David McCoy

Every two weeks, we publish a newsletter on business process improvement. While this newsletter requires client access to read all the research, you can still read the meta-structure. That’s ok. It’s like listening to a concert outside of the arena, or watching a ballgame through a knothole. If you like what you see, then take it from there.

This particular newsletter touches on rural outsourcing. That’s a great topic and one to consider if you are retooling processes. Might the best deal be from Kansas? As Joe Feiman used to say (paraphrasing), “It can be a choice between India and Indiana.”

BPM – business process management – is a good term. In fact, it’s a great term. But there are lots of great terms that get pushed aside in the march of time:

• Personnel has become Human Resources (HR)
• Employees have become associates, partners, colleagues, team members, etc
• Soup has become broth, consommé, bisque – why can’t you just sell me some dang soup?

Ok, that last one was a bit personal… but It just goes on and on. Once good words are being pushed aside due to some inherent flaw in the original word. Sometimes, that flaw is simply the fact that the word has cobwebs. Other times, it’s because of political correctness, a false sense of intimacy, or some need to introduce change. Actually, we no longer introduce change. We now transform, renew and revitalize. Ick! So, when does BPM get the ax?

Perhaps, BPM will be pushed aside and replaced by a jazzier term. BPR was once a term we all used. But, BPR was poisoned with down-sizing and right-sizing, so it had to die. BPM doesn’t seem to have that same bile. But, time marches on…and words meet their doom.

In 2018, we will certainly be talking about the THINGS that we currently call PROCESSES. We will be talking about how they relate to BUSINESS and how they can be MANAGED. But… will be we talking about BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) in one collective mouth-full? I wonder. To be fair, we might be calling cloud by different names; services by new tags; events by jazzier labels. Nothing resists change… er, I mean… Nothing resists transformation.

Labels are the spawn of marketing and we are become a market-driven economy. But, labels are real and powerful, so we cannot ignore BPM’s future, and we cannot leave it to the whims of some Ketel One drinking ad exec to come up with a sizzling new term for us.

What alternative terms can you imagine to describe that which we currently define by BPM? I don’t care about being right. I just want to see where we might go with this.

Think… and thanks for playing.

I have a friend who is a well-established businessman in a franchise operation.  He is one of the best, so naturally, when said franchise (term used loosely) wanted to build new systems, they grabbed him as their SME. Seemed like a smart move. I would have recommended doing the same. It’s a “process thing.” But….

• It’s difficult being an SME and maintaining your business – your little part of the franchise. Too many airplanes, too many meetings… too little time doing what made you successful. Do you think that might cause resentment? “Is this my reward? I do the best I can, and they make me a guinea pig for the whole company?” The answer is yes.
• It’s not what he signed up for. He came to work to make money and deliver service. The SME thing is nailing him on both counts. He’s delivering service, but it’s to the internal powers. Hardly what he signed up for. Is he making money? His staff will have to tell him, when he comes in from the airport. If he comes home this week.
• It’s not fun seeing all the internal politics and the machinery of IT at work. My friend has gotten deep in the bowels of IT, and process design, and reports, and screens, and all that “requirements definition” stuff. Yawn. He’s unmotivated. He’s not excited about what he sees. It’s just a big ole sausage factory and he’s the main spice, being squeezed and sprinkled as the chef sees fit.

I can go on. You have a friend just like this. We all do.

We claim that we love and respect our SMEs. Do we? Or do we use and abuse them to mine their brains and best practices? Your call. See how you are doing it. See what you can do better.

I’ll just watch my friend get a bit grayer and a bit more jaded at the whole “process.”

Check out our new web page on Pattern-Based Strategy. For those of you who follow our research on business process management suites (BPMS), business rule management (BRM), simulation, business activity monitoring (BAM) and Complex Event Processing (CEP), you can see it all coming together in a really big way!

Business Process Networks – I had a cool research discussion with my fellow analyst Benoit L’heureux. A great blend of IaaS and community for B2B process.You can read on this if you look him up. Expect to see more of the BPN research in your future.

