#BPM related TLAs comparison

This blogpost is aimed to arrange some acronyms (usually Three Letter Acronym - TLA) in the BPM domain. This blogpost is based on Definition of #BPM and related terms, again and Enterprise as a System Of Processes blogposts.

Just repeat a couple of basics.

Enterprise functioning can be considered to be the enactment of business activity flows spanning the applications, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the boundaries of the enterprise.

Process-based disciplines (TQM/QMS, BPR, TPS, 6Sigma, etc.) exploit the concept of business processes for the better management of the enterprise functioning in support of the enterprise goals.
Note: They are also called process-based management disciplines.

Business process management (BPM) is a process-based discipline involving any combination of modeling, automation, execution, control, measurement and optimization of business processes.

These 6 functions will be used to arrange various TLAs in 2 dimensions: functionality and scope.

Although, the BPM definition mentions "any combination", there are some dependencies between these 6 functions which distribute these functions in time.

• measurement is before optimisation because you can't improve what you are not measuring;
• execution is before control and measurement because the focus is on the enterprise functioning;
• modeling is before automation and execution because any work should be planned first.

These functions can be used in various scopes: a business unit, an enterprise, a supply-chain or an ecosystem.

Processes may be

• implicit  -it does exist in somebody's head or implemented by an application, e.g. SAP R/3, 
• explicit - it does exist in a human-readable format, e.g. in Visio,
• executable - it is does exist in a format which is human-readable and machine-readable, e.g. as BPMN  and may be interpreted by a business process engine application, e.g. Intalio, Bonita, SAP NetWeaver, IBM Webshpere Process Server. 

	modeling	automation	execution	control	measurement	optimisation	SCOPE
workflow	executable	explicit or executable	executable	explicit	implicit	implicit	departmental or enterprise
TQM/QMS	explicit	N/A	explicit	explicit	N/A	explicit	enterprise
BPR	explicit	N/A	N/A	explicit	explicit	explicit	departmental
TPS	implicit	implicit	implicit	implicit	implicit	implicit	enterprise
6Sigma	explicit	N/A	implicit	N/A	executable	executable	departmental
ACM	N/A	N/A	executable	executable	N/A	N/A	departmental
BPA	explicit	implicit or explicit	implicit or explicit	N/A	N/A	N/A	departmental
BPI	implicit or explicit	implicit or explicit	implicit or explicit	implicit	explicit	explicit	departmental
?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
BPM	executable	executable	executable	executable	executable	executable	any

N/A means not applicable
executable means machine-assisted execution
BPA means business process automation
BPI means business process improvement

As one can see, BPM (as a discipline) is the most powerful process-based management discipline although not all 6 functions are always used together.

Thanks,
AS