Tag: BPM2023

BPM2023 Utrecht Workshop on BPM and Social Software

It’s been a minute! Last time that I attended the BPM academic research conference was in the “before times”, back in 2019 in Vienna. This week, I’m in Utrecht for this year’s version, and it’s lovely here – beautiful historic buildings and stroopwafels in the conference bag!

I’m starting with the workshop on BPM and social software. This was the first workshop that I attended at my first trip to the BPM conference in 2008 in Milan, also chaired by Rainer Schmidt.

All three of these presentations looked at different aspects of how traditional structured process modeling and orchestration fails at addressing end-to-end process management, and how social (including social media) constructs can help. In the first presentation, processes are too unstructured for (easy) automation; in the second, there’s a need for better ways to provide feedback from process participants to the design; and in the third, organizations can’t even figure out how to get started with BPM.

The first in the workshop was Joklan Imelda Camelia Goni, who was accompanied by her supervisor Amy van Looy, on “Towards a Measurement Instrument for Assessing Capabilities when Innovating Less-Structured Business Processes”. Some of the background research for this work was a Delphi study that I participated in during 2021-2022, so it was interesting to see how her research is advancing. There is a focus on capabilities within organizations: how capable are certain people or departments at determining the need for innovation and creating the innovation in (often manual) processes.

Next was Mehran Majidian Eidgahi on “Integrating Social Media and Business Process Management: Exploring the Role of AI Agents and the Benefits for Agility” (other paper contributors are Anne-Marie Barthe-Delanoë, Dominik Bork, Sina Namaki Araghi, Guillaume Mace-Ramete and Frédérick Bénaben). This looks at the problem of structured business process models that have been orchestrated/automated, but that need some degree of agility for process changes. He characterizes BPM agility at three stages: discovering, deciding and implementing, and sees that much of the work has focused on discovery (process mining) and implementing, but not as much on deciding (that is, analysis or design). Socializing BPM with the participants can bring their ideas and feedback into the process design, and they propose a social BPM platform for providing reactions, feedback and suggestions on processes. I’ve seen structures similar to this in some commercial BPM products, but one of the main issues is that the actual executing model is not how the participants envision it: it may be much more event-driven rather than a more traditional flow model. He presented some of their other research on bringing AI to the platform and framework, which provides a good overview of the different areas in which AI may be applied.

The last presentation in the workshop was by Sebastian Dunzer on “Design Principles for Using Business Process Management Systems” (other paper contributors Willi Tang, Nico Höchstädter, Sandra Zilker and Martin Matzner). He looks at the “pre-BPM” problem of how to have organizations understand how they could use BPM to improve their operations: in his words, “practice knows of BPM, but it remains unclear how to get started”. This resonates with me, since much of my consulting over the years has included some aspect of explaining that link between operational business problems and the available technologies. They did an issue-tracking project with a medium-sized company that allowed them to use practical applications and simultaneously provide research insights. Their research outcome was to generate design principles that link IT artifacts and users through functional relationships.

Many thanks to the conference chair, Hajo Reijers, for extending an invitation to me for the conference. I’ll be at more workshops later today, and the rest of the conference throughout the week.

21st International BPM Conference in Utrecht – opportunities to attend, present or sponsor

Way back in 2008, I took a chance and attended the international academic research conference on business process management in Milan. I was hooked, as you might have gathered from the 1000s of words that I blogged that week. Since then, I’ve attended a few more: Ulm, Germany in 2009; Hoboken, US in 2010; Clermont-Ferrand, France in 2011 (where I had the honour of delivering a keynote); Tallinn, Estonia in 2012; and Vienna, Austria in 2019 (where I gave a talk at a workshop). They are always hosted by a university that has a BPM research program, and often the sessions are held in the university lecture rooms which gives it a more relaxed atmosphere than your usual industry conference.

I’m fascinated by the research topics, and one common theme of my blogging from these conferences is that software vendors need to send their product owners/developers here, both to hear about and present ideas on research in BPM and related fields. There’s so many good ideas and smart people, you can’t help but come away having learned something of value. Starting in 2010, the conference started to include an industry track to be more inclusive of people who were not in academia or research environments. At some point, they also started offering companies the opportunity to sponsor the conference: I believe that some vendors sponsored coffee breaks and meals, or had booths at parts of the event. A good way to raise their profile with the attendees, which include not only academics but a lot of people from industry as well. And, as I’ve pointed out, it’s a great place for companies to meet promising young researchers who might be looking for a job in the future.

This year, the conference is in Utrecht, The Netherlands, on September 11-15, 2023. I’m hoping to attend after three years of hiatus due to that pesky little virus; I did attend some of the sessions virtually in the past couple of years but it’s just not the same as being there. If you want to submit a paper or give a presentation, you can see the important dates here – note that the abstracts for research papers are due next week, with other deadlines coming up shortly. If you just want to attend, they have an early bird registration price until July 18. If your company wants to sponsor the event in any way, there’s some information here along with contact information.

I’m really looking forward to getting back to this, and to other conferences this year, after dipping my toe back in the in-person conference pool with speaking slots last September (Hyland CommunityLIVE) and October (CamundaCon). I’ll also still be participating in virtual conferences, which allows me to attend more than I would normally have time or budget for, including speaking on a Voices in Tech panel next week. There is no question that the way we attend conferences has changed in the past three years. Some conferences are staying completely virtual, some are making a hard shift back to in-person only, while some are going the hybrid route. Meanwhile, companies that slashed their conference budget for attendees and sponsorships are reconsidering their spending in the light of increased attendance at in-person conferences. It’s going to take another year or two to see whether people will flock back to in-person conferences, or prefer to stick with the virtual style.