Process Cafe

The State of BPM Part 2

This is the second in a set of three articles discussing the state of BPM today. In the first article we discussed the current state of the BPM capability and covered items such as training, project failure and the defintion (or lack thereof) of BPM.

In part three we will look at the future of BPM

But part 2 will discuss the state of the technology surrounding BPM. In particular we will look at the vendor segment and try to understand the impact of the consolidation that is occurring there.

For many people - especially IT people - the mention of the words Business Process Management is immediately equated to 'A business process management Tool'. This tool can be something as simple as a Visio diagram showing a workflow, right up to a complex BPMS package which integrates with Enterprise Architecture, process analysis and the automation of such tools.

As a result I feel the capability of process management has become inextricably linked with the underlying supporting tools to do that management. Unfortunately I feel this is something which is burdening the capability far too much.

In this week's discussion we are going to look at the state of the BPM tools market and try to decipher what issues or problems are occurring as a result.

If we cast our minds back not too many years the BPM tool market basically (at least according to Gartner) consisted of a number of the larger software providers such as Aris, Mega/Pega and Provision. Alongside these there were niche manufacturers who focused on particular segments of the market or particular functionality (Metastorm comes to mind as an automation provider that had very little - if no - process development capability)

Then in recent years there has been a consolidation in the market. Some of the larger vendors bought each other out. Other larger vendors purchased (or were purchased by) a niche vendor in order to create today's market, which basically consists of a smaller number of larger software vendors with fairly comprehensive offering covering many facets of process management. Metastorm, for example, purchased Provision which gave them the tools they needed to map processes and provide simulations appropriately (and Metastorm were, themselves purchased recently by another vendor. OpenText).

IBM got into the BPM market in a big way by buying one of the leaders in the sector, and Microsoft have made major moves into this area too.

But has this actually provided anything which is better for the end users? One complaint I hear constantly - both in person and in blogs/tweets etc - is that the tools are very much 'IT focused' or 'Business Process focused' and not 'user focused'. The ability of an end user to actually get in and use a lot of these tools in a meaningful way appears to be quite limited. I do not have detailed experience of all the tools on the market but I can tell you that for the tools I have experience of this is a valid comment. Recently Craig Reid, The Process Ninja, posted an article discussing the Nimbus tool which - in his opinion - appears to be more focused on the end user and less on process professionals. But I would suggest that this is more of an exception than the rule. A lot of tools are now starting to focus on using the BPMN standard for documenting processes and this is something which - in itself - is not completely intuitive and requires training to bring a user up to speed. The tools I have used have defined a minimum 5 day training session to bring everyone up to speed on them, and these factors lead me to believe that we do not have 'user focused' tools on the market

But do we need user focused tools? Should BPM be something which is managed and maintained by the end users or should it be looked after by a dedicated group of process management professionals? That is a subject of debate (and one which I, naturally, have my own opinions on), but suffice it to say the dichotomy between having users who know little about managing processes, using tools that help them manage processes in the way they wish to rather than how the process professional might wish to, is an interesting one and one which will keep process professionals in work for many years.

So where is the process tool market going in the next couple of years?

Of course nobody knows for sure. But if the current trend of consolidation in the market continues, it could safely be assumed that the market will come to be dominated by a small number of large vendors who provide integrated process management tools that can take a business from complete process novices right the way through to Level 5 process gurus.

Or it might go the other way. There is a case to say that integration of this sort is just constricting businesses. Do we really want all of our company running at the mercy of a single software vendor? This is - effectively - what happened with ERP systems back in the 1990's. Vendors such as Oracle, JDE (before they merged) and SAP provided single systems that whole organisations could align with, but can anyone say for sure whether this provided any sort of appropriate ROI? I, personally, worked with one organisation that spent the best part of $500m implementing an ERP system across the globe. Will they ever, realistically, make that return? I don't know. But I do know that when the main system went down at their HQ they were without a global system for almost 1 month - with the appropriate loss of business, reputation and earnings that this entailed.

