I learned this kind of magic on a training last year, it’s called “switching the communication protocol”. We use scientific protocol mostly for our IT jobs: definitions, logical conclusions, democratic style of discussions etc. But there are also administrative (“you do this now!”), conflictological (“I’m on your side”, the “win-win” kind of talks) and metaphorical. The latter is specifically prescribed for new ideas generation. It turns out to be more powerfull than scientifical e.g. when a team makes an early attempt to design the future. One of the most important recommendation was about brain storming sessions: the session moderator should be able to detect the protocol used by participants at the given moment and to switch the protocol to more appropriate.

Yet it’s a new technique for me so I appreciate your side note very much – seems that it works!

I learned this kind of magic on a training last year, it’s called “switching the communication protocol”. We use scientific protocol mostly for our IT jobs: definitions, logical conclusions, democratic style of discussions etc. But there are also administrative (“you do this now!”), conflictological (“I’m on your side”, the “win-win” kind of talks) and metaphorical. The latter is specifically prescribed for new ideas generation. It turns out to be more powerfull than scientifical e.g. when a team makes an early attempt to design the future. One of the most important recommendation was about brain storming sessions: the session moderator should be able to detect the protocol used by participants at the given moment and to switch the protocol to more appropriate.

Yet it’s a new technique for me so I appreciate your side note very much – seems that it works!

you’re right, and I think it does describe a subset of processes that are “unstructured” but I think it describes the user rather than the process (or problem) – which is why I like the other terms better…

BTW, I like the name of your patterns on your post “A little help from a friend”, for example. I think having good names for patterns is part of the magic for helping people remember to use them (think four horsemen in Java).

you’re right, and I think it does describe a subset of processes that are “unstructured” but I think it describes the user rather than the process (or problem) – which is why I like the other terms better…

BTW, I like the name of your patterns on your post “A little help from a friend”, for example. I think having good names for patterns is part of the magic for helping people remember to use them (think four horsemen in Java).

I think the better category of “dynamic” BPM to discuss is the category you put under that label – interleaving structured and unstructured elements of process to achieve a good result. The growing demand for this is a result of people finally understanding the distinction, I think, between top-down prescribed process vs. discussion or collaboration-oriented work that might surround structured processes, or might compose a single “activity” box on the structured process (At one company I worked with, when we interviewed people, at the end of the day all the interviewers would get together to discuss the candidates – modeling that interaction as a process would be silly – but the fact that we had such a meeting was integral to our interview process… ).

No one mistakes Collaborative or Unstructured processes as meaning “I use Rules or Configuration Rules to do that process”… And, instead of saying “dynamic process” these stack vendors should be a bit more honest that what they are providing is Rules + Process. Which is fine and dandy, it just doesn’t sound “new” when you pitch it that way. For example “dynamic service invocation” is something that I’ve been doing my whole career in BPM… so I don’t see how it is new… :) It just tells me that some of these vendors’ offerings were even worse than I thought before they started using the label “Dynamic”…

Now… back to terminology – Dynamic is an IT term, not a business term. If your customers are IT folks, you’re fine. If they’re business folks, I think there are better descriptors. And if there aren’t, we should work on one :)
A few ideas:
- Collaborative Processes
- Knowledge Worker Processes
- Self-directed processes (this reminds me of self-directed majors in university)
- Auditing processes

Others? comments?

I think the better category of “dynamic” BPM to discuss is the category you put under that label – interleaving structured and unstructured elements of process to achieve a good result. The growing demand for this is a result of people finally understanding the distinction, I think, between top-down prescribed process vs. discussion or collaboration-oriented work that might surround structured processes, or might compose a single “activity” box on the structured process (At one company I worked with, when we interviewed people, at the end of the day all the interviewers would get together to discuss the candidates – modeling that interaction as a process would be silly – but the fact that we had such a meeting was integral to our interview process… ).

No one mistakes Collaborative or Unstructured processes as meaning “I use Rules or Configuration Rules to do that process”… And, instead of saying “dynamic process” these stack vendors should be a bit more honest that what they are providing is Rules + Process. Which is fine and dandy, it just doesn’t sound “new” when you pitch it that way. For example “dynamic service invocation” is something that I’ve been doing my whole career in BPM… so I don’t see how it is new… :) It just tells me that some of these vendors’ offerings were even worse than I thought before they started using the label “Dynamic”…

Now… back to terminology – Dynamic is an IT term, not a business term. If your customers are IT folks, you’re fine. If they’re business folks, I think there are better descriptors. And if there aren’t, we should work on one :)
A few ideas:
- Collaborative Processes
- Knowledge Worker Processes
- Self-directed processes (this reminds me of self-directed majors in university)
- Auditing processes

Others? comments?

Sorry, didn’t get your point: are you against the term “dynamic BPM” or don’t see anything new in the concept?

From my perspective, there always was customers demand for something more “liquid” (using old BEA motto) than predefined diagram-based BPMS. And this demand is growing: more people start using BPMS – more visible this limitation become. On the other hand, the new generation of web-based collaboration tools raised the expectation so customers are less willing to accept current BPMS limitations and it’s becoming harder for the vendors to ignore this demand.

As for the term, I believe “Dynamic BPM” isn’t worse than any other and probably it’s actually better because it’s intuitive for the customers. Of course vendors play the old term substitution game as they do it with BPM itself (you noted it right) and any other technology. Isn’t ERP a confusing term? DBMS probably isn’t nowadays but I recall how it was.

Sorry, didn’t get your point: are you against the term “dynamic BPM” or don’t see anything new in the concept?

From my perspective, there always was customers demand for something more “liquid” (using old BEA motto) than predefined diagram-based BPMS. And this demand is growing: more people start using BPMS – more visible this limitation become. On the other hand, the new generation of web-based collaboration tools raised the expectation so customers are less willing to accept current BPMS limitations and it’s becoming harder for the vendors to ignore this demand.

As for the term, I believe “Dynamic BPM” isn’t worse than any other and probably it’s actually better because it’s intuitive for the customers. Of course vendors play the old term substitution game as they do it with BPM itself (you noted it right) and any other technology. Isn’t ERP a confusing term? DBMS probably isn’t nowadays but I recall how it was.