Adam Deane has once against sparked a discussion in his comments – this time about BPM and BPO – and he ends with the question: “So why are BPO and BPM not talking to each other?”

I might not have commented on the post, but for reading Neil Ward-Dutton’s response, and then Evan McDonnell’s response. Neil points out that CapGemini’s BPO offering uses IBM BPM (Lombardi), Steria’s F&A uses Nimbus/TIBCO.  And AWD from DST.  So it looks like there are a few examples – perhaps not getting much press.

Evan’s comments were even more interesting to me, crediting BPO providers with some foresight.   He rightly points out that BPO has largely been “lift and shift”, and that they’re running out of steam (but trust me, there are still low wage geographies and polutions for BPO providers to exploit).  Evan goes on to describe the BPOs with foresight and the great benefits they will achieve by adopting BPM.

I have no argument with that – clearly any company with scale, and customers, will benefit from good leverage on a BPM suite/system/solution.  BPO providers are, after all, just companies like yours and mine.

But I took some issue with the idea that we aren’t hearing about their success because they’re keeping it secret, and wrote:

I file this under “I could tell you about our successes, but then I’d have to kill you” (smiley face)

BPO organizations are/were not exactly known for being innovators. I didn’t notice any of them “anticipating” the lack of cheap labor – their whole business was typically based on the premise that the cheap labor pool was virtually limitless. It is no surprise that they are late to BPM, late to process improvement (for real). And a BPO’s process improvement is not for the customer’s benefit, it is for their own. As a customer to a BPO firm you have to own your own process improvement.

You might think I’m crazy or talking nonsense. Does Apple leave it to their suppliers to figure out how to improve their processes or their manufacturing? Or do they go in there and make it happen at a detailed level? Don’t think you can just hand off and walk away. If you do, you’ll find something that went from differentiator (when you made it a core competency) to commodity (when you stopped differentiating on it), eventually turn into a weakness and a cost center (after BPO has set in for a couple years). Only by then, you’ll have lost the critical internal organizational expertise to run that outsourced process…

There are benefits to BPO, but big risks as well. Handle with care.

Of course, many people would argue that most companies don’t do this investment in process and people – but whether companies do or do not invest, it is pretty clear that they should be investing.

As for BPOs, trust me, when a company’s whole business model assumes that individual people are not valuable nor interesting, it is hard for them to suddenly retread for the world where skilled labor is more expensive, and choosier.  Instead, they migrate down the experience ladder, or the education ladder, until they find people who meet the right cost structure (often regardless of the impact on customer outcomes).

To the BPOs out there: invest in people and process, it is the best way to add value for your customers.  But to the customers of BPO vendors – own your own processes.  Improve them.  Don’t let all the benefits of process improvement accrue to someone else.

Adam Deane strikes gold again with this post on a “Request for Answers”:

There is a difference in the amount of work needed in “simple process”, and a “simple process, but by the way we want it also to integrate into an old legacy system, run through a thousand steps, and automatically make coffee”
The difference usually results in a quick deployment where everyone is happy, or a project the drags on for ever, a vendor looking to run away, costs spiralling and everyone feeling that they have been screwed by the other side.

But the best part are the 20 questions he’d ask back to the customer… I’ll just list the first five to give you a taste of how spot-on they are:

1. What is the business problem that we are trying to solve?
2. What impact does this have? Who does this impact?
3. Why do we want to resolve this now?
4. How critical is this process to the organisation?
5. What would be considered a project success?

 

 

Adam Deane on Business Users and Programmers:

But the best differentiator pitch that I’ve heard being used is the “business user oriented” vs “programmer oriented”.
The claim is that business users can use the tool. I think it’s a great differentiator.  Although it usually doesn’t have much truth to it – it’s still a great market positioning pitch.

You see.. (and I’m trying to hide my sarcasm here..) BPM tools that use programming are bad for you.

If you need to open Visual Studio to build a workflow – it means you need skilled programmers, which means high salaries, and they need to write code, which means you need a tester, a team leader and a project manager (more salaries).

Every time the customer wants to change the business process you need the programmers to recode, recompile, retest (long deployment, or no changes – you can pick). Sophisticated code means that you need to rely on the IT team which means that you are tied in with that programmer/team. If the programmer leaves – no one will dare to change their code (who wants to be responsible for code that someone else wrote.)

“If you need to open Visual Studio to build a workflow” – then you’re doing it wrong.  A good bpm tool doesn’t require you to build your workflow in C++/C# or the like.

