It’ll be interesting to see what the BPM vendors report in for Q3.  Its clearly a challenging sales environment in general, right now, but we’ve been hearing from a couple of folks in the business that sales have been brisk in Q3 and into Q4.  Since I don’t have access to raw #’s, I don’t know if “brisk” is relative to lowered expectations, or whether its relative to possibly more optimistic plans made at the beginning of the year.

Sandy captured some notes from the Lombardi conference call here, and Dennis captured additional notes here.  They both do a good job capturing the gist of the call -maybe we’ll get invited one of these days :)

One thing Dennis points out from the call is fewer pilots, just diving in and doing it.  This makes sense in a rough economy, as the pilot process is expensive.  A long selection process is expensive.  If you can get the right product and skip some of the expense of a pilot, so much the better.  I’ve heard similar points made by other folks in the business lately.

Sandy points out that while she believes BPM is well positioned in a tough market, that she thinks the real spending will be on projects with customers who have already swallowed the capex to buy software.  We’ve definitely observed this phenomenon in the market - expanding on old solutions, building new ones on existing infrastructure.  Its good to be a BPM consultant in this environment, and really see the yield that customers can get on this process improvement investment.

I’m looking forward to seeing if some of the other vendors in the space will do these calls as well, and see if the trend of good news is across the market or localized with just a couple of the vendors.  I think the big news was continued growth of license revenue, and the fact that they are profitable for 2008.  Given the funding environment right now, it seems like A Very Good Thing to be profitable.

Ok, back to work on processes now…

A question that asks for the wrong answer, and an Answer that doesn’t address the right Question.

• A Question:  “Is this project a good fit for BPM?”
• An Answer:  “This isn’t a good fit for BPM.”

First, let’s talk about the question, and let’s think about it in terms of process rather than project.  BPM is good for processes.  Not just some processes, but processes generally.  The real question that should be answered is “What is the process?” Define the process in terms of what it does for the business.  Don’t define the process in terms of what it does with an incoming system event, or in terms of what a single user community does with some data.  Define the process in terms of how you:

• service your customers
• fulfill your demand
• respond to exceptions or challenges
• meet service level agreements
• create delighted customers and renewable business
• recognize revenue

(These are just a few ideas… )

If you can re-orient your thinking from the “project” or the “application” to really thinking about the process, you won’t question whether it is a good fit for BPM, that will be obvious.  BPM is a good fit for processes, and if you want to manage your processes, you need some BPM!

The answer/statement: “This isn’t a good fit for BPM.”  When I hear someone say that, the following ideas run through my head:

1. They haven’t found the process that their project is intended to serve, or
2. The BPMS they have doesn’t lend itself to a clean representation and implementation of their process, or
3. They just shined the light on their process and discovered all the ugly parts that were hidden in the boiler room.  Now they are feeling like it is barely a process at all, just a jumbled pile of exceptions connected by spaghetti.

To the first point:  Find your process.   Broaden your scope if you must, to consider what happens before your “project” starts (almost every project has inputs - follow the inputs - where do they come from? how did they get created?  who / what is responsible for that?  how do they impact my project/process?), and consider what happens after (who receives my outputs, where do they go and what impacts do my outputs have on their project/process/applications/users).

To the second point:  Just because your BPMS doesn’t represent the problem well doesn’t make it not a process, or not a good fit for BPM.  Let’s distinguish between a software package’s shortcomings and a shortcoming of the concepts embodied by BPM.  The software part is still evolving and improving.  In the meantime, there are going to be gaps.  These can be resolved or patched without abandoning the benefits of BPM.

To the third point:  If you haven’t been managing your projects and applications as key processes that support your business, of course there is a scary boiler room down there in the basement.  Take the time to extract process out of that mess, or else find a way to leverage the boiler room as a black box, with a nice tidy interface (think, electrical wall sockets) that let’s you design higher level process around this one area.  Come back and clean up the boiler room when you can show that by having a better result out of that black box will yield benefits (after all, with BPM, you’ll be able to measure the inputs and measurable outputs and timing and count data… and infer what could be improved without even knowing the inner workings)…

So, when I hear these things, I know we have a chance to help our customers realize an opportunity to look at their problem or project differently and yield the benefits of a BPM approach.  We’ve seen lots of data entry applications that lose sight of the fact that they are interacting with and altering the state of a real process with customer value.  Its really gratifying to see the value we can extract out of this change in perspective, and our CEO, Lance Gibbs, is one of the best in the business at this kind of out-of-the-box thinking (I’ve had the good fortune to be in the room with him on several occasions when such eureka moments have happened).  If you’re using BPM and you think you’ve got a bum deal on your process, take a step back and see if you can’t find the process there, the real process, which your project is meant to service…

