Process and Business quotes of the week

On Process – Chris Adams

When injecting the new concept of “business process” into a workforce, do not forget the people who are to execute the process. Do not let the theoretical concept of process get in the way of how people actually work. In fact, if your process is not an extension or refactoring of how people are already working today, then it is highly likely your process solution will become shelf ware

On Process Improvement – BJ Farmer

CEOs, consultants and change managers get all fired up about an improvement push (mainly about profits and change and fees). There lies the central problem: the people who actually put process improvements into practice have never been that excited by the concept. The explicit agenda is about the employer and organization while the benefit for ordinary employees is not immediately obvious, if at all. For most staff, a new efficiency initiative looks like change, hard work and discomfort, and feels like a threat.

On Abstract Processes – Max J. Pucher

a process is an abstract entity that produces no value. Value is defined by human interaction and perception in the real world. While abstract processes promise to make that human interaction more controllable they ignore human nature and workplace psychology, much as socialism and communism do.

On Enterprise-wide live process models – Mike Gammage

It’s obviously the future – the business operating system and the foundation of any continuous excellence program – but it isn’t simple to implement across the enterprise. It requires serious thinking about process architecture and the conceptual relationships between IT constructs and the live business processes – EA thinking, in fact. This is where EA expertise is needed and can be seen to make a real difference.

On Introduction of new technology – Bob Larrivee

We think that the introduction of new technology will motivate an organization to use it yet we find reluctance or avoidance. If technology is to be accepted and used successfully, there must be a clear purpose and guidance lest we create a different form of digital landfill or less than expected results. Users need to know what it is, why it will be used, how to use it and the impact to them. Technology introduces to business for the sake of being the latest technology delivers poor results.

On IT skills and IT roles – Chris Lockhart

With a weak crop of developers and architects, I’m concerned we’re growing a generation of bad IT managers, directors, VP’s and CIO/CTOs. I’m afraid our next generation leadership will be more concerned with the acronyms after their names, with frameworks and methodologies, than with the actual work of IT. That is, with theory rather than delivery.

On Complex Event Processing – Philip Howard

You can tell that complex event processing (CEP) was not initially developed by a company because no marketing man would ever have allowed a technology to be referred to as complex

On Business – Keith Swenson

We live with the realization that business is not going as well as we would like. 80% of CEO believe their business is excellent, but only 8% of customers. 90% businesses are unable to execute the strategy (Axon 2004). Especially in IT. 30% of software projects are canceled. Why is that? Are we focusing too much on efficiency and cost? and not enough on growing knowledge?

On Business Drivers for Document Management – Jacob Morgan

When asked to rate the significant business drivers around documents and records management, over 25% of respondents indicated “improve efficiency” at the top of their priority list while around another 18% included “optimize business process” as a top priority