Laws of #BPM (Business Process Management)

Note: General thanks to Peter Schooff ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/pschooff ) and bpm.com

1st law of BPM

Each BPM vendor, each BPM consultant, each BPM “body-of-knowledge” and each BPM client (i.e. enterprise) understands BPM differently.

Note: Thanks to Emiel Kelly ( https://nl.linkedin.com/pub/emiel-kelly/11/464/824 )

Corollary 1 All BPM quotes must be taken critically.

2nd law of BPM

BPM covers three different concepts:

1. a management discipline (a discipline for the better management of the enterprise functioning in support of the enterprise goals - managing business by processes); 
2. tools (also known as BPM-suite software products to manage business processes per se), and 
3. practices (usage of BPM to solve unique problems of a particular enterprise). 

Corollary 1 The meaning of BPM must explicitly defined.

3rd law of BPM

As any enterprise-wide undertaking, the usage of BPM within an enterprise must be systemically architected: designed, governed and optimised.

Corollary 1 Architecting BPM for an enterprise must comprise BPM as a discipline, BPM tools and BPM practices.

4th law of BPM

At present BPM is a vendor-driven market.

Corollary 1 A vendor-independent understanding of BPM is mandatory for successful using BPM in an enterprise.

Corollary 2 A vendor-independent understanding of BPM is mandatory for successful acquiring an BPM-suite software product.

Corollary 3 Current BPM standards are optimised to vendors not customers thus to be reviewed.

5th law of BPM

The vast majority of unique business processes can be constructed from a limited set of business-centric patterns.

Corollary 1 BPM achieves synergy between diversity and uniformity.

6th law of BPM

BPM employs the power of coordination.

Corollary 1 There are many coordination techniques which are used by BPM, e.g. flow-chart, intrinsic knowledge, social knowledge, business rules, etc.

Corollary 2 BPM is mandatory in a digital enterprise.

7th law of BPM

Done correctly BPM is 50 % of Enterprise Architecture (EA).

Corollary 1 Consider BPM and EA concerns (business, application, information, technology and security) together.

See http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.ch/2014/05/ideas-for-bpmshift-delenda-est-vendor_11.html

Corollary 2 Some enterprise architects do not understand BPM. (They consider that business processes exist only in EA repositories.)

8th law of BPM

BPM challenges arise because its theory is both unfinished and unacknowledged.

Corollary 1 BPM-related theory is a combination of math, ontology and systems theory. And on top of that then, engineering.

Thanks to John Morris ( https://ca.linkedin.com/in/johnhwmorris )

9th law of BPM

BPM establishes and maintains the explicit, machine-executable and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) linkage between various enterprise artefacts.

Corollary 1 BPM is an enabler for sound risk management at the enterprise scale.

Thanks to Venkatesh Thiruvarul  ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkyt ) and
Hadi El-Khoury ( https://fr.linkedin.com/in/helkhoury )

10th law of BPM

BPM delivers digital business solutions as explicit and machine-executable assemblies of artefacts.

Corollary 1 BPM delivers digital business solutions in an agile and incremental way.

Corollary 2 BPM delivers digital business solutions considerably faster than the traditional software development.

Thanks to Sergei Penkov ( https://au.linkedin.com/in/sergeipenkov )

11th law of BPM

Because the value is created in interactions between a customer's process and enterprise processes, BPM makes explicit the creation of value.

Thanks to Kai Laamanen  ( https://fi.linkedin.com/pub/kai-laamanen/6/384/913 )

12th law of BPM

BPM induces significant technological, organisational and work-related-cultural changes.

Corollary 1 Management of technological, organisational and cultural changes is a must in process-centric transformation.

13th law of BPM

BPM will die a new death every year in the press and among pundits... but not in the market place. 

Thanks to Scott Francis ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfrancisatx )

14th law of BPM

BPM community knows very well what universally does not work; at the same time the knowledge of what universally does work is hidden or non-existent.

Corollary 1 BPM community is a group of alchemists.

Thanks to http://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/what-s-the-worst-advice-you-can-give-someone-just-starting-bpm

15th law of BPM

BPM is full of assumptions.

Thanks to http://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/what-are-the-underlying-assumptions-of-business-process-management 

16th law of BPM

Successful BPM implementation is an enterprise-wide digital transformation.

Corollary 1 It is mandatory to keep the big picture and implement it in several small projects. ( see  http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.it/2015/06/incremental-transformation-to-digital.html )

Corollary 2 All the enterprise-wide functions must be aligned to optimised the use of BPM.

Corollary 3, ICT, as the most common enterprise-wide function, must have all its functionality “in tune” to optimise the delivery of process-centric solutions. Namely: Governance, Security, Software development practices, Operations, Monitoring, Support, Maintenance & Small enhancement, User Experience, Data Architecture, Use of the selected BPM-suite tool, Overall continual improvement.

Corollary 4 An enterprise needs a small group of agreed minds to architect and guide others to execute this digital transformation.

17th law of BPM

Thou shalt consider business process model as a description of WHY this process is as it is depicted in its diagrams.

Note: Such a description is:

• explicit
• computer-executable (i.e. formalised)
• multi-viewpoints (process diagrams are some of those viewpoints)
• multi-diagrams
• understandable by all the stakeholders of the process

Corollary 1 A process template is "cognitive assist".

Thanks to http://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/how-do-you-make-sure-bpm-doesn-t-get-overwhelmed-by-too-much-data

18th law of BPM

BPM is the revolutionary technology that no one likes to admit is revolutionary.

Thanks to John Morris ( https://ca.linkedin.com/in/johnhwmorris )

19th law of BPM

The following BPM-specific aspects must be present in any successful use of BPM:

1. BPM good practices (they are software-independent and enterprise-independent)
2. enterprise BPM architecture (how a particular enterprise is using processes to manage better its work)
3. target enterprise application and information architectures to integrate a BPM-suite tool into the existing enterprise computing environment
4. BPM-suite tool suitable for the job to be done at a particular enterprise
5. process-centric project management (which is agile-like because each process, being a composite artefact, defines all its component and their implementation follows agile practices)
6. organisational and/or operational changes for optimising working practices for the best use of BPM potentials
7. availability of leadership resource(s) to achieve synergy between all other items

20th law of BPM

BPM people must become friends with business architects, solution architects and enterprise architects.

Thanks to www.bpmtips.com

21st law of BPM

The BPM industry is ready for a next 'round' of standardization.

22nd law of BPM

Level of automation of your processes = c1 * "Level of modelling"**2 + c2 * "Level of coding" + c3

Corollary 1 Formalise your work before even thinking about automating it.

Thanks to bpm.com discussions.

23rd law of BPM

Do not mix up coordination with subordination.

Note 1: If the task B is planned to be executed after the task A then it does not mean that the performer of the task B is working for the performer of the task A.

Note 2: If the task B is planned to be executed after the task A and the performer of the task B may reject the work done by the performer of the task A then it does not mean that the performer of the task B must have the higher corporate power than the performer of the task A.

Example: A doctor works after a nurse but not for a nurse.


Thanks,
AS