BPM & Agile Methods

Have you ever though about the nature of BPM projects from a software development point of view? Honestly I haven't. But Gartner people seem to have asked themselves questions about this. At least, they can put a name on it. Sandy kemsley affirms that most deleopment lifecycles used to design Business processes rely on the simple waterfall model.

The Gartner BPM Talk she reports about distinguishes between several development lifecycles, while putting focus on the "architected model-driven" one. This one caught my eye, since I also view BPM modelling as being adapted to model-driven approaches, especially since Process model transformations to BPEL (from EPCs or BPMN diagrams) have become a reality. Recent holistic approaches to BPM which consider the high-level strategic views and the low level workflow implementation layers as parts of a common biotope for BPM: of which I think that it makes sense and with which I agree, precisely because of the executable processes. Also, the "architected" in "architected model-driven", as far as I have understood it is also a necessity and a fact: as business processes span multiple vertical silos in the enterprise, they also rely on architectural, organizational and strategic resources for them to carry their added value. This is very easy to see in teh case of frameworks such as ARIS which is an enterprise modeling Framework and also contains views and models to represent the architectures involved in defining processes. Since the enterprise is architected, business processes which run through the enterprise should be architected accordingly, defining interfaces when necessary and splitting processes into layers and blocks.

But the thing about this talk, about which I read on Sandy Kemsley's Colmn2, is the question: what about using Agile development methods for BPM projects. The best point of the talk was the fact that due to the BPM lifecycle having iterations from the strategy phase to the controlling phase (I am referring here specifically to the ARIS Lifecycle, by IDS Scheer), but also including shorter iterations for aspects such as configuration, policies and rules modeling (which is always a keyword for me), agile methods would work much better than classical waterfall methodologies, which are used for most BPM projects. I am no expert in Agile development or RAD (rapid Application Development) though, but it still makes sense to me. I will keep an eye on any works, software or publications on that.

Marwane El Kharbili.

Gartner BPM and Process Design Patterns

In this post by Sandy kemsley, where she reports about the Gartner BPM summit I have found some interesting ideas upon which I would like to react. She speaks about the talk by Janelle Hil at Gartner's BPM summit, where Janelle Hill reminds why BPM is different from workflow and business process reengineering techniques that existed before. She also discusses when the use of a BPMS becomes necessary. What I found most intriguing is that she speaks about policies on the level of BPMS (I guess she means generally also modelling and analysis frameworks) , and I am convinced of the necessity of managing policies at the same level of managing process, organizational, and system information. Policies can also influence the business by making it do what is expected from it, having influence on its quality, performance or security among others. So policies represent an asset for the enterprise in the same way processes do.

Another interesting thing to note is that Gartner just changed their definition of BPMS so the new quadrant looks different. the final and most interestingthing in the post to me was discussin process design patterns. Sandy kemsley says that the approach she uses with clients is trying to identify what kinds of process patterns they have in order to decide for the best BPMS for them. "three most common patterns that they see with BPMS are case management, form-driven workflow, and participant-driven workflow". Janelle Hill has listed 6 of them, which I would be curious to know.

Marwane El Kharbili.

Trends in Biz Apps by Yvonne Genovese

A shortie again. On this post on sandy Kemsley's blog, she noted some very interesting reported notes on the talk by Yvonne Genovese on the morning's technology keynote at Gartner's BPM summit 2008. Yvonne Genovese listed 9 big trends in business applications from her point of view. Most remarquable, numbers 1, 2 and 3 (logically), here the citation:

1. "Applications shift from pre-canned logic to dynamic assemblies, something that we’re already seeing with large packaged applications (such as SAP) opening up their internal functionality as services, allowing those functions to be consumed — along with any number of other web services — as part of a composite application or business process.
2. Convergence of business processes, people and information: applications that provide business value will consider all of these.
3. Focus on performance management evolution from reporting and monitoring to predictive planning and closed-loop optimization."

My pick is number 6 (citation):

1. The role of the ERP suite will change, since they typically provide a low degree of innovation; they will tend to be services consumed by other more agile applications.

Which to me is in strong correlation with point number 1. Read the post it's short and informative.

Marwane El Kharbili

Gartner Compliance & Risk Management Summit

Another quickie here, from the 3th to the 5th of March 2008. It'll take place in Chicago, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. For everyone interested in compliance Management and in Risk Management, this is a not-to-miss opportunity.

Marwane El Kharbili

BPM Conferences in february

On his blog (Column2), notifies sandy kemsley of three very interesting enterprise conferences in February:

• This week takes place Gartner's BPM summit from the 4th to the 7th of February.
• February 13th to the 15th is the ARIS Processworld (Americas) in Orlando. Title of this year's conference is "Improve Business Performance". Editions in berlin (June 16th-18th) and Hong Kong are also taking place in 2008. Sandy kemsley gathers all his posts to ProcessWorld under one hat, accessible here.
• february 18th-20th the FASTForward conference which covers Enterprise 2.0 topics (so Sandy kemsley). It is a "Business and Technology Conference Dedicated to Search-Driven Innovation" according to the conference's website. It is managed by the FASTSearch company.

Marwane El Kharbili.