BPM Holistic Methodology – The usual suspects

KEATEN: Who’s Keyser Soze?

KOBAYASHI: I am sure you’ve heard a number of tall tales, myths and legends about Mr. Soze.
I can assure you gentlemen, most of them are true.

KEATEN: Who is he?

KOBAYASHI: Judging by the sudden change in mood, I am sure the rest of your associates can tell you, Mr. Keaten.
I will let them tell you about my employer.

VERBAL: One story the guys told me – the story I believe – was from his days in a consultancy company.
There was a customer that wanted to implement a workflow.
There was a petty gang of BPM consultants that wanted their own mob. They realized that to be in power you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers.
You just needed to scare the customer into thinking that he needs your advice, and that without it the whole company will crumble.
Then the consultants come up with a plan. They’ll tell the customer that he needs to invest in BPM.

KEATEN: What’s wrong with BPM?

VERBAL: Nothing is wrong with BPM. They used software to implement business processes. It was very successful.

KEATEN: And Keyser wanted in?

VERBAL: No, he came in and told the customer that BPM isn’t software – it is a holistic management approach for managing business processes.
He said that process management cannot be solved by software, only by a holistic management approach. Methodology and high level design. No need for software.

He then built this holistic approach for the customer’s department, and then for the departments next to the department, and departments in other areas of the business, and departments of customers of the customer.
He didn’t stop until everyone was methodologised.

KEATEN: What happened next?

VERBAL: And like that he was gone. Underground. No one has ever seen him again. He becomes a myth, a spook story that customers tell their kids at night. If you rat on your pop, Keyser Sate will bring in BPM. And nobody really ever believes.
Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power.

The greatest trick the BPM consultant ever pulled was convincing the customer that BPM methodologies exist.

And like that, poof. He’s gone.