I find it ironic that it’s often the IT department that pushes for and obtains a BPM solution. Again, it’s the IT department that spawns the first BPM evangelists in the enterprise and sets out to internalize and deploy BPM solutions; all with the hope that their business counterparts will “get it” and run with the benefits of process management and become true participants and later owners of the solutions. Yet, all too often, it’s the IT department that then slides into their familiar role as software developers and begins writing software instead of managing processes. They may deploy one or two quick process solutions and then comes the project or program that begins to derail the vision; the process centric vision that is.

The project starts, you know, the one that’s larger than it should be, a seemingly invisible scope boundary, involves business units that don’t even know their included; yeah, that one. The group meetings start with good intentions, the process is kept in the middle for a while. But then, the conversations about how the interface looks, how fast will it run, what kind of system integrations are “we” going to pull off, begin. And suddenly, everyone loses focus of the business process. Suddenly, the “IT guys/gals” are writing software and the business analysts are trying to keep up with the requirements. The group meetings including the business sponsors give way to technical meetings with whiteboard discussions about how the BPM tool will be bent, prodded and tapped into to accomplish the “tricks” at hand. At the end of the day (month, year) you’re left with perhaps a slick solution; but where’s the process? Is there a useful process artifact for which the business sponsors can consume? Is the business unit ready to assume ownership and ongoing evaluation of the business process solution delivered? What about real process metrics, no, not the custom reports that were glued together on top of the custom database wired into the solution; but the real process metrics that could/should be gleaned from an adequate process model? These are the things that get lost when the process discipline and process centric visions are abandoned.

What to do?

If I had all the answers I suppose I’d write a book instead of this blog, but I do think we can start with the Project Manager role. This role is usually rooted in or reports to the IT department. As such, they’re often more focused on time lines, budget, and meeting requirements. Understandably so, but if this role were also responsible for an effective transition of ownership to the business sponsors/process owners, perhaps we could take some measures to keep the process centric view intact.

From the start of the project, the business sponsors should be accountable for delivering a series of statements regarding the metrics they wish to obtain from the proposed solution. In addition, they should be required to agree upon the manner in which the solution will be deemed a success or failure; this often tied to the metrics acquired. The Project Manager should keep this “project contract” or “decree” if you will in focus at each meeting. When scope is concerned, if the item in question does not lend itself in support of the metrics and measurement for success, then it should not be considered (at least for the first release, table suggestions and “sugar coating” for subsequent releases) . After all, an important goal of BPM is to deliver timely solutions with an opportunity for rapid change; that too must not be lost in the vision.

Many project teams are conducting routine “play backs” with their sponsors, but all too often these merely include screen shots or execution of interface screens and/or reports. Again, the process should run front and center. The process owners should know exactly what their process looks like before it’s delivered. They should be acutely aware of the swim lanes that exist, the roles associated with each, the activity steps defined. These are the things process owners manage, not an interface screen.

Upon delivery, the Project Manager should conduct routine meetings with the process owners and hold them accountable for the metrics they stated were necessary. The same measurements for success should be evaluated again and again. The Project Manager must evaluate his/her own success against the process owner’s ability to own the process, to understand the process, to measure the process, and ultimately to be empowered to improve upon the process.

Good article on SearchCIO.com last week. The first paragraph points out the challenges:  lack of internal resources, and internal politics.  The second paragraph brings up another: complexity.  Of course the article goes on to point out that the challenges are worth it, because the rewards are significant and measurable.

The points are a bit obvious:  BPM is “new” in IT circles, relative to other technologies in use.  It also is a bit “different” in that it isn’t just a new programming language (in fact, it *isn’t* a new programming language), but if done right, it requires a different way of doing things, in that some of the traditional boundaries between the business and the folks who write code for a living are broken down.  It also tends to require a little more agility from the integration specialists and database specialists than traditional application development efforts. The approach is closer to an Agile development approach than a traditional software development approach (although I’m not big on the particular religions of software development methodologies, Agile is at least a close proximity to the implementation style you want to adopt).

