Articles

Business Decision Management – Part 1

Author(s):

James Taylor

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and CEO and Principal Consultant, Decision Management Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Organizations adopting business process management approaches often find that a process-centric approach risks assuming that only two basic components must be coordinated – existing systems and tasks performed by people. The problem with this is twofold.

Firstly, many existing systems are extremely “dumb” – they store data, manage it and regurgitate it on command. These “legacy” systems have been built to support the largely stable business of the past rather than to cope with today’s dynamic business environment.

Insight and Ideas

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Almost everyone is familiar with the famous Edison quote: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”. To know much about Edison’s life, is to know that was certainly true for him – and many other creative individuals when you take the time to learn how they worked. Yet, there is still a strong sense among many that great ideas come to the gifted in the way lightning strikes, unpredicted and unexpected.

Insights as Idea Sources

In my experience, great ideas more likely come from great insight.

Business Architecture: Coming of Age

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

What is business architecture? If you ask ten business architects, you’re likely to get ten overlapping definitions clustered, to varying degrees, somewhere around the correct answer. But what is that answer?

SOA Watch: Don’t Let the Vendors Drive Your SOA

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

So, why are organizations looking towards their “comfort vendors” and “comfort technologies?” It’s a matter of path of least resistance and lack of education.

Path of least resistance because the relationship is already established, and you don’t have to go through the hassle of getting to know new players, or many new players.

BPMS Watch: Ten Tips for Effective Process Modeling

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The BPMN specification presents lots of technical definitions and rules, but it does not teach you how to create process models that are effective in their primary mission – maximizing shared understanding of the as-is or to-be process. To do process modeling effectively, you need to go beyond the spec and learn a basic methodology, best practices, and specific diagram patterns to use in common situations. To illustrate the point, here are ten tips for effective modeling in BPMN.

The Secret Weapons That Lean Provides for BPM

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

Ever notice that executives can call attention to a problem but they don’t know what it takes to get it fixed? In contrast, workers have lots of ideas of how to fix things, but they don’t have the authority to get improvements made. And conversations between the two groups are too constrained or conflicted to drive corrective action. To make matters worse, neither group seems to know the whole process and be able to determine how changing one part might impact another. In short, we have trouble finding both the forest and the trees.

Realizing the Strategic Promise of SOA Requires Master Data Management

Author(s):

Tom Dwyer

Editorial Director and current Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) represents a more flexible approach to building IT solutions. Combining SOA with other complementary technologies and approaches further enhances the ability to build more agile solutions. These solutions are easier to change, provide improved access to time-critical information and are more aware of – and responsive to – business events throughout the value chain.

ERP, Old IT and the Rise of Something New

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Complex and proprietary ERP systems symbolize the final evolution of “Old IT”. They are the embodiment of a frame of mind that is inherent in the culture of the industrial economy and its great invention – the assembly line. That mindset attempts to organize every activity down to the lowest levels of detail. It makes rules and regulations for everything and then tries to run each activity over and over, faster and faster without changing anything. This is how you get greater and greater productivity at lower and lower costs; this is what we call efficiency.

Business Architecture 2008: Standards, Frameworks and Governance

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

Business architecture is poised to make significant inroads this year. While business architecture emerged as a distinct area of focus in 2006 and matured during 2007, it is poised for a big year in 2008. A number of factors are beginning to converge that will make 2008 a turning point for this essential discipline including a new focus on standards, convergence of frameworks and solidification of the role of business architecture in enterprise governance.

Strategic Decisions

Author(s):

Larry Goldberg

Managing Partner, Knowledge Partners International LLP

In these pages over the last year we have focused on the business value of separating Business Rules from Business Process, and using Business Decisions as both organizing principal for those Business Rules, and as a means of managing the rules. The value of the Business Decision Management (BDM) approach is multifold, as the Business Decision is the natural means of connecting Business Rules to Business Process in a BPM environment.