Whichever way the tool market goes for BPM, one thing is for sure, There will always be people who will try to buck the tend and provide something else for the market. This is - after all - where the niche vendors come from. They have recognised that a unified, bloated, system which does everything, cannot make sense for every sort of business. It's for this reason that companies have now developed Visio add-ons which allow more integrated process mapping from their Visio tool. This removes the need for customers to purchase an extra process mapping tool and allows users who are trained on Visio - which is pretty much everyone in certain organisations - to transit over to process management quite easily.

Colleagues of mine in the BPM field are talking about other facets of the capability which are more 'niche' in themselves. Terms such as ACM and Social BPM are gaining traction in the community and I would expect tools that support these to become more widespread in the near future.

However, on the flip side many organizations remain "process ignorant" when it comes to BPM because many still don't necessarily understand exactly how things are getting done in their own business. Some cited issues such as a lack of interchange standards between process modeling and execution tools, which can render system interoperability difficult. One reason that this issue exists is that organizations are using modeling-only tools that lack an execution component. Organizations are finding the breadth of available BPM systems confusing in that each vendor interface will dictate how business processes are to be designed and applied. Could it be that a single unified interchange system will prevail in the future which will allow any modelling tool to interchange data with any execution tool? The salesman at some of the larger vendors will tell you that this already exists, but seeing the number of forum questions that appear from developers who are building these execution systems, it is apparent that all is not totally well from this point of view.

But are there positives to be taken away from this? Of course there are. The consolidation of the market is not being totally driven by the need of vendors to make more money although this is, indeed, one of the main factors. There does appear to be a push from customers to get vendors to provide a complete package that will minimise the issues mentioned earlier regarding interoperabilty. Vendors are identifying the weaknesses in their own products and purchasing niche products to fill those gaps (Metastorm buying Provision was a prime example of that). All of this is good for the overall market.

Newer capabilities - such as Social BPM, Adaptive process management, MDD etc. will force the vendors to once again review their offerings and provide something to support he end user needs. This will - in turn - create a number of niche vendors who will dominate their own segment of the market. Over time the larger vendors will probably seek to consolidate by purchasing these niche vendors and incorporating their functionality into existing offerings. In the long term this will, in my opinion, produce bloated, unfriendly, unstable software (I’m looking at you, Microsoft) and the market will fragment once again.

In the final section of this series we will look at the state of things to come in BPM and try to extrapolate where this will take us and what the problems are going to be with that.

Part three will be released next week.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
See related info below

The State of BPM - Part 1

This is the first of a three part series of posts on ‘The State of BPM’. Yes, I know that’s a pretty ambitious topic to do in three posts - especially without spending loads and loads of time talking about the minutiae of the topic - but I wanted to put a stake in the ground (or line in the sand) to try and summarise a number of the recent posts I’ve been reading which lead me to believe that not everything is rolling in clover in the BPM world.

The three parts of the topic will be as follows:

Part 1: This will discuss the state of the capability of BPM. y this I mean the practice of performing BPM, the pitfalls, the issues. This will not look, specifically at tools, but may cover methodologies.
Part 2: Will discuss the state of the technology surrounding BPM. In particular we will look at the vendor segment and try to understand the impact of the consolidation that is occurring there
Part 3: This will look at the state of things to come in BPM and try to extrapolate where this will take us and what the problems are going to be.

Part 1

The State of the BPM Capability

I would catgeorise this section as being related to three separate topics

a) The Definition of BPM

b) The State of Training.

c) High failure rate of projects.

Let's look at each of these:

The Definition of BPM

I think that I won’t get a lot of push-back if I make a simple statement about BPM “BPM is not very well defined”. The borders and boundaries are flexible when it comes to defining what BPM is and where it applies. This is compounded by the introduction and inclusion of a large number of acronyms into the sphere (DDM, APG etc) matched with new movements to bring other similar/related capabilities to the fore -ACM and Social BPM are two examples of this. A recent post I wrote talked about this phenomenon and the fact that various groups are trying to make more and more niche's within BPM. Each of this is - I think - merely serving to muddy the BPM waters.