Of course if you’re opening visual studio to do an integration – have at it.  To build something custom that will plug into your BPM solution – have at it.  BPM should make certain things easier than traditional development tools (and a “workflow” sounds like one of those things to me).  It doesn’t mean that you won’t still need traditional development tools for a BPM deployment, but you shouldn’t have to write your process flow in assembly language any more than you should have to write it in C++.

Incidentally, I don’t agree that “business can do everything” is a good pitch, though I do agree with Adam that it is horribly oversold.  The business and IT have to work together to make BPM successful (or, arguably, nearly any long-term IT or business investment).  Vendors oversell this all the time, which accounts for Adam’s sarcasm.  But, conversely, companies purchase tools that bring too much complexity to the simple stuff, or tools that start simple but don’t scale with complexity.  What do I mean?  I mean that as you add more process intelligence to your tooling, complexity should increase at a linear (or less) rate.  If you experience complexity increasing at a greater than linear rate, you’ll hit a point where the system can’t be maintained – the interconnectedness and interdependency of the system is too complex for someone to properly understand, modify, and maintain.

That’s why it is important for the “workflow” to be simple.  Because it can be.

A few great blog posts covering IRM BPM Europe.  This is a joint EA and BPM conference that was quite well attended by people I follow in the BPM space, but we weren’t able to attend this year.  A few of the highlights here:

It seemed that quite a few BPM practitioners were impressed with Alec Sharp’s presentation on June 9th:

The main point of the discussion is again that the human issues are the key for effective business process re-organization.And Organization Development (OD) is a perfect discipline that can complement the BPM initiatives.

Sandy Kemsley, as always, had excellent coverage of the event – and started off with an explanation of why EA and BPM conferences might be co-located:

EA provides a framework to structure for transiting from strategy to implementation. BPM – from architecture through implementation – is a process-centric slice that intersects EA at points, but also includes process-specific operational activities. They present EA and BPM as collaborative, synergistic disciplines

Sandy has great coverage of several more sessions, including “Designing a Breakout Business Strategy“, and Building a Business Architecture capability at Shell:

The EA and process design CoE have been combined (interesting idea) into a single EA CoE, including process architects and business architects, among other architect positions; I’m not sure that you could include an entire BPM CoE within an EA CoE due to BPM’s operational implementation focus, but there are certainly a lot of overlapping activities and functions, and should have overlapping roles and resources.

She also had another good reference to EA and BPM – Claus Jensen’s presentations and a recent red book.

Adam Deane has perhaps the best overall review of the event in a single post:

I was fortunate enough to attend both the Gartner EA conference and the IRM BPM/EAC conference this year.
Gartner added a BPM track to their EA conference.
IRM combined the EA and BPM conferences into one joint conference.

There were some subtle differences between the conferences:
Gartner’s message to the EAs: “Wake up and start embracing the business”
IRM’s message to the EAs: “Too late. Enterprise Architecture has already been divided into IT architecture and Business architecture. Deal with it”

Gartner focused on the future of EA: Energetic, Gamification, Business oriented.
IRM focused on the past: Trips down memory lane, The glory days of EA that have long gone, The “has been”.

Interesting dichotomy – at least that is how it struck Adam.

These are three different things.  Recently Dave Brakoniecki commented that most successful change implementations or BPM programs had executive sponsorship.  And I responded that, of course, there is selection bias involved- because successful programs will collect executive sponsorship.  I attempted to encourage those “stuck in the middle” to find a way to succeed, and use that success as leverage to get sponsorship and support from executives.

Jacob Ukelson commented (cleverly) that this could have been “more about Business Politics Management” – a subject he wrote about previously.  We even got a nice ebizQ discussion out of the topic.  Adam Deane followed up with a missive on Business Politics Management as well… but this is where I think our paths diverge:

The task should go to head of the department for his review. But everyone knows that Mister X needs to be bypassed. Sometimes it’s because he is a slacker, he will never do the task, he has been in the organisation for years, he doesn’t care about the “procedure” and there is no one to discipline him. Sometimes it’s because he is too powerful and can get away with murder. In any case, trying to force the process to make him do the task will end in tears. The best way is to bypass.

Actually, this isn’t the kind of business politics that interests me.  This isn’t leadership this is conflict avoidance (or resolution).  The politics around the particulars within a process are there – and you have to manage them – but the success or failure of your project depends more upon the leadership of your team and the sponsorship of executives – not the politicking of tweaks in the process.

And lest someone get confused, sponsorship isn’t the same thing as leading in most organizations, though it should be either leading or coaching (taking a vested interest in the outcomes).

Jacob returns to the subject here, but whereas Adam addresses design time of processes, Jacob focuses on run-time:

So yes, Business Politics Management is the cousin of Business Process Management – a kissing cousin. Most BPMS vendors don’t consider politics something a BPMS should address. In my opinion as long as BPMS tools ignore all the stuff that goes on around the process (i.e. politics), but has influence on the outcome of the process – they have a big hole in functionality.

