1. Positive: “Oh, how cool! I’m going to get a ton of money! What a great fortune!”
2. Negative: “Oh, no! Who’s going to die in the next 12 months? What a horrible fortune!”

So, which is it? Is this fortune cookie an IOU or a death threat? It depends on your Process POV: Process Point-of-View

You’d better bring the same holistic perspective to your own business processes. Each new process “improvement” is probably someone’s process “death threat.” Stakeholder analysis is critical if you care about Process POV. Just because you like your fancy new process – “We cut out two layers of bureaucracy!” – doesn’t mean that everyone will. Just remember: Sometimes you’re the bureaucracy-killer, other times, you’re the bureaucrat about to be killed.

Think about all the stakeholders in these scenarios:

• Heart patients waiting for a suitable donor (Who sees a miracle and who sees a tragedy?)
• Streamlining crowded prison populations through early release programs (“Hey! It’s not so crowded with those punks out of here!” That’s one POV…just one.)
• Educational systems that raise school-wide scores by “teaching the test.” (“Congratulations on your successful school!” What about the other POVs?)

It goes on and on. If you have a process, you have stakeholders. If you have more than one stakeholder, you have different potential process POVs. Know yours, know those of your stakeholders. Don’t mislead yourself into thinking you can align them. Sometimes, you can. Most times, it’s a fool’s errand. Expose process POVs early and often. Drive your change in the light of full disclosure. Acknowledge process POVs, do what you can, and then move on with an implementation that does the least harm to the most people (or the most good for the most people, if you watched a lot of Star Trek as a kid.)

I like undergrads.  When I guest lectured in Hong Kong a few years ago, I met some very sophisticated kids who were the cream of the Asian crop.  Even so, as I lectured, they were busy with cell phones, instant messaging, sleeping, etc. – typical undergrad fare.  Tonight’s group had its share of typical undergrads too – there were a few drooping eyelids, and a lot of screen-gazing going on as I spoke.  I have come to expect this kind of audience behavior when I lecture to undergrads.  As a disclaimer, I too was a typical undergrad.  I got some of my best snoozes in Political Science – sometimes I even went to class to do my snoozing.  I imagine myself as a 20-year-old in a lecture hall, hearing some geezer go on and on about integration brokers, message warehouses, event correlation, batch file transfer…  opps, sorry.  I just put myself to sleep.  Even with a topic as dry as dust – it was still a lively session and we had a lot of fun.

I have a few observations from tonight’s venture:

1. College kids know the economy is in trouble and they are concerned about the job market and making money when they graduate.  Some of them see BPM and “process stuff” in general as a nice potential for making a difference – and a buck.
2. Some colleges are doing a great job preparing undergrads for a career in BPM.  This group had been working with BPMN, building models, learning simulation, gathering insight that some enterprises have not even started working on.  Not every college has tackled the BPM challenge.  GSU is one that has.
3. These guys are going to be tomorrow’s process owners, process analysts, process consultants.  They will be buying process tools, extolling process virtues and generally, carrying the process torch.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, there is new blood coming to market every graduation season.  You should check out what they are learning.  Imagine hiring someone who doesn’t have to ask, “Ugh… just what is a process?”  Imagine hiring someone who cut her teeth on BPMN as an undegrad…

When did you first touch BPMN?  Yeah.  Me too.  Good luck with your degrees guys.  We need you out here.  Hurry up and graduate and get those resumes on the street.  And catch a good snooze in PoliSci if you can – for old time’s sake.

New Term Warning – “Methodological syncretism” currently has 282 hits on Google.com.  Using a comparative trick similar to one which John Pescatore is famous for, I can also tell you that “whale pie” has about the same number of hits.  So, basically, this term is not well-known.  However, “methodological syncretism” is mentioned in a well-respected SAGE publication, so I can’t claim any ownership interest here (if it’s mentioned in SAGE, it must be real).  But, I do feel that I can co-opt the term for my own use in BPM.

Methodological syncretism within BPM – I’m defining this concept as, “The process by which two or more methodologies are blended to create an über-methodology that uses the best of each donor methodology toward a more effective delivery of process excellence.”  I believe this is an important concept.  In 2006, I did a case study where the enterprise was blending aspects of Six Sigma, traditional project management methodologies, and traditional SDLC.  It seemed to work for them.  Further, isn’t Lean Six Sigma a clear example of methodological syncretism?  I think it is.  I think this concept is very real and it’s probably pervasive.