Certification for Business Process Competency Centers – Hallway discussion with Les from ebizQ and Samir from Appian.  Interesting twist to shift the certification discussion from the individual to the collective. Now, what if you create a CMM-like approach for BPM maturity? That gets really interesting.

IBM’s Ilog integration – This is nerdy, yes… But, I saw a pretty nice integration of IBM’s Ilog acquisition at the show. I saw JRULES linked into WID via a wizard that would work with the JAR file, and an alternative direct WSDL grabbing approach. Not all of it was available today, but the integration was smooth and graphical. Nothing here is really new in theory, just in look, feel, and ease of use.

The Big Fish Metaphor – This year, it’s hard to get masses of people to attend a user conference. Several vendors confirmed that they were rethinking or delaying their conferences until 2010.  Q4 is a booger. But get this. It’s like a river current. When the current is weak (good years) there is no resistance and all the fish can navigate the waters – everyone shows up at your user conference. When the current is STRONG (huge Q4 travel restrictions, etc) only the strongest and biggest fish can swim upstream. You get fewer fish, but they are the top quality ones who made the extra effort to be there. Think about that when you are planning your user conferences. Quality vs quantity kind of thing.

Monsters, Inc. – I was leading a session on business rule management, and I described the care and mining of a rules subject matter expert. (SME)  To make it a bit more memorable, I reminded folks of Roz, from Monsters, Inc. If you have not seen the movie, you have missed some great animation. If you have seen Roz say, “You didn’t fill out your paperwork!” you have seen a classic business rules SME at work:

Mike: Roz, my tender, oozing blossom, you’re looking fabulous today. Is that a new haircut? Tell me it’s a new haircut. It’s got to be a new haircut. New makeup? You had a lift? You had a tuck? You had something? Something has been inserted in in you that makes you look… Listen, I need a favor. Randall was working late last night out on the scare floor. I really need the key to the door he was using.
Roz: Well, isn’t that nice? But guess what? You didn’t turn in your paperwork last night.
Mike: He didn’t… I… no paperwork?
Roz: This office is now closed.

There are people who know all about rules, and forms, and requirements, etc. They are SMEs and you need to treat them nicely. Not to spoil the movie, but you know Roz turned out to be a bit more important to the plot than you would have thought… so will your SMEs.

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Disclaimer: These are observations that I could have made on Twitter were I ignorant of the number 140, and were I Twittering.  I am not and I do not. I blog.  This is not research…. consider it fodder for discussion. Elise Olding will be producing a trip report from the conference for our clients. That will be research. Maybe some of this will make it in there, after it is scrubbed, baked and cooled on an open window.

One more ’self-serving’ comment. Lots of interest in my side hobby (the ‘humor column’).  Either I am showing too much excitement or people are hungry for laughs in 2009. I think it might be both.  2009 will soon be over… sooner than later if Oz has its way with interest rates. Until then, keep swmming.

Dinner with Gabrielle Field, one one of the powers-that-be working with Brett Champlin in the ABPMP certification effort.  Talking about BPM Certification, we (collectively) came up with a few idea. As ideas, they are just that… ideas:

• Certification will be attractive to BPO players outside the US. Just one more bit of street cred they can offer to prospective buyers.
• In general, certification may actually be more attractive outside the US, than in.  Maybe. Maybe for a long time. Maybe not.
• Brazil may be a good vector for pushing certification to the masses.

As a reality check… BPM certification is still immature. But, maybe that will change… maybe starting outside the US.  As I said, these are just “ideas.” Ideas <> Gartner Research.

Thoughts?

Hot topics in Orlando today… a quick core dump from Janelle Hill and David McCoy

1. Business Rules
2. Business Rule roles and responsibilities
3. CIO Agendas (Is BPM on your agenda?)
4. Statement for today: “Explicit process is the imperative.”

Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants: A common dividing point. One of my friend’s kids just joined the Facebook crowd. Her first post was, “I got a Facebook.”  Interesting choice of verb, “GOT.”  I use that verb when I pick up milk and bread. She used it when she picked up an account. Even more interesting was her choice of the indefinite article “a.”  I got a…. just like, I got a dog, I got a car, I got a B in history. “GOT A” – implies incredible comfort and familiarity with a piece of software (does she know it is software – probably not…) that is younger than she is. “GOT A” – the language one uses to acquire a common-place thing. An “anything”… Wow!

