Have you ever noticed that when some people are given a limit, they push the limit? I’m seeing that here, where speakers were instructed to have a maximum of 25 slides, which I find to be generous for a 45-minute talk — mine is currently sitting around 15 slides with a maximum of about 30 words per slide. Keith Harrison-Broninski is obviously from the “more is more” school of slide shows, and has exactly 25 extremely dense slides. For example, the slide that we just looked at contains 114 words; ironically, it ends with a point about how we need to define the aim of BPM in 10 words or less.
His focus, something that I heard briefly in Fingar’s talk earlier, is that current BPMS’ don’t support human-facing processes all that well, and that processes can’t be modified by business users. I have a problem with this basic premise, since I’ve seen lots of cases where BPM has been used to great effect both for standardized, transactional human steps and collaborative processes, and many of the BPMS vendors offer tools that allow for business changes to the process. Certainly, much of the technology is in place, but sometimes corporate culture gets in the way, which is not strictly a problem with the technology. Stay tuned for my presentation tomorrow, which I will eventually blog about, on how Web 2.0 and BPM have the potential to change this landscape.
[OMG, we just hit a slide with 249 words — the print is getting smaller and smaller. Keith, you’re killing me!]
I’ve commented on Human Interaction Management (HIM) previously, and I still don’t see any great benefit of using HIM role-activity diagramming over a standard swimlane style of diagram, especially given the relatively good penetration of swimlane diagrams into businesses. However, there’s some interesting ideas in his patterns for work (interaction between roles) and patterns for work management, as well as inter-enterprise automation. Not surprising, given some of his posts in the past, he states “BPEL is on the way out” and that BPMN will soon map directly to J2EE/.Net components, and proposes HIM as a solution for (inter-enterprise) choreography.
If you’re interested in trying out HIM, Keith is offering a free downloadable beta version of his HIM software available on his site.
If you would like to see what Sandy is talking about for yourself, the slides are online at the HIM site. There are lots of funny pictures to liven things up 🙂
You can also hear a recording of the talk I gave at the conference, courtesy of Derek Miers (thanks Derek).
Thanks Keith. For those too lazy to browse, the direct link to Keith’s presentation is here and the recording here.