Absorbing the BIG Elephant. Part 1

Companies who are looking to start with BPM and searching for BPMS in order to help them, are most of the time finding the BIG Elephant on their way. Almost all BPMS Vendors are receiving the big question; how do we get started with BPMS and how will our organization absorb this? (The Big Elephant is not they nice looking animal call elephant – but the visual expression of a big project – for which you don’t know in the 1st view how you can oversee it).
If we want to eat our BIG Elephant, then we have to look how we can slice it in smaller absorbable pieces. So if we apply this to a BPM-Project, we will mainly have 3 big pieces or elements: People, Process and Information.
Let’s focus on people for now. This will raise the most important question: what’s the impact of this project on people and how will their daily work be affected by this?
You probably discovered already that the biggest problem on absorbing our piece called ‘People’ will raise a lot of issue and resistance from them. By nature people are not very open to changes and will try in some situations everything to avoid it. (Adoption failure is probably the number 1 reasons why a project fails at the end). So we have to focus on how we bring changes to them and show them the benefit. In some cultures and companies they spend a lot of time and effort, in order to learn people handling changes (Japans cultures are very focused on ‘Kaizen’ – a methodology to guide changes in an organization)
Somewhere in their mind a question is coming up: ‘What’s in it for me?’ or ‘Will I lose my job?’
Let’s look what an organization can do on this and make sure that they have the ‘People Slice of our Big Elephant’ under control.
· Build a strong visible business case
· Build a strong executive sponsorship
· Build a team of change agents, which are guiding and messaging the changes across the organization
· Create a clear vision and roadmap
· Show business and user benefits
· Communication, communication and once more communication! But it their own language.
· Empower people and share responsibility
· Start small, think big and scale fast!
· Improve continuously, based on lesions learned

Part 2: Processes ... coming soon

BPM ≠ Workflow

As I’m daily working with partners, customers and prospects around BPM and workflow, it seems for most of the people not to be clear what the difference is. Most people think BPM and Workflow are the same and therefore they are comparing apples with peers and lemons. Workflow has to be seen as a sub-set within a BPM, in other words a BPM Process is build of several workflows and is putting the whole management, control/monitoring on top of this. BPM is looking at the real business process, by example a sales order process, which is containing several workflows.
At the other side BPM is not about technology, or drawing just nice process diagrams or having a nice underlying SOA-Implementation, but it’s about driving Business Agility!
And this is where the problems are starting with purely workflow solutions. They are looking from a technical point of view, in sometime situation these solutions are nothing more than code compilers (converting nice graphics into code/assemblies). And are not allowing the business users to have more control over their business processes or allow them to dynamically change the execution path of the processes. BPM will allow you also to create a higher transparency over your processes, streamline them and of course optimize them.
The success of Microsoft MOSS/SharePoint and its underlying Windows Workflow Foundation is not making it easier for people. MOSS and WF are great for what they are made and are intended to be used for, but at the other hand it’s dangerous as it can make a wrong impression or understanding to the outside world.
Bad products don’t exist any more, as long you use them for what they are made for.
Ever saw a plane sailing or a vessel taking off from the run-way?

SOA for ICT-People, BPM for Business

I found today a great article from Prof. D. Deschoolmeester from the BPM Research Centre at Vlerick Management School (Gent – Belgium). Prof .D Deschoolmeester is stating also that BPM is not equal to SOA or vice versa, and that each aspect has to be signed on the right level and be used by the right audience. SOA is a great approach if you want to support the business, which are looking for dynamic and hybrid business solutions.
BPM has to enable the business again to take control over their processes and allow them in first phase to know how their business is running! Today a lot of the business processes are hiding inside monolithic and robust ERP-Solutions, and this is now creating a problem in this dynamic world. How can you align quickly the market situation or re-align a sales process, if it’s wrapped in a black box?

Some food to think about it!

Surving the technical SOA-World

I'm today at the SOA Symposium in Amsterdam and very surprised about the technical and high levels almost magical language they are using. For most of the people here SOA is a technical instrument only, which they want to keep far away from the business people. (Managers don’t understand IT)
However if I remember correctly IT is there to support the business, meaning without business you don't need IT stuff.
I fully agree with the mean vision of SOA, but it still believes that it should be aligned to the business need. In this very hectically and under high economic pressure situation, companies are looking for solutions that can quickly adapted to changing business or market needs.
SOA and BPM can be used to SUPPORT the business, DECREASE the total cost of IT development and platforms, but not to make this more complicate or keep the business people stupid.
Remember without business, nobody needs IT !