangerous indeed. Many people get catched into this trap: they believe they shouldn’t launch a process into production until it’s integrated to just about everything. Bad, fatal mistake.

Alexander

Thank you for the valuable additions. The only point I won’t readily accept is methodology. My current position (it has changed during last year or so) is that BPM should be agnostic to process methodology, it’s an enabling technology for various methodologies. Want to develop the methodology? Fine. But don’t do it under BPM, better join existing schools. Otherwise we are doomed to re-invent the weel, split the efforts and confuse customers. Depending on issues the prospect faces I’d recommend TQM, Lean, Six Sigma, TOC or some mixture of those rather than pretend to introduce a brand new BPM methodology that makes all others obsolete. It seems that I’m a minority if not alone at this point but I can see that people just don’t buy another “BPM methodology” and I believe they are right.

a) historical — workflow was originated within ERP systems to improve their flexibility; but often such a workflow is not visible. Effectively, BPM offers the externalization of workflow, so, BPM and ERP are very complimentary;

b) methodological — in the absence of an agreed reference model for BPM it is difficult to compare impact of different BPM implementations;

c) managerial — popularity of ERP is based in the long-term practices of US management to focus primary on the stock optimization. At the same time Japan was developing process-oriented practices;

d) architectural — re “Of course it’s impossible to say which way is better - a unified system from a single vendor or the integration of various \“best of breed\” systems”. I think, a network effect should be used as a guidance — moving from the former to the latter decreases efficiency and increases effectiveness. So, choose what you need now.

Thanks,
AS