It was almost half past three o’clock, when Alice stumbled upon a blue door.
She could hear a lot of yelling on the other side.
Very quietly she opened the door…
Mad Hatter: A very merry ACM unbirthday to you!
March Hare: No.. a very merry ACM unbirthday to you!
Mad Hatter: Let’s congratulate with another cup of tea, a very merry ACM unbirthday to you!
March Hare: No.. a very merry unbirthday to you!
Suddenly the March Hare and the Mad Hatter looked up and saw Alice
March Hare & Mad Hatter: No room, no room, no room, no room, no room, no room!
Alice: But I thought there was plenty of room!
March Hare: Ah, but it’s very rude to sit down without being invited!
Mad Hatter: I say it’s rude. Its very very rude, indeed! Hah!
Dormouse: Very very very rude, indeed…
Alice looked at the Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter looked at the March Hare. The March Hare looked at Alice.
The Dormouse didn’t have anyone to look at, so he counted his toes instead.
Alice: Oh, I’m very sorry, but I did hear you talking about ACM and I wondered if you could tell me…
March Hare: You know about ACM?
Mad Hatter: Oh, what a delightful child! Hah! I’m so excited, we never get compliments! You must have a cup of tea!
March Hare: Ah, yes indeed! The tea, you must have a cup of tea!
The Mad Hatter took a teapot out of his hat and poured it into a checkered cup.
Alice: That is very nice. I’m sorry I interrupted your birthday party… uh, thank you.
March Hare: It’s not a birthday. It’s an unbirthday. BPM celebrate one birthday every year.
Mad Hatter: Ahhh, but there are 364 ACM unbirthdays! Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer!
Alice: Why, then today is my ACM unbirthday too!
March Hare: It is? What a small world this is. In that case… a very merry ACM unbirthday.
Everyone was looking very happy, except for the dormouse who was still trying to count his toes.
Alice: But why doesn’t ACM have a proper birthday.
Mad Hatter: Proper! Proper! Fiddlesticks. we don’t celebrate birthdays.
March Hare: (whispering) They can’t celebrate it, no one uses it.
Alice: What?
The Mad Hatter poured all the tea into a cup. Then he put the dormouse into the empty tea pot.
Mad Hatter: ACM is used.. well.. at least, it should be used.
March Hare: Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.
Mad Hatter: It’s a fantastic methodology.
March Hare: (nodding) It is a fantastic methodology… but no one is using it.
The dormouse was still in the tea pot having some trouble counting his toes. They seemed a bit sticky.
Alice: Of all the silly nonsense, How can you have a methodology that everyone likes, but no one is using. Surely if it was that good, it would have been adopted by the BPM, ECM and CRM vendors by now.
March Hare: Quite the opposite. Because it’s such a fantastic methodology, no one is adopting it.
Mad Hatter: Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.
March Hare: The ACM methodology has been around for years. If it goes midstream then no one will like it anymore.
Mad Hatter: There is only one birthday, but 364 unbirthdays.
March Hare: Exactly! Now blow the candle out, my dear and make a wish.
March Hare & Mad hatter: A very merry unbirthday to you!
Inside the teapot, the dormouse smiled. “Ten toes” he said to himself.
Just as I thought.
Adam Deane 
Adam, I just love your posts. I wish I would come up with these satires.
To the point of no-one is using ACM: Who cares?
We have already changed the future of BPM. Even Forrester wrote that BPMS without DCM features won’t make it. And analysts only understand a small portion of what ACM can do. Most executives only worry about one thing: their next contract. So they see no point in doing anything that is not mainstream for their operations. And the mainstream is fueled by BPM advertizing money.
Much like the US food industry despite all the evidence to the opposite. Th public has completely false beliefs about food.
Food, Inc. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc.
Forks over Knives – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forks_over_Knives
Super Size Me – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me
The result of this: two thirds of Americans are obese and the UK is going in a similar direction. It is really hard to fight against Oracle, IBM and SAP advertizing budgets and they clearly do not care what it actually does to their customers.
You can be on either side of the forces of change. Your choice. Sarkasm is usually a measure of last resort. 😉
As an afterthought: No one was using Facebook ten years ago too …
All the best, Max
By: Max J. Pucher on 28/08/2012
at 11:35 am
What a key note Adam.
The thing is when most of the people find that ACM is just another way to automate they will ruin the business.
By the way, lately I’m having a lot of interactions with “pure” techies to develop a solution architecture and the problem is not about the methods. The problem is about tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is about your life and work experience, it’s not documented, there are no books or references about it. If Tacit knowledge between people that are working together don’t intersect there is no way to go further, project management fails, enterprise architecture frameworks fails, process management framework fails. People don’t understand what the others are talking about or have different semantic meaning to them (but this is for other post).
Regards
Alberto.
By: Alberto Manuel on 28/08/2012
at 5:46 pm
Madness. Just madness!
By: Charl Asuit (@techsnoop) on 31/08/2012
at 11:30 am
Bravo!
By: Максим Смирнов on 07/09/2012
at 5:29 am
[…] В начале сентября, в рамках конференции BPM1012, проходившей в эстонском Таллине, состоялся первый международный workshop по Adaptive Case Management. В ходе самой конференции также было еще несколько мероприятий посвященной теме кейс-менеджмента (Adaptive? Dynamic?, впрочем не важно). К сожалению, на конференции я не был, но к счастью в сети достаточно информационных материалов с ней связанных. И пожалуй наиболее удачным преддверием очередного обсуждения ACM явилась заметка в блоге Адама Дина о вечеринке относительно дня нерождения ACM […]
By: Как идут дела у адаптивного управления делами « Архитектура информационных систем on 09/09/2012
at 11:33 am