Architecture & Governance II – There’s something about BPM… February 27, 2011
Posted by Sanooj Kutty in Business Process Management, Others, Service Oriented Architecture.Tags: bpm, bpmn, business analysis, business architecture, business process automation, Business Process Management, enterprise architecture, epc, Service Oriented Architecture
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There’s something about BPM… that’s missing…
This post is definitely not my “eureka moment”. No such great discovery coming from me yet.
After all I am neither in my bath nor am I running around naked.
But, I have tried to define processes. Modeled them in EPC and BPMN and yet somewhere I face the frustration of not having got it just right. There is always some cross-link missing or some exception not managed. Arguments have advised me to focus on the 80% of Pareto’s law. However, if we are to run a 100 million dollar business, that 20% is a whopping 20 million dollars! For sure, I do not want to be the one losing that 20 million.
This is where your Business Architecture or also known in some corners as Business Process Architecture kicks in to help you structure your processes. Conventional Architectures start from the top and they tend to start with a Service. As some call it a Service, others have gone on to call them Process Landscapes, Process Areas or Scenarios. Ultimately and fundamentally they are on the same page and a typical such architecture is shown below.
However, I disagree with this model because this starts from what we want to serve our customer and not vice versa.
This is where it happened to me. It happens to all of us. We learn many things during our academic and vocational journeys that we leave behind and then suddenly it pops up out of the blue and knocks us so hard that we wonder why didn’t we think of it before.
My moment came to me during a recent marketing workshop where some of the marketing jargon lead me back to the basics of marketing. It’s all about the needs and wants of a customer. If we only have to cater to what the customer needs, great. If the competition also caters to the customer’s needs, then we have to give them what they want.
This was missing from the above architecture. It starts with a “sales orientation” by aiming to deliver what we have to serve them. What we must put in place is definitely a “market orientation“.
One must move from a “push to customer” architectural principle to a “pushed or pulled by customer” principle. Thus, our business architecture starts from the customers needs or wants as defined by the diagram below:
I believe a business always starts with the customer and if the customer wishes, it can always be brought to an end. Hence, applying the basics learnt from our marketing classes in our business architecture, we go closer to the customer and the closer we are to our customer, the closer we are to our objectives.
Everything’s in the Name! February 5, 2011
Posted by Sanooj Kutty in Business Process Management, Others.Tags: bpm, business analysis, business architecture, business process automation, Business Process Management, change, change management, culture, enterprise architecture, information management, knowledge management, knowledge transfer, process, strategy
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The name game has now creeped into Business Process Management. A former manager of mine kept referring to BPM only to see a demonstration from Metastorm’s Enterprise Architecture software and exclaim that this is the BPM tool I was looking for.
Initially, as a BPM evangelist, I was peeved, peeved enough to withdraw myself from the program and request to be assigned to conventional IT project management. The industry had suddenly fallen in love with BPM and it was the buzzword everywhere.
As a committed BPM-er, I continued to pursue personally my passion for BPM. From Aris to Adonis to Tibco to Interfacing to Metastorm to IBM Blueworkslive, my shallow time-permitting evaluations confused me at times too.
Aris calls it a Process Platform or Aris House.
Adonis calls it Business Process Management.
Tibco calls it the same.
Metastorm has both Enterprise Architecture and BPM
Interfacing calls it Process Center.
Yet, do they mean Business Processes or Business Architecture ? Or are they one and the same?
Today as I tried out the BPMN Modeller Visio add-on from Interfacing, I realised one thing. Whatever name you call them, they all aim to achieve the same objective. However, because of the difference in scope, standards and methodologies that may be adopted by different tools, it is important that when you ask for a solution, you ‘name’ it right.
Platform, Architecture, Management or Center? They can all mean the same, yet behave different. They can all produce the same result, yet look different. They are all good tools and will serve very well. However, would they fit your organization easily?
I have chosen the Visio add-on to introduce to my employers. Not because I really liked it, but because every one has a Visio on their desktop and over 5 years, there are more people who know to use Visio than just the single me who has used a BPMS before in my organization. Without a BPMS coming into the organization anywhere soon, this tool allows me to introduce the principles of Business Architecture and Business Process Management.
I would call it BPM although I know I am only Architecting/Modelling the processes. Simply because, management and others in my company call it BPM. Any other name and it confuses all. Hence, everything’s in a name.
And yes, I do not blame my manager anymore. He was merely an outcome of the industry fad to outdo each other with different fancy names.