Finally, BPM isn’t something the kids are learning in college.  Hiring someone fresh out of school (graduate or undergraduate) isn’t how you jump-start your BPM expertise, as you might have previously jump-started your Java expertise or Ruby or Rails expertise.  With BPM, you might or might not use those technologies, but the skills and knowledge you need to have a handle on include:

• BPMN
• Process Mapping
• ROI
• Measurability
• Prioritization
• Abstraction
• Staging / Incremental Improvement
• Technical prowess for web services, thin or thick user interfaces, Java API’s, XML, Databases

The complexity of deploying BPM often comes from the cross-department, cross-functional nature of the projects.  The typical analogy is that the process is the elephant and each group within the process is like the blind man feeling their part of the elephant and trying to guess what the whole process looks like.  We have to get these constituents into the room and complete the picture.

The lack of internal staff with these skills or experiences is most likely because these kinds of cross-department and cross-function projects are rarely embarked on.  Most of the members of your IT and Business teams may not have worked on such a project (and their previous experience may have made them gun-shy).  That’s the time to pull in some outside experience- and if you can get both generalized experience with BPM projects, and specific-vendor experience, from the same outside firm, then so much the better.  You’ll be better served by firms that aren’t interested in backing up the bus and unloading a whole bunch of consultants, if you’re goal is to have a core competency in Business Process roll-outs, or BPM.  Instead, you’ll want to find firms that will augment your team, will reduce your risk, and will be available for the long-term, on your terms, to assist your process efforts.  In our experience, most companies start with one project, and then expand to two or three parallel projects in the next iteration.  So, even as internal staff are getting ramped up, the need to leverage outside expertise across those projects (risk mitigation) actually increases at that point, even while the percentage of outside help relative to internal resources actually declines as the internal expertise builds up.

If your organization is one that outsources non-core competencies, and BPM is not a core competency, then you can also work with a firm who will staff up as you need more work done, and stand down as your work winds down.  At BP3 we’re interested in business continuity contracts where we maintain a long-term relationship with our customers and help them through high- and low- tides both with initial development as well as ongoing maintenance and support.  Doubtless we’re not the only ones interested in providing this kind of white-glove service.

A business unit commissions a solution that involves people, decision points, multiple paths and real-time visibility. Sounds like a business process, right? Sounds like a perfect fit for Business Process Management; more specifically, a BPMN rendering and a BPMS tool to implement and execute the vision.

Some key aspects in this solution are:

• People
• Business Decisions
• Multiple paths sometimes in parallel
• Point to point orchestration
• Metrics

These are all aspects that support and imply a BPM solution.

Now, what if I needed a similar solution, but minus the people? What if I had a batch or back-office solution that did not involve people other than an occasional exception path? What if this batch solution was expected to process thousands of transactions daily? Would this still be a BPM solution or would it be a software program designed specifically for this purpose? I have heard many, even in the BPM field; argue that such a batch solution may not be suited for a BPMS implementation. That BPMS tools are not geared for this type of high-volume fast paced execution required of such a batch oriented solution. However, to that I say why not?

You see, just because “People” are not necessarily involved in activity steps within the process, the process is no less a business artifact than those which do involve people. Now surely I’m not advocating that every program written could otherwise be a BPM solution, but I am saying that many of these so-called batch solutions do indeed involve business decisions, multiple paths, and multiple point-to-point system-to-system communications; all of which require sophisticated orchestration and most certainly should have adequate real-time metrics. These solutions are often augmented and evaluated for efficiency and accuracy just like that of people oriented BPM solutions. Often these batch solutions do need to handle exception paths which may involve people. Should the program kick-out on exception to some other process solution? And if so, how do the solution owners manage the big picture of the process flow? More times than not, these batch solutions must maintain state in some manner. They must be prepared to handle system failures and contingencies. Is this all to be written rigidly into a program somewhere with very little visibility?

I also find that many BPM enthusiasts tout automation as one of the goals of BPM in a march towards efficiency. I agree with that sentiment, but once a process has been improved upon to the point of automation, is it no longer a process? Should it then be re-factored into a compiled program of sorts? I think not; for automation left unattended is a dangerous thing. An automated solution still requires checks and balances, reported metrics, and proof that the efficiency gains expected are realized; and what about improvements, new products that adjust the automation, new regulatory requirements that incur change in the solution? Even when fully automated, the business process still remains in the fore front.

