Process for the Enterprise

Is the Checklist Mightier than the Model?

Scott Francis — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:30:11 +0000

In honor of SXSW-interactive and the prevalence of twitter here, I’ll give my brief take:

“Is the Checklist Mightier than the Model?”
In a word: No.

Longer version:

Checklists are useful. Just because we have lots of new-fangled tech and old tech like MS Project or Rally or what-have-you, doesn’t mean a checklist won’t help you get through your day or get things done. But it is a complement not a replacement, and it isn’t a competition at all.

Keith Swenson on Model-Preservation vs. Model-Transformation

Musings after two days of SXSWi: a Top 29 List

Scott Francis — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:12:17 +0000

I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts from two days at SXSW-interactive…

Austinites don’t really know escalator protocol. We stand on both sides of the escalator, annoying the folks from both coasts who know that you stand to the right to let the impatient blow by you on the left. The Austin Convention Center has some very long escalators, and the traffic jams have been beauteous.
People will not take the time to go to another floor to find shorter food and beverage lines. Try the 4th floor first thing in the morning – its a morgue because everyone stops at the first “Starbucks served here” sign they see – which happens to be on the first floor.
Unlike my experiences at every other conference I’ve ever been to, SXSW (at the Austin Convention Center at least) had power supplies everywhere. I swear I saw one above the urinal in the Men’s bathroom. No, not really. But they were almost everywhere else.
Do not screw up a bay-area coffee snob’s coffee order. They will not be amused. (I love coffee, but I don’t qualify as a snob because I actually like Starbucks just fine. If you think people who like Starbucks coffee are coffee snobs, trust me, this is a finely layered cake and Starbucks is now where near the top of the coffee snob cake).
People who blog about comic strips can expect to see 1000 comments in a couple of days. There aren’t 1000 comments in the whole BP3 blog yet. Apparently BPM is only mainstream in the eyes of Gartner and Forrester – it is not mainstream in the eyes of comic-strip readers, or anyone else you could call “mainstream”.
Nearly every blogging-related panelist seemed to have started blogging when computers were built with vacuum tubes. I jest, it was only 1997 or 1998… which amounts to the same thing as far as blogging goes. Would have been good to hear from a successful blogger who started more recently…
A classic quote (missed the name for attribution): “In 2002, I thought [cynically], ‘hasn’t everyone who wanted to start a blog already started one? I mean, there are literally thousands of them.” Needless to say, as he pointed out, he vastly under-estimated the number of people who wanted to start their own blogs.
Fun quotes: “If you think Twitter is a good substitute for a blog you weren’t a good blogger to begin with”… “Huffpo could just be tweets”… “New generation of blogging sees it as furthering your existing self. Whereas before, it was unearthing the self you were afraid to expose” (paraphrased)…
Do design and platform matter? The panel says, largely: no. “Design is 5% important. Craigslist is popular and its the worst designed site on the web.”
There need to be about 10 more food trailers outside to satisfy the hunger of 15,000 attendees. Seriously. It turns out that Austin is not just ground-zero for Migas and Breakfast Tacos, but also for the food-in-an-airstream-trailer – even good food.
Going to Moonshine for a 1:30pm lunch was a good call. But it was a 45-minute wait. Food trailer was also nearly a 45 minute wait. Guess which one was better?
There was a running joke about how to get a million page views on a blog post, but I won’t repeat it here.
Top ten lists were also cited as a key driver of traffic. Why? No one knows for sure, but it works. Check Digg, Reddit… etc… it always seems to work. (I wonder if a top-29 list will work?? hmmmmmmmm let’s find out).
Apparently it is hard to make $50k/year blogging. I’m not sure what “hard” means in the context of blogging, but everyone nodded their head (we know hard isn’t hard like mining coal, but does “hard” mean you need to be lucky or does “hard” mean it takes many many hours of investment without much assurance of return on that investment? or something else?)
A Google product manager talked about link quality like it was a moral good and not just something you worry about because you want your page rank to be good and you want Google search to drive traffic. Kind of losing sight of the fact that getting paid for linking isn’t really amoral, it just inconveniences Google’s search quality – and then Google will punish you for having paid links that aren’t marked as such with no-follow (they literally used the term payola). The example given was that you should turn down that $1000/month someone is offering you to link to their site. The guy next to me said (sarcastically) “yeah, that’s a problem I have.” Right.
Saw a panel about “unsexy” but profitable businesses. Great representation from local firm, uShip, among others. If Business Process Management (BPM) consulting doesn’t qualify for unsexy, someone explain to me the looks of desperate un-interest I can generate by telling people at SXSWi what I do for a living (BPM Consulting). Hopefully this means we’re destined for profits as well.
There are too many stock photo sites in the world. But that’s good, because next time I need one they won’t be too expensive (I saw 4, at least, on the exhibit floor). There are a LOT of tools for building websites (I saw 4, at least, on the exhibit floor). Couldn’t help but wonder if they were all partnered up with stock photo sites…
There are too many sessions! I can’t possibly see everything I’m interested in. But I’m glad there are so many sessions because the small sessions are the real gems.
The Chevy Volt actually looked kinda cool. Kinda.
There’s an under-served interest in well-designed physical products at the exhibit. DAS keyboards and blue lounge where the two that I saw, and they looked great and had good attendance the two times I looked. Everything else was a bit too virtual.
The AT&T U-verse store was, unsurprisingly, unable to tell me if they serve our neighborhood yet. On the other hand, AT&T the wireless carrier seemed to hold up pretty well the first two days of SXSW.
@paulcarr with British accent: “The internet is a major distraction. I recommend you all stop using it.” In the context of this audience, that was high humor.
It turns out, hashtags have to be shorter than 140 characters to be useful on Twitter. Please take note of this, SXSW organizers…
Apparently: “if you’re goal isn’t to make money, you’re not actually in business”. I like the way that panelist thinks. If I remember right, that was also @paulcarr, of Techcrunch.
Sushi goes quite well with Tres Leches, thankyouverymuchialwaysthoughtso. And this is why I love Austin.
Pedi-cabs in Austin cost more during SXSW than any other time of the year. Why does Austin have so many pedi-cabs? I don’t remember them being here when I first moved to Austin, but they’re everywhere downtown now.
Bijoy is everywhere.
SXSWi men’s fashion can be summed up as converse sneakers with tshirt and jeans and a sport coat. Fedora optional.
No matter how many people are here, you can still bump into your friends, and make new friends. Good seeing everyone yesterday. If you see me looking lost today, say hi and distract me from finding the next panel room.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the conference, its quite an experience. Really impressed with the Austin representation.

