Our final demo session of bpmNEXT — can’t believe it’s all over.
How I Learned to Tell the Truth with BPM – Gene Rawls, Capital BPM
Their Veracity tool overlays architecture and process layers using visual models, integrated with a few different BPMS (primarily IBM); create models in the tool for process and underlying technical architecture (SOA, rules and data) layers, and create linkages between them to indicate interactions. Direct integration of IBM ODM into rules layer.
Business Process and Self-Managed Teams – Keith Swenson, Fujitsu and WfMC
Finishing bpmNEXT with a presentation on self-managed teams in the context of BPM, not a demo. Contrasting organizational styles of “early structured” (aka “structured”) versus “late structured” (aka unstructured), with respective characteristics of centralized versus decentralized, and machine-style versus garden-style. Concepts of sociocracy (on which holocracy is based): a formal method for running self-managed teams that are structured around social relationships, aka dynamic governance. Extremely agile, allows ideas to boil up from the bottom. Replaces voting with consensus, where there is open discussion of options and everyone must consent that it is acceptable; objections must require a better proposal. Defining principles: consent governs policy decision making; organizing in circles; double-linking; and elections by consent. Self-managed organizations are inherently agile since good decisions are made where needed and everyone agrees. May be implications on DMN as to how decisions are modeled and captured. 
BPMN and CMMN can cover some of the domains of predictability; we saw other demos this week using other model types that extend further into unpredictable work, such as a process timeline view. Outstanding issues of whether BPMN should be extended to handle less predictable work, or if CMMN can handle this. Keith ended with the observation that this was the year of DMN at bpmNEXT, and issued a call to action for an open-source implementation of DMN execution with conformance suite; likely more possible than for BPMN since it is more constrained. A lot of great discussion ensued, and Keith will be spearheading a WfMC committee to look at this.
As long as there are budgets sociocracy is doomed. There’s plenty of Agile methodologies out there that like to do things by consensus (Scrum weight cards anyone?), but budgets tend to influence product managers’ prioritization and that doesn’t always jive with the bottom up boiling part. I’m watching a Fortune 20 do it right now and architectural dependencies are largely being left by the wayside.
Thanks Sandy for capturing a summary of the event; really useful for us folks who were unable to make it.