Software programs and compiled, efficient code certainly has its purpose, and after all, these BPMS tools wouldn’t run without it, but when it comes to business visibility, orchestration, state management and multiple touch points; whether people are involved or not, Process Management solutions are quite applicable. And as these program interfaces become more and more modular through an SOA discipline, the orchestration and process management of those modules and services at run-time becomes increasingly important. So I challenge the BPMS vendors to stay focused on the process vision, but don’t stop at Mortgage Apps, Claims Adjudication, and Book Order solutions …… think further, faster, and with greater depth than ever before; I want to manage all my business solutions through a well defined, visible, and deployed process!

On a LinkedIn Group I participate in, there was the question posed: “How can BPM Practitioners help Banking and other Financial organizations effectively, in the current scope of situations? Do you believe Financial Regulations will significantly change the way the processes are driven.”

My thoughts… We’ve see an uptick in interest from financial services companies in what we do in the BPM space. Granted, budgets are tight, but times such as these are exactly the time to invest in process, if you haven’t already. If you already have significant process investment, now is the time to revisit thresholds and measures and make sure they reflect current reality.

Although whenever regulations change, the analyst community and people in general assume this will mean an uptick in process. However, I’ve not seen regulation *by itself* as a big incentive for companies to tackle process improvement. It is only when the bottom-line costs of compliance become apparent that there is interest in investing in process to mitigate or eliminate those additional costs. (For example, Sarbox didn’t cause a big uptick in BPM by itself in the first wave of implementation.  Most companies implemented a highly manual or paper-based system at first.  But about a year after everyone implemented Sarbox, projects were kicking up all over the place to improve compliance and reduce cost.) I tend to think that the economic environment will cause more process change than the regulatory environment.

Besides BPM implementations, in terms of the mechanics of the process, one can still address financial services situations via a process lens. By way of example, one might consider a particular financial process to not benefit from process improvement because the defect rate is quite low, or because there isn’t a lot of pressure on timing. But there are areas to look at that matter: if the few defects that exist cost a significant amount of money, then you still want to address them; if money sits in reconciliation accounts, unrecognized until it gets reconciled, then that is like a manufacturing business sitting on inventory - there is a cost to that inefficiency because those funds can’t be deployed to investing in the business.

BPM can improve speed while retaining alignment with process and goals. Good time for companies to be process-aware.

After watching the market gyrate a bit over the last weeks, months… year?… and as a business owner, I get a lot of questions from friends about how the economy is affecting our business, or our customers.  I’d be lying if I said there was no effect.  Clearly, some of our customers are making tough business decisions, altering forecasts, and making plans to deal with a tougher financial environment.

But I’ve noticed something else.  The pace of process innovation and change hasn’t slowed.  If anything, it has increased.  This is entirely appropriate-  process improvement can save a company a lot of money, and typically it is money that goes straight to the bottom line (much like an improvement in pricing performance will go straight to the bottom line).

We see customers focusing on process innovation for the following ends:

1. Making a location-specific process global (applying best-of-breed across the enterprise)
2. Making a global process location-independent (no longer dependent on a single call-center location)
3. Extracting savings from commodity processes
4. Measuring performance of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) contracts against SLAs through BPM.
5. Making it possible to utilize BPO companies in combination with internal staff on a single process
6. Improving on differentiated processes
7. Measuring adherence or increasing adherence to Risk Management processes

We’re seeing less focus on refactoring processes for growth, and more focus on refactoring for savings.  What’s the difference?  When you are building a process for growth, the concern is that the process that handles 1000 calls a day won’t handle 10,000.  That you need a process to help you scale that 10x growth curve, and to help people who are new to the process cope with the process.  Often this means taking a process suited for experts and making it accessible to new employees.  When you’re refactoring for cost, you’re looking for the defects.  In a call-center process that’s eliminating the need for call-backs, dropped calls, calls that finish without conclusion.  So you look for root causes and look for preventative measures, quality control on data entry, etc.  You look for elimination of non-value-adding steps in the process, and for eliminating bottle necks that cause one area or another to be overstaffed.

Not every company is making these investments, and the companies we work with are already narrowed to a select group that are already pursuing process excellence via BPM - but it feels as though most companies are not panicking and they are focused on these tried-and-true ways to improve their bottom line.

One of the reasons we offer bite-sized packages to customers (and prospective customers) is because there is an element of “you have to see it to believe it” with process improvement.  I’ve seen a few of our relationships go from a 1-hour session to a 2 day working session to a 4 week study to a 3 month roll-out.  Each piece a palatable risk-reward investment to move down the path toward process improvement, rather than signing up for a boil-the-ocean endeavor.