She is a digital native. Digital immigrants use different language: “I have established a login with that Facebook.com web site everyone is talking about.” Or, “I have set up an on-line account with the Facebook application that all the kids are using to stay in touch.”  Sounds like they are going to the bank, opening a new savings account. Digital immigrants. They are on the outside, looking in at the latest circus freak.

Digital immigrants have too much context. They remember life before “the hot new thing.” They do not show comfort and familiarity with the new toys. They use comfortable metaphors from their world: bulletin boards, desktops, trash cans, accounts, passwords (”Welcome to the secret club, Bob!”), folders, documents, etc. They attempt to manifest the real in the virtual. They have TOO much context. They can always remember “the before.” They remember too much of the “old country.” They are immigrants. It’s what they do best.

Digital natives are not that much smarter than all the rest of us. In fact, they have less knowledge. They have less context. They don’t know anything about “the old country.” To them, there is only one way to do things: the new way. “Get a Facebook.” It’s that simple. Keep that perspective in context. And you Digital Natives: Your “day of context” is coming. One day, your kids will laugh at your archaic ways from 2009. “Dad used to type and ‘text’ all the time. Can you believe that?” That is so lame… they didn’t even have LifeStreamingME back then! LOL!

Oh…on that “LOL” part… I doubt that will be used much in 2025, but I’m just a poor immigrant. I don’t know any better yet.

Well, it was one year ago, on September 15th, 2008 when I uttered my first post on this blog. I was on the Friday night Amtrak Southern Crescent, returning from Washington DC, when I got the word that “The blogs are ready.”  On Monday, I was locked and loaded, technologically ready to roll.

Here’s what I said. in that first post.. WHAT I SAID

How have I done?

Who really knows…

I do know that I have become a newspaper humor columnist during that time, redirecting much of my giggly stuff to the unprepared members of my local community. I do know that I have a lot of readers here and lots at home. I do know that more of you read than comment. I do know I have had fun. I believe many of you have had fun too. So, that is success.

Blogging is a strange blend of narcissism and vainglory on one hand, excitement and enthusiasm on the other. I have tried to balance these two extremes, even to the point of refocusing my blog to “only that stuff that relates directly to IT,” redirecting my posts on Pu Erh tea, drywall repair, and old car mythology to my non-Gartner channels. This has not been easy. I hate building walls. But, life is a collection of walls. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. At least I make my walls clear and give you URLs to the other parts of my output.

I hope you like this stuff… this ephemera.

I hope I do too…

Another year lies before us…

Thanks for your readership!

David McCoy

I have been “dealing” with a stunning social networking site. I say “dealing” in that it keeps “crapping out,” throwing off Java errors, stack errors, database write errors, net connection errors, etc. The site says, “Sorry… we are down” way too often. Sometimes, it just eats your post. Other times, it acts like a wayward 3-year-old, wearing roller skates and carrying a box of fine dinnerware. In other words, the system is totally unstable.

Now, do I care? Not really! This is not a banking system playing with my account balance. It is not a medical records systems saying, “You’ve got cancer!… Wait… No…it’s a hang nail.” It’s not an on-line order entry system about to accidentally ship 1000 Barbie dolls to my house. Roy Schulte and I used to joke about that kind of process debacle, in those exact terms. No.. It’s not important. It’s just me, posting, “LOL! That was funny!” This system is not life-or-death.

This is the difference between Enterprise Class computing and Global Class computing. My buddy Daryl Plummer loves to talk about this. If you have not read his research on same, you really should. Bottom line: In the enterprise, we know you and we know you have expectations for quality of service. We also control you. Outside the enterprise…. we’ll, we don’t really know you and we certainly don’t control you. We also know that you will tolerate crappy performance in exchange for something important to you: access, information, collaboration, social interaction, etc.  Now, we don’t want to deliver crappy performance… but… well… stuff happens, eh? You Global Class participants will forgive us… you always do…

Global Class vs. Enterprise Class – A major design issue in 2009 and likely in 2020. Go figure.