Whether you agree with Jacob’s assessment of BPMS vendors or not, what Dave Brakoniecki and I were more focused on is whether executive sponsorship is a pre-requisite for success for your change management or BPM program?  Or is it sometimes a byproduct of a successfully run program?  Should you just give up if you can’t get the executive sponsorship lined up before you start the project?  (I’m not just talking about funding, I’m talking about truly sponsoring)

It seems even with Business Politics Management we have different ideas about what BPM means… But I’ll step away from the terminology and just focus on the funding and executive support – these are things you will have with successful programs by the end, but at the beginning you may have to go it alone for a bit first.

Adam Deane on how to promote your BPM company:

Industry Analysts
I’ve explained the importance of industry analysts .
Industry Analysts listen to customers, they have an impact on vendor strategy, and can have an impact on vendor sales.

BPM Consultancy Companies
A sales lead from them is probably one of the most qualified leads you’ll ever get.  They meet customers. They are their trusted advisors.

Independent consultants and people in the field
Again. They are the customer’s trusted advisors. They are physically sitting in their offices. They are part of their team. Their voice counts.
People in the field have an enormous impact on decisions.

He then goes on to list, in his opinion, the most influential BPM industry analysts (including a couple that don’t work for Gartner and Forrester).  It is a good list, he has picked out the right people.  He mentions that BPM consultancies and independents but demurs because the list would be too long.  Actually there are surprisingly few consultancies that are really engaged in blogging and the online BPM community, relative to how many total consultancies are out there.

Adam Deane’s recent post about Keith Swenson’s blog was quite interesting to me.

Keith has been blogging on BPM for the last 4 years.
The first couple of years were mainly around notations, standards and development.
The next year had an emphasis on BPM best practices.
His last year of blogging concentrates on ACM – Adaptive Content Management.

Personally, I found the articles on BPM best practices – the most interesting to read.
Clever observations and recommendations. They were also articulated very nicely.

I’m not a notation kind of guy, so the debate around standards and acronyms wasn’t exactly my cup of tea (XPDL,BPAF, BPDM, Wf-XML, BPMNEL, WYDIWYE and … IJKLMN)

I’m not a notation guy either… but I found myself sucked into some of these debates anyway! Sometimes you just can’t help it.  People often criticize the notation, when the real problem is the specific implementation of the notation that they’re working with. (This same thing applies to people criticizing a space, like BPM, when the real complaint is with specific tools).

Of course, the part that really jumped out at me was almost buried at the bottom:

And I must admit that his latest obsession with ACM has got me a bit baffled.
I haven’t a problem with the ACM concept, but I do have a worry about the approach.

I agree with Adam that Keith’s most interesting work (to me) was regarding BPM best practices.  I find the discussions on ACM too theoretical – with nothing practical to separate ACM from BPM in a meaningful sense (only in a theoretical and etymological approach).

Adam Deane declares war against ECM in a humorous post titled “BPM and ECM – The War Begins”.

Despite the humorous tone of the post, it is still worth reading if you get down to some of the nuts and bolts at the end:

Case Management
[... ]
We will redefine case management to deal with individual instances of the process.

Well, this might be a reference to a post of ours about BPM and CM / ACM.  But, to be clear, I am *not* “defining” CM (or ACM) in that post.  I’m not defining BPM either.  What I was attempting to do was explain philosophical differences in point of view – which is separate from the definition of something.  For example:  Snow is snow.  But to a bird in flight and to a mammal on the ground, the implications of “snow” are totally different.  And no, I’m not going to try to compare BPM and CM to birds and mammals explicitly!  Just pointing out that perspective or philosophy can help explain differences in opinion about how to do something, or differences in opinion about the goals of doing the same thing the same way.

Food for thought.

Adam Deane noticed a change in Gartner’s BPMS Definition:

If you compare it to previous BPMS definitions by Gartner (for example in last year’s Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites), you will see two major additions:
1. Document and content management.
2. Inline and offline simulation (instead of just simulation)

Good catch.  Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that the definition of “what’s in the BPMS box” would change over time – I expect that soon it will be a given that several other features (even products, or market segments) should be included in the BPMS definition.  Why? Because too many people view BPM (or BPMS) as the the future “Business Operating System” (in the 90′s, I think most people viewed ERP as the operating system for the business… ).  Rightly or wrongly, that puts a lot of things under the umbrella.

The real progress will be when the technology becomes so good it is transparent to the business, so obvious it is as if it works by magic (see Arthur C Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”).