As I said in that post

I know that folks such as Alexander Samarin (a key member of the Nexus at that time) have chosen to make three distinct definitions of BPM depending on whether BPM is being looked at as a discipline, a portfolio or a toolset:

Whilst I think I can align with this it does indicate that there are - at the very least - a number of possible interpretations of BPM. This, in itself, must be causing problems.

The State of Training on BPM
What constitutes BPM training? Is there a globally recognised standard for BPM training? I would maintain that there isn’t. Not that this is necessarily a problem, but unlike other officially recognised training standards (for things like project management or accountancy) there doesn’t appear to be a recognised body responsible for providing this training. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t BPM training (And I am not going to make any comments about the standard of training or the suitability of it in this post) but it does mean that there are a number of ‘BPM bodies’ who are profiting from providing their own brand of training to an unsuspecting user base.

But what about BPM? Or Six Sigma? Or Lean. Aren’t these BPM training? I would maintain that none of these constitutes BPM training, but each of them constitutes a sub-set of BPM training. I risk the wrath of the Black belts out there by saying that Six Sigma - a partially discredited methodology - is, in fact, nothing more than a basic version of quality improvement which has - in fact - done nothing to help companies that are using it improve their overall performance (although it does identify improvements at a micro level). Forbes stated that "of 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma programs, 91 percent have trailed the S&P500 since" [1]

Does BPMN constitute the training we need? No. BPMN is, again, a subset of the training that is needed. It is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model. But it isn’t the only way of doing it. This is one of several notations that can be used for modeling and what it doesn’t do is teach the fundamentals of how to discover and map a process.

The High Failure Rate Of projects

If we bypass the different training issues, the methodology sprawl, the reduced scoping issues and the other points listed above we still get to the key issue that plagues BPM: Our friends at Gartner have stated that over 50% of process projects will fail (This is addressed in the Perfect Process Project) and this is due to a number of reasons but primarily it is lack of appropriate Executive Sponsorship and Change Management.

As a business leader, it is all very well to hear about BPM and what it can do for your company. But at the moment there simply isn’t a large number of case studies that can conclusively prove that BPM implementation will save your company fortunes, or indeed improve your efficiency. The case studies that do exist are mostly vendor produced and therefore are selected to identify the best case scenarios. Our friends at Gartner state that well scoped BPM projects approach a 15% internal ROI. I align with that theory, but I can’t get away from the fact that - like Six Sigma - the processes of providing ‘the scope’ will reduce the effectiveness of the overall project. Remember, as stated above, Jack Welsh and GE used Six Sigma to great effect back in the 1980’s/90’s, but companies that followed haven’t been as successful and there must be a reason for that

On the positive side, however, a recent study has found that organizations are showing a growing interest in BPM, but some are challenged by the lack of standards between process modeling and execution, amid other issues.

(http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/25/Outmoded_BPM_resources_an_issue_for_businesses_1.html) On top of that, many organizations remain "process ignorant" when it comes to BPM because many still don't necessarily understand exactly how things are getting done in their own business. Some cited issues such as a lack of interchange standards between process modeling and execution tools, which can render system interoperability difficult. One reason that this issue exists is that organizations are using modeling-only tools that lack an execution component. Organizations are finding the breadth of available BPM systems confusing in that each vendor interface will dictate how business processes are to be designed and applied. We’ll talk about this in the next post.

IT is constantly being challenged to do more with less. Outsourcing as a concept become very big recently - especially with regard to Business Processes. But now the cost of this is starting to bite and companies are pulling their BP management back in-house. It is supposedly saving them money (which does beg the question of why it was outsourced in the first place if money wasn't a driver). But at the other end of the scale the logic that processes can be automated without people involvement is coming under attack from respected individuals (http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/enterprise_applications/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202101899).

Modelling and building processes has to now consider the role of the human as a PART of the process rather than just a monitor of the process or recipient of the output. This is another item which is causing pain and confusion for businesses wanting to implement 'BPM'. In the current context BPM is looked upon as a tool which will automate the processes. This brings in the concept of having some third party bring in best practice (http://process-cafe.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-in-practice.html) and tell you how to perform your business (whether this fit your model or not). Training on a particular tool is needed to understand how specific parts of a process are modeled (and the differences are quite spectacular (http://mainthing.ru/item/154/), your workforce then needs to understand physically how to create the process, model it, simulate it, implement it and manage it - all while trying to run the business and keep within budget and on time in the project. It's no wonder that a large proportion of Business Process programs don't work....

