About Outside-In, BPM and EA

Just an opinion about the “outside-in” because of the recent debates in the BPM blogsphere, e.g. http://process-cafe.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-outside-in-debate.html

I found the Steve’s training course rather good and I consider outside-in (OI) as a good process optimization technique. 6 Sigma optimizes process to reduce number of errors within the process; OI optimizes the process from the customer’s participation perspective.

To be able to use OI, it is necessary to make in your BPM practice a customer as the EXPLICIT PARTICIPANT of the process – please, allocate a pool for this role (as Thomas shown in his great presentation -- http://taraneon.de/blog/2009/10/01/let-coffee-be-your-guide-to-process-experience/). My example is the submission interface pattern -- http://www.slideshare.net/samarin/process-practical-patterns-si (download it first to play the animation).

You don’t see a customer (end-user who pays our salaries) in your process? Do not worry! Exploit your enterprise architecture to find out all RELATIONSHIPs between your processes, roles and other artefacts and make them (relationships) EXPLICT thus trace a way from “a nail the shoe was lost” to “a battle the kingdom was lost”.

Thanks,
AS

Yet another explanation of the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline

Using processes to better manage an enterprise involves the following operations with processes (very similar to PMI methodology - http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2010/11/methodological-similarities-between-bpm.html):
- modelling / planning
- automation / instrumentation
- executing
- controlling
- measuring
- optimising

In many enterprises those operations are carry out by different people (actually by different roles) and often different "languages" to describe processes are used by those roles (IT is the worth example among them). Each time when information (i.e. process description) moves from one role to another, there are some "translation" errors.

Imagine that you want to prepare a corporate document within an enterprise in which everyone translates this document in his/her unique language before making modifications. It is a very inefficient way of communication and coordination.

Exactly this issue is addressed by BPM which recommends to use one master description of business processes for all mentioned above operations. Of course, such a master description may be transformed (translated) to some secondary languages for particular purposes of a particular operation. For example, some international organisations produce their documents in many languages, but the master copy is developed in only one language.

Thanks,
AS

EBIZQ.net: What key methods do you use for applying design patterns in BPM?

<discussion ref="http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2010/11/what-is-the-best-way-to-apply-workflow-patterns.php" />

I believe in tools that worked in practice. For this reason I like patterns. Unfortunately some of them e.g. some “workflow patterns” are a bit difficult for the users. So, I collected about 20 practical patterns (simple and advanced) in my book and in my blog http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/search/label/practical%20process%20patterns

I would like to be able to construct a business process (a template or an instance on on-a-fly) from small process fragments (similar to the chess game in which we have standard combinations). Some of them will be predefined in a library of process patterns, some of them have to be created on demand. (More about this in http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2010/04/let-us-architect-use-of-existing.html).

For me, the closest match to patterns are macro-commands which we had in assemblers at run-time. Of course, now we need them at design time.

Thanks,
AS

Methodological similarities between BPM and PMI

I noticed a good match between methodologies:

BPM discipline	PMI
model (or plan) automate (or instrument)	initiating planning
execute	executing
control measure	monitoring and controlling
optimise	closing

Thanks,
AS

Linkedin: ACM is a very naughty boy

<discussion ref="http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=34067598&gid=2452802&trk=SD">

@Syed “BPM as a business discipline (not as a technology) should consists of at a high level two different kind of process architecture patterns, sequential (e.g. flow charting) and non-sequential & ad-hoc processes”

If we go back a reference model and define BPM as “process-oriented management discipline to help an enterprise to realise its vision, by managing the flow of business activities in a holistic way thus considering together modeling (or planning), automation, execution, control, measurement and optimization of business processes” then we can see that there is no fundamental difference between “sequential” and “non-sequential” processes. All depends on how OFTEN those 6 BPM functions (model, automate, execute, control, measure, and optimise) are applied:

• once before many process instances
• once before each process instance
• a few times within the process instance or
• before/after each activity in the process instance.

Classic BPMS (BPM as technology) do well the first option. The business want to have a possibility to change option as necessary (similar to the gearbox). So, no need for yet another process-oriented discipline – “just” make better tools based on a good theory (which is still lacking a reference model and reference architectures).

See also http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2010/04/let-us-architect-use-of-existing.html
Thanks,
AS

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

Examples on how BPM helps to enable innovations

This post is inspired by the discussion http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2010/05/will-bpm-projects-start-to-fade-as-businesses-go-into-growth-mode.php in which I wrote (again) that the proper use of BPM helps enterprises to enable innovations. In this post I will concentrate on practical examples which illustrate my contribution that that discussion. This is because Max Pucher commented (thanks Max for your time) some of my previous posts/presentations as “theoretical exercise”(e.g. http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/can-bpm-be-rearchitected-into-to-acm/, http://www.slideshare.net/samarin/achieving-synergy-between-bpm-soa-and-ea-3950413, and https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4560463190032436692&postID=3054041712702200514 ). Hope that these practical examples will help Max to better understand the practical roots of the BPM/SOA architectural approach which I described in my book http://www.improving-BPM-systems.com/book

As usual, I have to be very explicit with the BPM (Business Process Management). I distinguish the three concepts of BPM: BPM as a discipline (how to use processes to manage an enterprise), BPM as software product (e.g. BPM suite or BPMS) and 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).

In other words, those three concepts are: the theory, the software tools and the practice.

The “proper use of BPM” means a well-architected ensemble of all three concepts of BPM, but especially the third one – an enterprise BPM system which is architectured to provide the level of flexibility requested by the business.

Below I mention some practical positive effects of the proper use of BPM in enterprises

1. Business artefacts (roles, rules, data structures, documents, processes, services, events, audit trails and KPIs) become versionable and external (thus easier to evolve) in contract of being diluted within monolith applications. For example, a company wanted to change a simple, but fundamental, business logic which has been implemented twice: a) in a BPM/SOA part of the business system and b) in a popular ERP via some custom development. In the first case, the change took 1 hour; in the second case the same change took 1 year. Of course, with such speed of evolution discourages the introduction of changes.

2. The process-centric way of building IT systems improves their flexibility. For example, a document management solution for HR has been developed from a few COTS products. After a few years of evolution of this solution, it was in a state which fully prevented any modifications – a small change required touching all parts at the same time. We used processes as the focal point of integration of different parts of the solution and thus the further evolution was enabled because different versions of a process template can easily co-exist.

3. BPM/SOA helps to combine functionality of existing IT tools to deliver a new way of working. For example, the management of a distributed organization wanted to reduce the number of face-to-face stakeholder meetings by enabling discussions and formal voting on some policy issues BETWEEN meetings (i.e. by Internet). The management wanted this functionality within an existing extranet implemented on top of an industry-leading ECM commercial product. CEO outlined the functionality for CIO, CIO asked the vendor of this ECM product and the vendor answered that it is not possible (specs are not detailed enough, too short time, etc.). The CEO’s innovation met the IT reality. Then we used the BPM/SOA approach to develop the missing functionality OUTSIDE the ECM product and to wrap everything together as a few processes. It took 10 man-days (5 for dev and 5 for doc).

Thanks,
AS