Now that the day is over, I’m happy to see the market ended up for the day.  But regardless of the market ups and downs, we see real value and real need for process improvement all around us.  And consistent investment in those activities will yield results in good times and bad.

Lance Gibbs, our CEO, was at Gartner’s conference this week.  He’ll have some thoughts to share when he returns next week, but in the meantime, once again Sandy Kemsley comes through with session write-ups on her blog.

Look to this space for more from Gartner BPM conference next week!

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This is a 4 day class that will provide practical hands-on experience in integrating Lean Six Sigma and BPM with IT. Most if not all other Six Sigma for IT training that is on the market is only a day or two long and incredibly high level. We are bringing a true practioner’s course to market and one that doesn’t necessitate that the student already be Lean Six Sigma knowledgeable.

The agenda looks like this:

As you can see from these modules, this course aims to provide not only the education content but also various activities where you will put this knowledge to use and be able to go home to immediately begin receiving value from the week spent in the training.

You can get more information and register for the class here.

First class is in Dallas, Texas, Dec 8-12th. Hope to see you there!

The case for modeling without thought of execution…

I recently came across a blog entry from IDS Scheer on their Aris BPM Blog. Thanks to Sandy Kemsley for pointing me to it from her blog. Upon first read of the article by Sebastian Stein, I was struck by the difference in perspective between those who implement processes and those who model them.

For those who model (Modelers), the Model is the chief output and goal. Having a Model that will survive the test of time is the goal. You can see that bias throughout the post. In fact, the core philosophy is embodied right here:

“A business process model, depicted in one of the popular notations like BPMN or EPC, should not contain any technical details. If the underlying IT infrastructure or implementation technology changes, the business process model should remain stable. Your warning bells should ring if you have to change your business process just because you changed the implementation technology used.”

The two key points:

1. No technical details
2. stable with respect to technology changes

Something Overlooked by a Model-only Perspective…

But there are some problems with this… First, all the BPMN/BPMS tools that I have worked with support layering of processes. This layering allows the user to create a model that reflects Business sensibilities at the top layer, and if needed, several layers down in detail. So, if your need is to model something without “any technical details” you are not prevented from doing so in the BPMN-oriented tools that I’ve used.

Second, when you get to a certain level of detail, the process design should be informed by Technology. How so? It is important to understand if a transition is a manual or an automated one. Is it a non-value-added manual step? Then generally we want to automate it, or ideally remove it. Value-added manual step? Then generally we want to optimize around its constraints, but automation won’t be the goal. However, we may want to use technology to reduce errors, to improve time-to-execute, etc. In the posting, Sebastian doesn’t go into detail as to what he considers a “technical detail”, but it does beg the question: what is too technical? How about input and output data from a step in the process? These are critical process design considerations (if you know that a piece of data is required as an input, but you’re not sure where it comes from, you have a problem to resolve in your process design. And those inputs and outputs help define the “contract” of an activity or subprocess (or even of the entire process).

Third, Modeling tools today make it exceedingly easy to change a Model to adapt to Process changes. While it seems like a good idea to have a Model that is “stable” with respect to technology changes - the fact is, business processes change faster and more often than the technologies and systems that support them. The real problem isn’t keeping the Process consistent across technology changes - the problem is that the underlying technology may not be flexible enough to adapt to the new process model! At the least, the technology layer is often not agile enough to do so at a sufficiently affordable price and on a sufficiently short timeline (unless of course, that process technology layer is a good BPMS).

Fourth, the resilience that one needs, truly, is with respect to performance data. Performance data analysis is what will drive my process improvement activities, or identifying a process operating outside control limits. I need to be able to compare the performance of my process now to the performance of my process next year, to the performance of the process last year… If my process changes dramatically, how do I do that? Note: I’m not saying the technology changed. The process changed. So what I need is a way to track data that will make sense even in the face of relatively substantial changes in my process. BPMS tools can provide this facility, either baked in or via smart modeling practices, by taking snapshots of data at key milestones in the process that are not likely to change, semantically, even while the syntax (specific steps) of the process may change. To this end, even though the order entry portion of the process may change dramatically, you can still track information around the # of orders in, the value of those orders, the time it takes to process them, etc. even though the order entry process may go from highly manual to highly automated to web-self-service (or may yet encompass all three).

How do we Sum it up?