But are there positive signs? Of course there are. The consolidation in the BPM vendor market is showing that vendor's are looking at the ability to bundle different facets of BPM together to produce a package to support the business (more on that in part two). This is good for business, right? Right? But moe than that it is starting to prove that the capability of BPM is become more and more widespread across organisations. Whereas previously the work was known as 'Time & Motion' study this has now developed and business and IT leaders are starting to see that value that a well scoped and managed BPM project can bring to their organisation. This - in turn - is bringing more and more people into the BPM sphere and expanding the pool of knowledge and talent that is available (albeit without the globally accepted training)

Summary

To summarise: We have a capability in BPM that is not clearly defined, is suffering from an amount of 'bloat' with the introduction of topics such as ACM into the mix, has-ill defined globally accepted training and is suffering from a high rate of attrition when it comes to successful implementation. All this without considering the tools and packages that can be used and the impact of biased vendor involvement.

Is it any wonder BPM is in such a state?

In part two will discuss the state of the technology surrounding BPM. In particular we will look at the vendor segment and try to understand the impact of the consolidation that is occurring there. Part two will be released next week.

1 - Morris, Betsy (2006-07-11). "Tearing up the Jack Welch playbook". Fortune

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

The Anachronism of Acronyms.

What is BPM? It's a simple question with a complex answer.

There appears to be a move in the BPM world to create a whole new substrata of 'process management'. Max Pucher appears to be one of the leading members of this cadre and - like so many before him - he tries to establish a little niche 'fiefdom' which he can call his own. Andrew Smith from One Degree has posited Adaptive Process Guidance (APG) as a new paradigm too. Forrester have created Dynamic Case management

And bravo to them for doing that.

But here's the problem I have: Why seek to split the capability of BPM down into different acronyms or niches when we don't fully understand BPM as it stands at the moment?

Last year, Thomas Olbrich and I sat down and put together The BPM Nexus (along with original founder Theo Priestley) and we sought to create a BPM definition which we could use to create concensus amongst practitioners. Our efforts - unfortunately - came to very little for a number of reasons which are not important now. But what did come out of the discussions which took place was the fact that so few people have a common understanding of what BPM means precisely. They know what BPM means to them and the know what they do when it comes to BPM. But to sit down and write a standard defintion of BPM that everyone can agree on is difficult.

Because of this there have been a number of separate initiatives aimed at splitting BPM into component parts - or sub parts - to allow vendors, particularly, to attach to these niches and boost their own offerings. The phrase "Social BPM" has suddenly appeared in the BPM vernacular along with "ACM" or Adaptive Case Management.

My question to those who push these things forward is "Where is the diagram that explains how these fit together?" Are they all subsets of BPM as a whole (which I maintain they cannot be because we don't have a standard definition of BPM), or are they all related but separate capabilities which - if we put them all together - will bring a standard definition of BPM? More importantly, do we really understand the delineation of what ACM means - for example - in the world of structured processes versus unstructured processes? Alberto Manuel believes that ACM comes under the BPM umbrella but is a different paradigm. Fair enough, so what does that look like?

I would love to see such a diagram. I would love to see where in the diagram we could fit the following acronyms (or underlying capabilities):

BPA,
ACM,
APG
CRM,
DCM
Social BPM
etc.

I understand (and agree with) Max's assertion that "The discussion whether ACM is BPM has no benefit whatsoever for the business!" But I am not the business. I am a BPM consultant who needs to be able to explain this to the business. At the moment I can't.

Personally I believe these are all important capabilities which must be understood and managed in the context of the corporate entity. But I also believe that these are capabilities which are not only confusing, they are incorrectly understood leading to inefficiency and increased cost.

