BPM 2011: A new year

2011. A new year has begun.

For some it’s a fresh beginning. For some – a new challenge.
I was looking for a metaphor that embodies the excitement we all feel in starting a new year.
It goes like this…

An Enterprise Architect goes to hell and the devil greets him.
He takes him to a hallway which has three different doors and tells him he’ll have to choose one room to spend the rest of eternity in.

So he takes him to the first door and he opens it and sees everyone standing on their heads on wooden floors yelling “BPM is a software solution!”.
The man thought that would be pretty terrible to spend the rest of eternity on his head on such a hard floor and asked the devil to show him the second door.

Everyone in the second room was standing on their heads on concrete and yelling “BPM is a holistic management approach!”.
The man thought that was even worse to spend the rest of eternity on his head on an even harder floor.

Finally the devil takes him to the third door and in that room everyone is up to their knees in dog shit and drinking coffee.
All were happily chatting about different BPM methodologies and practices.

The man thought that it was pretty bad, but at least they could drink coffee so he told the devil he chose the third room to spend the rest of eternity in.

So the man, up to his knees in dog shit, drank coffee and chatted with his colleagues.
After a few minutes the devil came back into the room and yelled “OK everyone. Coffee break is over. Back on your heads!”