So the argument is that a modeling-only tool buys you a benefit (stability against technical change) that you don’t need, while not providing a benefit (technical agility with respect to business process changes) that you do need… yet still doesn’t address the key stability need -that of the measured process performance data. Moreover, the integration from most modeling tools to an actual functioning BPMS is, for the most part, non-existent from a practical perspective. Even when that integration exists, it is usually lacking process execution sensibilities in the model. There is a difference between drawing a model that represents the business needs and drawing one that can NOT be executed because of ambiguities and inconsistencies. For the best integrations I’ve seen so far, the products and the integration are all written by one vendor. (I’m definitely interested in seeing examples of this kind of tooling and integration and I’d be happy to write up reviews for such)

I’ve actually written an import to a BPMS suite using an Aris model as a starting point - and its hard!  There is a ton of non-relevant data in the export - positioning information, for example - and other information you need is difficult to lay hands on (roles/ownership).  To be fair, this wasn’t a BPMN diagram in Aris, but it WAS a diagram of a process, in a very unstructured environment.  It wasn’t any easier than parsing it out of Visio vdx files.  My recommendation, is that if you are given a process modeled in a modeling only tool - your first instinct should be to redraw that process in your execution modeling environment rather than try to import it (unless the importer ships with your product, in which case, give it a try!).  You’ll be surprised how fast you can recreate the model in your execution environment.

Now what?  Does an Execution-Oriented Model still make sense?

Okay. Given the arguments Sebastian presents, it seems he is suggesting that if you don’t know what product you will use to implement, you should use Aris to model your process (in fairness, if you don’t know what execution environment you will use, paper, visio, and Aris are all good options). And that, because it is “agnostic” with respect to the implementation tool you use, there is some derived benefit (this is really the point I disagree with). However, if you are going to build your solution in a completely different toolset, and you accept my premise that exports out of Aris (and other modeling tools) into execution BPMS suites leave a great deal to be desired, then you come to an interesting crossroads. Is he suggesting that once given an Aris model we should just write BPEL xml or some Java code to implement the process? or that we should then use a BPMN-oriented modeling suite to re-model and then implement the process?

In our experience, just “writing code” to codify a process in a modeling tool is a mistake. For one, how can the business determine if you have faithfully reproduced the process in your code? Extensive usability / UAT testing might reveal an answer, but it is a very expensive way to find out, and it only happens after all the code is written - and any mistakes will be very expensive to fix at this point because they could be simple mistakes or they could be conception or foundational mistakes. An Agile development process can help, but many organizations have trouble carrying off this approach with traditional software tools. If the technical team uses a BPMN execution environment (a BPMS) to build that process, then the business will be able to see the process in BPMN, a language (drawing) that they can understand, and understand the semantics thereof. By visually inspecting the design, the business can eliminate the greatest proportion of future defects at the earliest part of the design phase. And the technical team will implement each portion of the process in context of the business process at that point. And that is critical for providing useful business context to the technical team at the time they most need it.

Which Model is the Master?

And finally, now that your Process is implemented in an execution-oriented BPMS, as well as modeled in your modeling-only environment… which Model is the “Master”? Of course, you can make either answer work.  But let’s be clear about the choice you make :

Option 1:  The Model as drawn by the business in the modeling tool is the master.  it does NOT reflect what is actually happening in the business, or within IT, but it does show what the business was hoping the process would look like when the project started.  (Optionally, it may have even been revised and updated at the end to reflect some of the changes that implementation and testing revealed needed to be made).

Option 2:  The Model that works as agreed to by IT and the Business, drawn and executed in the BPMS environment.  This is the model that was actually tested by business users in UAT, by Unit Testing in IT, and system testing in IT.  This is the model that is actually running your business process in production, and it reflects reality.

Is it important that your original Model is resilient to technology change in this context?  Is it relevant that your model doesn’t have any technical details in it?

Or does it seem to be more interesting that there is now a BPMN model that represents what actually runs in your business every day, that can be measured and analyzed over time.  Does it matter that this BPMS is resilient to back-end technology changes (activities provide abstraction to what type of integration, and each integration can provide abstraction as to what specific systems are being tapped)?  Does it matter that this BPMS can support relatively rapid changes in process to adapt to your real business?  Does it matter that you can map the data you are tracking to your Model, to generate heat maps and highlight problem areas?

Well, you can guess where our heads are at.  Modeling is important, but Execution makes it relevant to the bottom line, and makes the Model itself more valuable.  If you want help turning your models into reality, we can help.