This special report asks the question: “Is it possible for both the business process and Business Architecture Modeling approaches to share a common modeling language and might BPMN 2.0 satisfy both?”
Over the past few years, organizations have broadened the role BPM software plays in process improvement. Five years ago, BPM projects centered on human-centric workflow designed and executed with process models. Since then, lines of business continue to demand software that is more adaptive to how they work, and vendors have responded with increasingly mature offerings.
This Red Hat sponsored IDC white paper explores the evolution of BPM, how an organization's basic requirements are changing in the face of the broadening scope of BPM software, and how Red Hat competes in this space with JBoss Enterprise BRMS 5.3 and its recent acquisition of Polymita.
If you don’t get off to the right start with a BPM Project, there are all kinds of consequences such as:
- Needing to change process owners mid stream
- Wasting time focusing on the wrong goals
- Not involving the right resources
- Missing critical information and making poor decisions
- “Buying” the technology solution
Do you notice any built-in contradiction in the title of this article? A naïve approach to Continuous Improvement (CI) would be to attempt to benchmark Toyota, and just do what they do. That would be OK if: 1) You make automobiles, and 2) You have fifty years of Toyota management experience. Without those advantages, you would do best to consider a modified strategy.
It’s not easy to change, and usually not fruitful to change precipitously. An anecdote from an unnamed country, several wars ago, decided to mechanize the cavalry. An inspector, reviewing the prototype of the new battalion, marveled in the shiny new personnel carriers and tanks. However, he then noticed two soldiers standing off to the side, apparently doing nothing. When he inquired, he was told: “They are there to hold the horses.”
Not quite! I can’t tell you how many companies I have worked with who announced we have modeled all the current state process or say we want to begin by modeling all their As Is processes. And they ask, can you help us with that? There is nothing wrong with modeling processes, but it takes a long time and it doesn’t produce improvements. Modeling processes is just one of the first steps. I suggest modeling the processes you want to improve and do them in groups of three or one by one. Then analyze each and improve them to see business results.
So if you’ve only done the process diagramming, what do you need to do next? Look at the roadmap below showing the phases of a BPM/ process improvement project.
This article highlights the importance that system integration capabilities should play when selecting a BPMS. Integration is often the largest challenges in transforming business processes and can often present one of the most difficult barriers to delivering rapid success.
Few business processes live out their life within a single system. Consider the example of winning a new customer, on-boarding them, delivering a service and gaining payment. It is not uncommon to find the following systems involved in supporting these processes:
Contributed by: Tom Dwyer, Vice President, Research, Editorial Director, BPMInstitute.org
BPMInstitute.org defines Business Process Management (BPM) as the definition, improvement and management of a firm’s end-to-end enterprise business processes in order to achieve three outcomes crucial to a performance-based, customer-driven firm: 1) clarity on strategic direction, 2) alignment of the firm’s resources, and 3) increased discipline in daily operations.
Traditional methods of performance management focus on department & functional unit performance. BPM focuses on the management and continuous improvement of cross functional processes. This involves continuous monitoring, evaluation, measurement and process innovation. These cross-functional processes must be clearly defined and documented. Process performance objectives in terms of time, quality, cost and productivity must be defined. Process teams and process owners must be established.
By easing the process of integrating business events into automated decision-making, JBoss Enterprise Business Rules Management System (BRMS) is helping organizations incorporate real-time awareness into their applications and implement the high levels of automation needed for today’s fast-paced business operations. With the many benefits of a budget-friendly open source software subscription, this powerful technology is more accessible than ever before. Using JBoss Enterprise BRMS, business analysts, developers, and system integrators can create and manage rules and events in a single product using a shared set of authoring tools. The result is a more agile, transparent, and competitive business. If in the past you have not found business rules technology sufficiently compelling for your company or projects, now is the time to take another look.
Contributed by: Tom Dwyer, Vice President, Research, Editorial Director, BPMInstitute.org
In December 2011, the BPMInstitute (BPMInstitute.org) participated in a Forrester research report entitled "The Forrester Wave: BPM Training And Certification Programs, Q2 2012" (May 2012) of the training and certification programs offered in business process management. BPMInstitute.org has made the report available to our readers, for a limited time. This article provides additional comments on the topics presented in the Forrester report. The report's research findings agree with our own research into our student's objectives for taking BPM training.
The availability of highly functional, open source business process management systems (BPMS) and business rules management systems (BRMS) are bringing the benefits of process automation technology within reach of many more companies and projects. If you are considering deploying business process or rules management but have been daunted by the cost, footprint, and complexity of proprietary solutions, an open source approach may be just what you are looking for.