Anyone care to comment ( or more importantly, illustrate)?
------

P.S. Just to clarify: I'm not wanting long diatribes on why ACM is better than DCM, or why we should be doing APG instead of drawing workflow diagrams, what I'm trying to understand is the gestalt, holistic view of where these all fit together.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

The BPM Blacklist

I wanted to try and create a definitive list of the top 10 BPM bloggers for anyone interested in the niche.

This is my equivalent of "The Black List", which is a Hollywood list of the top unproduced screenplays every year.

To qualify for the BPM Blacklist a blogger has to meet the following criteria:

Blog regularly on the topic of BPM, BI or BPMN
Produce good quality, informative posts
Tweet, be tweeted or retweeted regularly.
Has to be someone I read and follow

Criteria 1 and 3 are along a continuum. If someone hasn't posted for a while but has been regularly tweeting good content then I can cut them some slack. Similarly if they blog a lot but don't tweet regularly.

Of the available bloggers who meet this criteria I have then selected my top ten. This may not equate to your top ten.

The first version of this was produced in August 2010 by me. There have been a number of changes since then, some of which have been influenced by comments on that post.

Added to the list

Elise Olding

Keith Swenson

Max Pucher

Removed from the list
Theo Priestley : No longer meets the criteria listed (1, 3)
Ashish Bagwhat : No longer meets the criteria listed (1)
BouncingThoughts: No longer meets the selection criteria (1)

Just because you are not on the list at the moment doesn't mean you won't be re-admitted at some later date (in fact I may extend the list to 20 people). Just keep trying to meet the criteria listed above and there is a good chance you'll get on there.

Here is the 2011 Spring BPM BlackList:

Bruce Silver: Bruce is the daddy of BPMN, has been in the business for years and knows BPMN like the back of his hand (he should do - he helped write it)
Jim Sinur: He's been with Global360 and Gartner and he is the industry analyst for the BPM sector. His writing is often formal and rigid, but that doesn't take away from the value of his contents.
Adam Deane: Witty, sometimes caustic, but always on the money. Posts quite regularly. Always worth a read, especially his weekly roundup of the best BPM Quotes.
Sandy Kemsley: One of three women on the list. She attends and presents a lot at BPM conferences around the world and always has some useful insight into the latest movements in the BPM market. Her blog is 'Column 2'
The Process Ninja: He's Australian based and blogs about real-life applications of process. I look forward to his posts.
Connie Moore: The Forrester analyst for BPM and the other woman on the list. Finger on the pulse, covers the industry and the general BPM environment.
Thomas Olbrich. A German who blogs in English and German and who wrote my favourite BPM blog entry ever.
Keith Swenson's blog is a must-read: he writes thoughtful and informative posts on BPM and ACM (adaptive case management) that often inspire long conversations in the comments, and manages to do so without pushing his own company's products.
Elise Olding : Blogs with Gartner (alongside Jim Sinur). Also active in the Twitter community.
Max Pucher. I find his opinions and attitudes very contrary to popular thought. But that doesn't mean he's wrong. A contrary opinion is always useful for provoking discussion.

I have also added each of these people to a Twitter list. If you wish to follow this list you can find it at my Twitter account.

The list itself is available from the side bar on my blog and can be accessed directly from this link.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
See related info below

The most important part of BPM

After reading a couple of posts recently on 'the next big thing in BPM', and predictions about the future of the capability, I had to chuckle a little. Mainly because if history has taught us one thing - especially with BPM - it's that history is not a good indicator of things to come and most prognostications are wrong. Did anyone predict 'Social BPM'? No - at least not until it was amongst us and then the predictions were related to how it would proliferate.

So I was tickled to read details of The Hottest BPM Trends you MUST Embrace and seeing things such as 'Connecting BA to BPM to create a realistic road map for process transformation', and 'Move the needle on BPM Skills for key process roles'. Not that these are wrong - in fact these all form part of what I call 'The Common Sense Approach to BPM', but they are just that: common sense. Basically the predictions are saying 'Get the right people involved at the right time with the right training, give them the right tools and responsibility and make sure it's aligned with what the business wants'. Of course when the rubber hits the road that's when all the best laid plans go awry.

But as I was contemplating all this it occurred to me that a large amount of the prognostications and predictions, the prophecies and the trends are all missing one vital focus area: Actually doing process discovery.