Too Important not to Cross-Link: Activity Data

Scott Francis — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:36:25 +0000

John Reynold’s post on Activity Data, from a process participant’s perspective, is just too comprehensive and good not to devote a short, sweet post that cross-links to his article. If you think about what went wrong with your last activity implementation – it was likely that you weren’t considering the full list of things that John lists here.

Mixed Reviews on BPM Conferences

Scott Francis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:29:17 +0000

This isn’t particular or specific to the world of BPM conferences – there’s a general “conference malaise” going on – in which only the “best” conferences are really tearing it up.

Outside of the BPM world, its clear that conferences like SXSW in Austin are doing just fine (and did just fine last year too, by the way). Record attendance and a record number of panels and bands and acts is just the norm at SXSW these days (conference starts today).

But in the world of BPM, 2009 was tough for conferences, when the expectation was that people would still be attending BPM conferences due to how applicable they are to everyone’s business. Several vendors postponed their conferences or took them virtual (Lombardi’s Driven), but the ones who waited until the fall (Appian) benefited from the beginning of the rebound in businesses planning for the future rather than businesses just living in fear of the next shoe dropping.

Sandy Kemsley has pointed out this problem with BPM conferences several times, as has Theo Priestley, and we’ve chimed in as well on the topic. Some fresh perspectives:

Sandy points out that 2010 looks like a rebound year for conferences. We’ll see – Gartner’s BPM summit is in March in Las Vegas, and IBM’s “Impact” is in May – good test cases of the demand for these conferences. Word from the London Gartner summit implied that attendance was low? (I wasn’t there, so its second-hand to me).
Theo Priestley and Mike Gammage hypothesize that Gartner and IQPC could merge events by 2012 – which again sounds like weakness rather than strength to me.
Interestingly, Gammage was more encouraging about Gartner’s latest offering, while Jon Pyke’s contacts were not impressed.

Theo has a separate blog post, and while the bulk of it is about building community more broadly, at the end he makes a telling argument:

“When a sponsor at a BPM conference turns round and says he was perplexed at why there was such a low turnout given how important BPM has become according to what surveys seem to suggest the answer may be in the fact that we can’t even agree on what we’re telling clients in the first place.

For a group that practices change we’re incredibly resistant to it ourselves…..”

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I think BPM conferences need to do a few things:

Localize. Have the conference closer to the bulk of your attendees, so that more people can come without travel costs.
Face-to-Face. Tele-presence and high-def video conferencing is great. But a virtual conference is a broadcast medium. If attendees want one-way communication they can read the book or watch the video after the fact. If they want interaction, then you need physical presence to really encourage that.
Respect budgets. Don’t make cost of attendance a barrier – keep it reasonable. For anyone traveling, travel costs should dominate their total expenses, not registration costs.
Crowd-source. Leverage the community to arrive at the topics. There’s been too much top-down sourcing of content at conferences, without soliciting feedback from potential and actual attendees.
Narrow the focus. The narrower the focus, the more involved the people who attend can be. People mistakenly think you have to broaden the audience to get more people – but the point isn’t MORE – the point is BETTER. If the event is BETTER then you’ll get more value out of your investment of time and money.

