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Free advice for BPM vendors

It’s not often that you get free advice from an analyst/consultant, but I gave this one away already today in a conversation with a vendor: don’t ignore BPDM. The fact that Lombardi has already announced support for it as the interchange format between Blueprint and TeamWorks (not a coincidence that Lombardi’s CTO sits on OMG standards committees) even though the standard is not yet released means that it’s likely to be presented to customers as a competitive differentiator by the BPM vendors who implement it very early on in the game. Assuming that it catches on, you’ll still need to support both BPDM and XPDL for a period of 2-5 years.

Vendor Valentines

My other half didn’t quite make it to the card store — although I understand that a spa day is in my future — but TIBCO remembered me on Valentine’s Day (click on the image):

I have to say, they have some of the most playfully eye-catching marketing graphics in BPM.

Gartner BPM summit in San Diego

Thanks to a kind invitation from Jim Sinur when we met at the IDS Scheer user conference last week, I’ll be attending the Gartner BPM summit in San Diego on February 26-28. Watch for my live blogging from there under the Gartner BPM category.

If you’d like to meet up while I’m there, drop me an email. Also consider adding yourself to the Upcoming.org event so that others can see that you plan to attend, too.

Second BPMG Toronto chapter meeting on March 2nd

After the successful first BPMG chapter meeting here in Toronto, there’s a second one planned for March 2nd. It would be nice if BPMG actually made some space on their site to advertise chapter events; you wouldn’t find this information if you weren’t on their mailing list (or one of my readers 😉 ).

There is a description of the event in a PDF file on the BPMG site, and I posted it on upcoming.org. It’s free to attend, but you need to register in advance.

ProcessWorld Day 2 wrapup

I fly home in the morning, so I’ll be missing tomorrow’s ARIS User Day; this was by design, since I really didn’t want to sit through detailed product training sessions.

I’ve had a number of people here recognize me from having read my blog, which is very flattering. I had one person tell me that if he weren’t here, reading my blog would be just like being here (um, but you are here, dude…). I was even called the queen of blogging. I’m blushing. The stream of consciousness blogging has been fun, although now I need to go back through all those notes and make sense of some of the ideas.

I sat with a professor from Widener University today who teaches in their Center for Business Process Excellence, a program that I didn’t even know was offered. She was quick to whip out a brochure for me, and although it’s very sponsor-laden (both IDS Scheer and SAP appear on it), it does give an outline of their program and states their mandate:

A global initiative designed to forge new levels of business process innovation by strengthening collaboration between the corporate and academic communities
Promote research into next-generation business solutions to better prepare tomorrow’s workforce
Promote business process modelling by incorporating such issues into the undergraduate and graduate curricula and support faculty and students to engage in research efforts

They offer Masters of Information Systems and MBA’s that incorporate process innovation, plus certificate programs in business process innovation. Some of the courses seem a bit light — a few of them are completed in three Saturdays — and I have no idea what sort of accreditation or recognition that they have for these programs, but any university that is recognizing BPM as an area of study is worth a second look. You can find out more about it on their site here.

ProcessWorld Day 2: General session with Andrew Spanyi

Last up today is Andrew Spanyi discussing the “soft and fuzzy stuff about business process governance” (his words), and I have to say that I don’t envy him the 5pm speaking slot. The audience is sparse — many having departed to catch a flight, go shopping, or just take a break after an already-long day — and those of us that are here are a bit apathetic.

This whole topic, of course, requires a new acronym: BPG (business process governance), which is the set of guidelines focussed on organizing all BPM activities and initiatives of an organization.

Ten minutes into his talk, I’m really starting to feel sorry that I sat on the opposite side of the room from the door, making it impossible to depart politely. Either he’s flipping slides too fast, or my brain has slowed to a crawl, since I absolutely cannot seem to take any notes of value. I did, however, catch his three critical leadership behaviours required for BPG:

A high level process model
Well-defined performance metrics
Broad-based education on process methods

He also pointed out something that he heard from Tom Davenport: major IT systems are difficult to implement, and many projects fail; process change involves new skills, behaviours and attitudes so is also difficult; that makes it difficult to do both at once. And what I’ve seen with BPM initiatives, almost all companies try to do both at once.

