Many companies which have begun applying lean or agile practices in their work place are now finding they need to reconsider who they hire to fill the more collaborative and facilitative roles required by those methodologies. Unfortunately, most companies believe they can magically transform their firm into a highly productive and enjoyable place to work by asking traditionally trained managers to simply apply a few new practices like value mapping, iterative development and an intense focus on quality. 

Chances are good that your company has embarked on efforts to document processes and procedures at the departmental level, creating a collection of swim lanes and flow charts that might soon reside forgotten on servers and hard drives.

Some time ago during a discussion on ITtoolbox.com, I theorized about BPMS Cloud as the last, ultimate step, providing the final means to transition to a post-IT era.

The acronyms associated with BPM seem to grow in quantity year by year while the essence behind them grows at a much, much slower pace.  If we cut through all the jargon, we can get to the simple truths. In this article, we’ll discuss one such fundamental truth – business requires both leadership and management to succeed. You can’t overlook or over-value one or the other; they have a symbiotic relation in any business, business function or business process.

My very first BPMS Watch column, over three years ago, was titled “Without a BPMS, It’s Not Really BPM.” And to a large degree I still believe that, although today I would probably tone it down to something like “without a BPMS, you can’t realize all the benefits of BPM.” That view is certainly less radical now than it was in 2005, as both developers and developer-oriented tool vendors have increasingly embraced the BPM Suite idea.