We’ve followed this philosophy for bpmCamp and it was a great success for us – the feedback has been enormously positive, with a lot of interest in repeating the event next year. But of course, our “unconference” was limited to 40 attendees – and its easier to organize around these principles when you keep the size of the conference smaller. Still, I think there are lessons to learn for those who would put on BPM-focused events, and the biggest one is:

It’s about the audience, not about the organizer.

For more information from bpmCamp, follow this link to our blog coverage of the bpmCamp event. The element that I think is most crucial is the impromptu discussion that can happen in a more intimate setting. Questions don’t wait for a microphone or a moderator – the hand goes up or the question is proposed and people can jump in and contribute. I was really pleased with how this dynamic worked at bpmCamp and I hope we can reproduce this at other events. I think 2010 will be a better year for conferences, but organizers need to keep in mind how to make these gatherings *more* valuable for attendees or they’re going to lose their attention next time.

Focusing your Message

Scott Francis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:34:41 +0000

In “Pick one and own it“, Jason Cohen advocates for picking just one advantage over your competition to sell, and really owning it.

Its a valuable debating technique to learn, regardless: when confronted with an argument, instead of switching to a different argument, stick to the one at hand, and finish it out. When you switch gears you’re often conceding ground, without arriving at consensus. It also prevents you from being intellectually lazy if you can’t just switch subjects when the discussion isn’t going your way or the way you expected.

It is also a good way to build your brand if you can focus on just a few key advantages, taking each one to logical conclusion, instead of overwhelming the message with 100 advantages that are difficult to prove or show.

Gartner Warms up its BPM Message

Another take on Panels at SXSW (from AustinStartup)

Scott Francis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:28:59 +0000

AustinStartup has had a couple of posts attempting to help those new to SXSW find some of the gems hidden in the long schedule of events at SXSW.

Here’s another take on panels you shouldn’t miss, by Carla Thompson.

The Process around Social Tools

Scott Francis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:13:43 +0000

Interesting reading about Social Tools within Intuit on the Dachis Group’s site, as they discuss engaging with social tools in their business and the new processes they have to embrace. Christine Morrison responds to questions from Dachis Group, and I’ve quoted the exchange that caught my attention:

Getting diverse constituents to agree on process changes, or new processes can be difficult. Any tips you can share on bringing people together?

The answer is, it depends.

If the goal is to just make a new, first-ever process that’s never been attempted before in your organization happen (and it doesn’t have to be large-scale right off the bat), I recommend a skunkworks operation: prove your case in a limited, low risk way, and use that data to drive adoption across the organization. The overhead in this scenario is a lot easier to achieve: you usually just need one well-placed promoter who is willing to take a risk on a new way of doing things. Some of TurboTax’s most long-term, strategically important social initiatives were launched this way (Live Community and Inner Circle, for example). [...]

Call me a BPM geek but I like seeing people outside of the BPM world thinking about process, and in this case realizing that social tools don’t get you out of having to think about process – but they do have implications for change in your processes as they exist today, if you’re open-minded enough to allow for it.

Prepping for SXSW (interactive)

Scott Francis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:09:20 +0000

Stacy Higginbotham from GigaOm gets things rolling with 10 Austin Startups you should meet at SXSW. Notably, she avoided the obvious in Gowalla and listed out a few that folks outside of Austin might not have heard of or made contact with. There are certainly other interesting startups in Austin, but she managed to call out a couple of my favorites (Whurleyvision, Appozite, and OtherInbox).

There are a mind-numbing number of panels, just for the interactive portion of SXSW. I’m going to attend some of the sessions this year and I’m still trying to figure out how to narrow it down. Its definitely a time to feel fortunate to live in Austin to have this kind of opportunity to see what’s going on in the world of music, movies, and “interactive” (this year, by the way, the focus seems to have turned toward mobile platforms… whereas interactive used to be more focused on blogging).

UPDATE: of course, as I soon as I posted this I found an article I’d been saving to read that should have been included:

Austin Startup’s “Tech Tips for N00bs to Survive SXSW“. It gives some classic advice about double checking the locations of your events before assuming they are all co-located. SXSW uses *all* of Austin for its events – especially for the music festival. I recall one year that they reported using 300 music venues in Austin for one festival. The article also includes great links to sites with more information on SXSW, and who to follow on twitter to keep up with the latest and greatest.

The best advice: bring earplugs.

Gravity and Windows Workflow Foundation

Scott Francis — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:47:12 +0000

I was recently struck by the difference between a couple of posts about SAP Gravity and Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation.