Spanyi had a great list of five sure-fire ways to fail:

Lack of accountability and authority
Insufficient focus on common language
Lack of linkage to strategy
Insufficient focus on improvement
Focusing on method rather than results (e.g., focus on modelling rather than improvement)

At the end of all this, I’m left with the notion that BPG is just another way for consultants to make money. Okay, I’m a consultant too, but not the fuzzy management consulting type: at the end of the day, I actually want to see a system running.

ProcessWorld Day 2: Services industry breakout with Marshal Edgison of ELM Resources

The first breakout of day 2, I attended a session on “Optimizing Process Through Business Rules” with Marshal Edgison, Director of Application Development for ELM Resources, a not-for-profit organization focussed on facilitating and processing student loans, about how they’re leveraging both the process modeling and business rules modeling functionality of ARIS in order to drive their modernization efforts. The rules engine integrated into ARIS as the ARIS Business Rules Designer is Corticon.

They selected ARIS because they wanted a modelling tool that was not closely associated with the technology (i.e., from the process execution vendors) and could be used by business analysts. As a loan processing organization, their processes are very rules-based, and they found that their business rules were everywhere — in application code, in database triggers, in user interfaces — and were hard-coded into the system: the classic situation where business rules can be of enormous benefit. They saw an opportunity to not just model their business processes in order to get them under control, but modelling their business rules and encapsulating them into a business rules management system.

They recognized that BRMS could add agility to processes by automating recurring decisions, centralizing rules for easy management and consistent deployment, manage complex logic (they had over 1 million interdependent rules, although they fall into about 5 basic categories), increase development speed and reduce maintenance time and costs. With the ARIS Business Rules Designer, the rules could be seamlessly integrated into processes as automated decision points: ARIS defines the enterprise data model and vocabulary, and the BRMS leverages that vocabulary in transaction processing.

Edgison went through a case study of a new federally-mandated graduate loan program that came into effect in February 2006, with all participants required to support it by July 2006. Many of the financial institutions who are ELM’s member organizations were unable to comply within that timeframe, and it took ELM six months and more than $500K to implement it. As part of the sales cycle for the ARIS Business Rules Designer, they redid this using ARIS and the BRMS: it took one day with four people.

He ended up with some notes on determining whether business rules are right for you:

Do you have decision-intensive processes?
Do you have operational inefficiencies around decisions?
Do you have dynamic, frequently changing rules?
Do you need better synergy between business requirements and IT implementation?

Although a bit wordy and totally unable to control one the audience member who asked about 12 questions, Edgison was a great speaker: very knowledgeable about both his projects and the importance of business rules in modelling processes, with the ability to communicate his ideas clearly and in a compelling manner.

ProcessWorld Day 1 wrapup

Great hotel? Check. Good food? Check. Wifi in the conference rooms? Check. Green tea available at the breaks? Check. M&M’s in the press room? Check. Oh yeah, the conference content is good, too. 🙂

I have to admit, I didn’t pay a lot of attention during Dr. Mathias Kirchmer’s last presentation of the day on “open BPM”: I’ve been in meetings since 7am, and I was pretty much conferenced out by the time that I finished my interview with Trevor Naidoo. Kirchmer finished his talk with the IDS Scheer annual BPE Verve awards for their customers and one partner:

Estée Lauder for Business Process Strategy
Atlantic Methanol Production Company for Business Process Implementation
Molson Coors Brewing Company for Business Process Lifecycle
PMOLink for Business Process Partnership

I’m really enjoying my time here, as I do at most user conferences. I’m meeting a ton of new people: other press and analysts whose names I know but have never met face-to-face, IDS Scheer customers, as well as the IDS Scheer folks themselves. I have to give a big shout out to the people at Springboard PR, especially Mark Tordik who has been my main liaison, for helping to make this happen.

The theme party tonight is Havana Nights, which promises a Cuban buffet, mojitos, casino tables, mojitos, a Latin band, and mojitos. Can you tell where my mind goes at the end of a long day?