2010-05-27

Who is doing #BPM within an enterprise?

In this post, I would like to share my understanding in what extend different people within an enterprise are involved in BPM.

As usual, I have to be very explicit with the BPM (Business Process Management). I distinguish the three concepts of BPM:
1. BPM as a discipline (better management of an enterprise via modeling, automating, execution, controlling, measuring and optimising the flow of business activities that span the enterprise’s systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries),
2. BPM as software product (e.g. BPM suite or BPMS) and
3. BPM as a portfolio of the business processes of an enterprise, and the practices and tools for governing the design, execution and evolution of this portfolio (enterprise BPM system or enterprise BPM-centric solution).

Below I consider an enterprise which has accepted and implemented a process-centric way of management of the enterprise. Each stakeholder (leftmost column in the table below) of the enterprise BPM system works in some extend with some of those BPM as tools. The keys used in the table below are the following:
“—“ none (not important tool to do the job)
“-+” a bit (general knowledge about tool is necessary and some occasional use of it is needed)
“+-“ some (good knowledge about tool is mandatory and systematic use of it is needed)
“++” a lot (critical and daily-used tool)

For example, a line manager knows how to use processes to manage his/her area of responsibility, has some exposition to the selection of BPM software and uses the BPM-centric solution for daily supervision and coordinating of work of his/her subordinates.

And for architects, I added the rightmost column which is about architecting the use of these three BPM together.

A few modifications (thanks to Adam's comments) are marked in red. Two roles "BPM initiate sponsor" and "Organisational unit" are added. The latter is a group in some organisations which is responsible for improvement of work of the whole organisation.

Another modification to reflect the comment from acguitarte (Thanks)  in blue.  I consider that Strategist is, in some sense, an architect (a person who translates a customer’s requirements into a viable plan and guides others in its execution).




Thanks,
AS

6 comments:

Adam Deane said...

Hi Alexander,

If I understand correctly (based on +- and ++), you are saying that the stakeholders that are involved with the concepts are:

BPM Decipline: Business Architects and Business Analysts
BPM Software: Super Users, Business Analysts, IT Architest and IT Developers
Enterprise BPM: IT operators, Line manager, Super Users and normal users

Could you add another table showing what you think different people within an enterprise should be involved in BPM, in order to compare.

Cheers,
Adam

Alex said...

Thanks Adam,

Do you mean more types of stakeholders?

The table is actually an ideal picture (I should be more explicit...). So far I did not see a company around with the explicit role of "business architect".

Thanks,
AS

Adam Deane said...

Hi Alexander,

The only stakeholder I’d add is the BPM initiative “sponsor”, but there isn’t a defined corporate role called sponsor.

Your table is spot on. My tiny adjustments would be:
I would like to see normal users having a bit of knowledge and input on both the BPM discipline and BPM software.
I also think that the IT developers should understand the BPM discipline, not just the BPM software.
My last observation is that you have targeted IT for the BPM software, whereas nowadays BPM software vendors are targeting the business analysts, as they should be the real owners of the business process.

Cheers,
Adam

Alex said...

Thanks Adam,

I updated the table - you are right that everyone should have some understanding of the BPM discipline. As well as business analysts should work directly with BPM software.

Thanks,
AS

acguitarte said...

@Alexander - this is a good typology of the BPM stakeholders. Perhaps you can add "Strategist" or "Strategic Planner" as a stakeholder?

fyi, my formal title in my organization is "Business Architect" and I normally hand off our business architecture work artifacts to business analysts and BPM analysts. For example, BPM analysts build out the details of a process from either a business use case activity diagram or a business capability map for a specific area of business interest.

Alex said...

Thanks @acguitarte and check my interpretation, please.

Thanks,
AS