It's all very well telling people that they need a great BPMS or similar system to help them manage their processes, or that they need to have a well-oiled governance process to manage the change control around them, or that they need to identify the key, customer-focused processes and use social media to help run them more efficiently. It's even fine to tell people that processes are not isolated and that they are all parts of a larger continuum. But what very few people seem to actually be telling people is 'Here is how you do good process discovery'.

Think about it. All the systems, governance, tools, expectations and roadmaps will be for nought if the process that is captured and recorded is incorrect. But do we all use good process capture methodologies? What are the good process capture methodologies? Would we know a good one if it jumped up and bit us in the face?

I've told this story before but it bears repeating:

The result of this discussion was that not only were we able to appropriately capture the business process as it occurred inside the department but we were also able to modify it to make the flow between the departments more streamlined and efficient. This was a win-win situation for both groups. Only at that point did we turn to the process capture software we had and start to drop the tasks into there.

Appropriate process capture is key to having good processes. It doesn't matter whether you use Post-It notes and brown paper, Visio diagrams, excel spreadsheets, or if just note things down on big pieces of A3 paper, you have to have a good methodology to capture processes and you have to be thorough.

I sense (though I have no empirical data just anecdotal data from my work) that a lot of larger companies rely too much on the tool they have purchased to help them with defining the process, when in actual fact the tool will just capture the process that is entered. This may not be the correct, complete, or appropriate process.

If this is the case then I can make one prediction for 2011 and beyond: "We'll never get the full value of BPM unless we improve our process discovery methods"

.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

Illusion and reality in BPM

Over the weekend I was reading through a couple of blog posts written by various BPM bloggers. One of these in particular stood out to me as it very succinctly highlighted one or two of the human nature issues that plague BPM.

The post in question was written by Keith Swenson and was entitled "Structure is in the eye of the beholder". In the post Keith talks about certain illusions that are ingrained into the human psyche which can effect the way people perceive and understand their world. This is particularly important when it comes to mapping it from a business point of view.

For example: When I look at a landscape I see the ground, the hills, the sky and the trees. There are no definite demarcation lines between each of these pieces, but when I draw them I tend to draw a line to indicate the horizon, a line to indicate the hills, and the trees are outlined to separate them from the background. In other words there us a tendency to add separation when - in reality - no separation exists. Translate this to business process and you have a situation where we try to compartmentalise things. As Keith says :

Furthermore there is the ability of the mind in hindsight allowing us to know and understand things that we didn't know or couldn't understand at the time things were happening. This manifests itself in the form of complete knowledge and understanding of something after the fact but an inability to appropriately describe or map it during the heat of battle. With hindsight people can't understand why it was so difficult to map a process when - in fact - it was merely the fact that it was mapped and understood that made the hindsight so clear.

The summary of these two pieces of human nature is the fact that we tend to try and put artificial boundaries around things that shouldn't have them, and tend to misunderstand how complex things really are after we have mapped them by thinking that we could have done a lot of the mapping in advance.

Does this mean that our efforts at mapping processes are all for nought? Are we doomed to fall into traps set by our own human nature? Will we forever fail at being able to make sense out of the reality of our life? Well, without this turning into a philosophical treatise (and I believe it could quite easily do so) we must remember that there will never be a perfect solution for problems such as these. The key is to know that there is a potential issue and to understand what impact that will have. Human nature will always play a major part in events when humans are involved. It's the same reason why 80% of people think they are good drivers but in reality this can't be true. But we know that this is how people rate themselves because it's human nature. As long as we take this into account we will be in an appropriate position to understand the reality of a situation rather than the perceived reality of the situation.

My thanks to Keith for his insightful post.

==========================================

Some housekeeping:

In one of my top posts from last year I wrote about '10 BPM Blogs you should follow'. After seeing the response to this post I have revised some of the entries following feedback and will be producing a curated list of top BPM bloggers that I am referring to as 'The BPM Blacklist'. This list will be available within the week and I will produce a post and a link to both the list, the feeds and the twitter accounts (where available)

.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
See related info below

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The Anachronism of Acronyms.

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