Articles

Strategies for developing a Roadmap for your SOA initiative

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

There has been a lot of chatter lately about SOA failures, the “Death of SOA”, and Big SOA vs Little SOA. Many IT departments have been struggling to deliver the ROI that they promised their executive team when they raised the capital to start their SOA initiatives. There are two major reasons for these lack of desired results. First and foremost, is a lack of focus on architecture. Second is a lack of a well defined roadmap. Many, including myself, have written articles about the lack of focus on architecture. In this article I will provide a strategy for putting together a roadmap.

Is Your Change Management Program Impacted by Change Saturation?

Author(s):

Deborah Turturici

President - Sr. Business Enterprise Architect, Ability-Alliance Group, LLC.

Is Your Change Management Program Impacted by Change Saturation? Your Change Management program is in place and communications are going out regularly, but you find your associates disengaged, confused and very skeptical of the upcoming change. You talk regularly with your team and other associates, but you feel like you’re dealing with a disproportionate emotional reaction to each change-related communication that goes out. Do these situations sound familiar? If your Change Management initiative contains all the key components for success and you have been diligent with its implementation but still find the people within the organization unresponsive, you could be dealing with change saturation.

Business Process Management and Cloud Computing

Author(s):

George Barlow

Faculty Member BPMInstitute.org, Founder/CEO of Stratiza, Stratiza

Cloud Computing is changing the fundamental way in which information technology services are being delivered. It is also spawning a whole new series of terms and acronyms like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Business Operations Platform (BOP), Public Cloud and Private Cloud. It seems as though new terms are being coined every day. As both established and emerging vendors move into the Cloud Computing marketplace the definition of Cloud Computing continues to morph.

Rocks in the stream: Applying Lean to IT, HR and Accounting

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Finding the Customer

Customer focus is a critical element in lean thinking. Do you set the pace of production to the customer demand rate (the Takt time)? Is the Voice of the Customer (VOC) used in product and service design? The answer is always an emphatic “Yes”. The customer is always critical to improvement activities.

The Business Architecture, Value Streams and Value Chains

Author(s):

Ralph Whittle

Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant

Many companies are considering a Business Architecture (BA) initiative as part of their corporate strategy. While researching and analyzing the BA, they are rediscovering Michael Porter’s value chain. Many find this reawakening quite logical, while some may get confused between the terms; value chains and value streams. This article will provide an explanation and synthesis of these remarkable and enlightening concepts. First, I will clarify and define the basic terms so that I can explain their architectural relationships.

The Rule Driven Center of Excellence: Improving Requirements Engineering at the Internal Revenue Service

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The Guidance and Outreach Office of the Business Rules and Requirements Management Division of the Internal Revenue Service contributed to and reviewed this article.

Architecting Enterprise Business Model

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

This is the second in a series of eight articles that should see the light of day on both BPMInstitute.org and SOAInstitute.org during 2009. It looks to the author like the perfect opportunity to build a profound methodological case for two fundamental parts of the modern Enterprise Development Methodology (EDM): Enterprise Architecture & Processes. The first such article, making the basic case for EDM, was just recently published on SOAInstitute.org¹ .

Achieving Business Agility with SOA

Author(s):

John Moe

Principal Consultant, J Moe Associates

You would think that for many SOA evangelists and practitioners the current challenging business climate would be the perfect opportunity to walk the walk on the main promise of SOA – business agility. Agility is defined as: “Nimbleness in the face of unexpected obstacles”. Well, we certainly have a whole bunch of those at the moment.

Although the vendors are pushing this value proposition heavily at the moment, the take-up is still hampered by a lack of real business success stories. And, of course, lack of budget.

“Bootstrapping” Your Company’s Productivity Program

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Introduction:

You’ve just been asked by your boss to develop and implement a productivity program to reduce waste and improve quality. Several of the executives are retrenching into a defensive posture: preserve cash, freeze discretionary spending, cut operating budgets X% across the board, accelerate early retirements, layoffs, and sell off non-core assets. Others are advocating more investment in R&D, rolling out new products / services, and even rethinking the business model. Your company’s livelihood is at stake. The expectations for you personally are even higher.

Process Ownership and Governance; Paradigm Shift

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

After 3 decades of Total Quality Management, Process Reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma and now Business Process Management, it is mind boggling to observe that only a few companies have an excellent process Governance in place and consistently manage their processes.

It is certainly valid to ask ourselves why we are not doing better and what can we do to remediate to the situation. The literature from the ABPMP BPM CBOK^TM to the different Gartner reports and our understanding of process ownership and governance has certainly improved tremendously over the last 5 years and yet we still count only a few companies that manage by process year after year.

After pondering the question for a while here are a few thoughts on the question and some suggestions on how to approach Governance and Ownership in a way that can lead to better results and a sustainable process culture.