In the first, some demonstrations of SAP Gravity with Google Wave are presented. But they seem a bit contrived to me – and moreover Google Wave isn’t realistic for enterprise use yet – which makes SAP’s focus on Wave all the more puzzling (since they usually don’t focus on any technology until its pretty tried and true). Gravity seems to be long on sizzle and short on substance to me. But I give SAP props for trying something different to unlock innovation around their huge install base. And honestly, what they’ve done so far has definite “cool” factor.

But then I saw this post on Windows Workflow Foundation, and I see that it is possible to have been in the BPM space for 10 years and still not get the importance of the business – it is still a programmer’s product, rather than a business-person’s product. You can sum it all up right here:

“The purpose of WF is not to be a complete workflow solution for Windows. Instead, the goal is to make it easier for software developers to create workflow-based Windows applications.”

Luckily, if you really want to be on a Windows-centric solution, there are BPMS vendors out there that do that…

BPM, same as it ever was?

Scott Francis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:00:02 +0000

Every so often, someone makes the argument that essentially nothing has changed in the world of BPM. Actually, this isn’t unique to BPM – it is a common refrain across all kinds of software categories.

And it is tempting to buy into this, when you realize how durable a writeup like the history of BPM can be (this isn’t a bad writeup, by the way). But one has to remember that history *should* be a bit durable with the passage of time. Jon Pyke recently opined that no one in BPM has anything new to offer. But the substance of his post is that the marketing isn’t differentiated, and the product positioning isn’t differentiated, and further, that the people who work at these companies don’t know what differentiates them.

Having worked on both sides of the coin (on the software side and the consulting side), I have to disagree with some of Jon’s conclusions because the input data is more limited than he’s realized.

For example: of course the marketing messages are commoditized among BPM vendors, as is product positioning. Sadly, it is perfectly easy to copy someone else’s marketing and positioning – it takes minutes, hours, or days at most to do so. I think the tragedy in BPM is that all the vendors seem willing to implement “checkbox” versions of every feature that analysts care about, rather than go deep with the product in areas that produce real value for customers. Unfortunately, vendors have been largely rewarded for such behavior with good product comparison reviews and chart placement – but their customers have not been similarly rewarded by this kind of investment.

There are real differences in these products, but it requires a much more in-depth understanding of the products to appreciate it. Can we be surprised that customers have a hard time achieving this level of product knowledge during the evaluation process? I used to work with someone who was always telling me how “nothing had changed” in the last 5 years in BPM – at a time when, 5 years before, there was no BPMN – and at that time, BPMN was the de facto modeling standard for BPMS offerings.

There has been quite a bit of innovation in the last 10 years in BPM, but some of the best ideas didn’t get enough investment to go from interesting to indispensable, and some of the best ideas really were commoditized – picked up by all the pure play vendors (and later, but the stack vendors). I could argue that nothing much has changed since 1994, when I wrote a sales process application that leveraged Lotus Notes VIP to replicate sales data and manage workflow between Sales, Sales Engineering, Manufacturing, and R&D. But that would be a bit disingenuous. I could write that solution in 1994, but I didn’t have a way to communicate the process to the business (BPMN), that accurately reflected the implementation so we could make sure we had it right. And I didn’t have a standard data representation for analyzing the process data (for business process improvement). I certainly couldn’t handle in a trivial way a process that required parallelism the way I can with executable BPMN models.

Jon says:

That’s why, and I’ve said this many times before, BPM is far too important a topic to leave in the hands of product vendors – this is a Business thing – the clue is in the name BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT. [...] They will talk about the presentation layer, the SOA integration support, analytics, modeling and what have you.

This is, unfortunately, true of a great many people in the BPM ecosystem. However, it doesn’t sound like a few of the pure plays that have been acquired (take a gander at Phil Gilbert’s blog for several essays on the subject of business taking control back from IT), and it doesn’t sound like some of the new vendors (ActionBase as one example). Whether these vendors are well-represented at Gartner conferences is another question entirely, but it is ironic that it is typically the small vendor that is more focused on business value. One of Jon’s last points:

Every vendor believes they are unique but the fact of the matter is many of the software metaphors used in these products were defined by pioneering workflow vendors such as Filenet, Staffware, Plexus and Wang

Well, honestly, software metaphors are meant to be re-used, so I’m not sure that that, in and of itself, is a point of criticism. For example, some of the metaphors in older integration technologies like CORBA and DCOM are embodied in SOAP and WSDL – but not many would argue that web services weren’t a step forward. And if BPM functionality is truly commoditized – is that bad for the customer and the industry if it becomes more standard and more cheaply available?

I know it is tempting to look at the glass as half-empty, but with so many BPM vendors performing so well in a challenging environment, its hard not to look at the glass as half-full. Call me an optimist.