BPM Quotes of the week

On Vendor Reference Checking – Janelle Hill

From my experience this year, I’ve concluded that this assumption is astoundingly wrong! There is no correlation between the size of the vendor and the quality of the references!

On Process Disparity – Tom Holmberg

Just as in the French Monarchy, executives in the company may understand that there are issues, but do not understand the root cause of the problem, scope of the issue or even the solution of how to fix it.
Yes, the French peasants did eventually revolt against the governing class and threw the country into chaos, but I am not suggesting that you to go out and storm the executive floor of the office with torches and pitchforks (that may not go over well)!

On Modeling Unpredictable Work – Frank Michael Kraft

Modeling a complete scenario like modeling a military battle scenario still has many unpredictable components like unexpected events, ambushes, different than expected landscape, enemy troop moves etc.

On can BPMS support “Design by Doing”? – Jacob Ukelson

The only way “design by doing” can work is if you observe knowledge work in its natural setting. That means email, documents, meetings and telephony. That just doesn’t mesh with a BPMS. I think that most BPMS vendors would like people to tidily do all of their unpredictable, ad-hoc work in the BPMS, but the real world doesn’t work that way

On Redefining BPM – Keith Swenson

Every time I get to the point that I think I have figured out the life’s answers, they change the questions

On Redefining BPM – Comment by Max J. Pucher

Yup, ten years of my BPM bickering is still not paying off. It really makes me laugh. Forrester is saying that BPM is now going through the disillusionment phase in the hype cycle, so in two or three years it should come into proper use. Ha…. We are discussing the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ here, I’m afraid. Let’s go and do something productive.

On Technology Company Demonstrations – Phil Ayres

Technologist talk in their local industry babble. Customer’s speak their own in-house babble. Somewhere in the middle the only understandable discussion comes from the way a set of English words haven’t been abused for their own limited purposes

On BPMS vs Workflow – Alexander Samarin

One can implement a BPM system without any automation, for example, an ISO 9001 Quality Management System is a BPM system in which (very often) processes exist in paper and employers’ minds. Such a BPM system is difficult to use and to evolve.
Usually, it is necessary, but not sufficient, to use a BPMS to implement a BPM system. Because one of its the most important and less visible characteristic of any BPM system – flexibility – should be carefully architectured. Previously, we used workflow technology to implement enterprise BPM systems. BPMS is certainly a better fit for this job.

On BPM vs SOA – Ashish Bhagwat

It’s time SOA-wrapped-BPM gave way. I don’t even know what that would mean but it keeps coming up time and again. We are already talking about moving on to social, collaborative and adaptive favors of BPM

On Recognition Technology and BPM – Sandy Kemsley

I think that there’s a huge potential to take the natural language and parse out both process and rules from the description, which would be a really good starting point for ongoing automation of the process or rules independently, or both

On Predictable Processes – Craig Reid

On my way to work in the morning I pass by a big issue seller. One morning he shouted at me “like the shirt mate!!”. As a basic human being open to flattery I was pleased by the fact that he liked my shirt, even though being a homeless person he was probably not up with the latest industry trends.

On IT Professional Roles – Salim Sheikh

If you talk to most people and ask them what they do, they will say that they work for a certain organisation in a specific functional role. So someone might say, “I work for a retail bank and I am in HR.” Yet, when you talk to an IT professional, they will tend to say, “I am a project manager,” or, “I am a business analyst.” They may then qualify that by naming the organisation for which they work

On Social Technologies – Chris Adams

Over the last 2 years, the BPM sages have been asking how BPM can leverage social technologies. I think the bigger question that should be asked is: How can I employ Social into my overall IT portfolio to not just meet, but exceed, the goals of my business.

On Customer Buying Criteria – Julie Hunt

If a software vendor does not know what its customers want, the vendor will not be able to convince customers to buy its offerings. It’s not about “my product is better than competitor X” – it’s about “my product will give you what you need to be successful with your needs”.

On Enterprise Social Software – Salim Sheikh

Chances are you only know what’s going on in your company when someone else decides you should. You probably spend 1/3 of your day in your e-mail client, and 500 hours a year hunting for stuff

On ACM – Tom Shepherd

Putting on my Carnac hat, I’d say that there’s a lot more of these kinds of discussions to be had over the next year. There will be much gnashing of teeth over “BPM does it this way” and “ACM does it that way” but in the end my hope is that we’ll emerge better equipped to support the businesses we all operate and support