Note on Methodology Engineering - There is a much more well-known concept called methodology engineering (ME) – or method engineering as it is known in Europe – which is very similar and certainly pre-dates my term.  I’m guest lecturing tomorrow night for its creator, Dr. Richard Welke – my very good friend.  Richard and I will be discussing this topic before the lecture, and we’ve been discussing it in email for the last week.  We see similarities between the two concepts but believe they are not the same.  I specifically wanted to use a term that was similar in intent to ME, but one that relaxed the definition – a lot.  ME is much more prescriptive as to how the methodologies are linked, requiring an underlying meta-model.  ME is a more well-defined approach.  My term is much looser and much less prescriptive, by design.  If ME is “the book on brain surgery,” methodological syncretism is merely “brain tinkering.”  Richard agrees with my analogy (and no, he did not suggest the analogy).  As I gather more insight, I will certainly discuss this topic further.

Call for Input – Do you see merit in methodological syncretism?  Don’t fret over the term – I don’t want to enter it into a beauty contest.  Just let me know which methodologies you’re blending.  As a thank you, I can send you a nice recipe for whale pie.

My usual research response has been to remind you that your tax code and all your laws are written in natural language (“oh… I see your point.  I never could understand that deduction for the profits on excess mineral rights that can be claimed by part-time fishermen who install solar panels on their second homes in July.”)  No, I won’t go there.  Instead, let me tell you about some tires I bought.

The tires are great!  My wife and I love them.  And we thought we loved the financing scheme the company gave us.  Here is what it said on the contract:

“6 months no interest/minimum payment required”

Wow!  Six months and we don’t have to pay interest or make a minimum payment.  I like that rule.  Well, we threw away the first bill and when we got the second bill, there was a charge for failing to make the minimum payment.  Come again?  I called the bank behind the promotion and they said the rule should be read as (a) 6 months no interest but (b) a minimum payment is required.  This is the natural language pitfall – semantic interpretation.

Folks, where I come from – a slash tends to be read as an “or” and distributes the verb uniformly.  This is equivalent to an airport warning, “no knives/handguns allowed.”   No one in his/her (I had to do it) right mind would interpret that to mean: (a) no knives but (b) handguns are allowed.  Try explaining the logic behind that interpretation as you wait for your orange jumpsuit and a new roommate at the nearest prison.

In a rare stroke of customer service luck, the agent immediately agreed with my interpretation.  Perhaps he is a closet linguist.  He waived the fees and in return, I am just going to send in the whole payment and pretend this event never happened.  I love those tires.  I no longer love the financing scheme.

In defense of NL, if you allow poor or ambiguous grammar you are asking for trouble.  The NL rule tools do a great job at clarifying the ontology and enforcing proper grammar.  And NL has its place. But my point is simple.  If you think natural language is a universal panacea, you are in for a surprise. We learned too much from the days of AI to forget that. 

Gartner clients: watch for our research in Q1. NL is just one of the rule representation approaches we will be reviewing in detail.

Say you have been hired to design and develop a new management system to be marketed to homeowners’ associations.  Pretty nice job, eh?  Every association on the planet is a potential customer. So you start analyzing the requirements and applying process management techniques, just like a good little analyst.

Scenario 1: "Yeah! I want a system that lets us enforce the rules.  I want to be able to track violations, archive photos of violations, issue fines and track legal proceedings.  I want this system to give me an air-tight case against any violators.  Our homeowners have rights, and those rights must be protected.  Anyone violating those rights must be punished. That’s all I care about!"

Scenario 2: "Fantastic!  I would love to have a system that lets us keep track of homeowner needs.  I want to be able to schedule the block parties, pool use, and all the other fun events we do.  I think it would be cool if we had an interactive site where we could share ideas, talk about our hobbies, our kids and our great neighborhood.  Our homeowners want a sense of community.  Anyone moving into our community is to be cherished. That’s all I care about!"

Welcome to Weltanschauung: two vastly different worldviews, two vastly different sets of expectations to meet.  Good luck building a satisfactory root definition.  While the homeowners’ association example is 100% mine,  I will credit Trevor Wood-Harper (and Lyn Antill and D.E. Avison) and their Multiview methodology research legacy as the inspiration.  Back in 1986/87, Trevor and I discussed his published example of prison systems, Weltanschauung, and root definitions.  His story was eye-opening and it stuck with me.  In fact, it would be unfair not to credit that example for the inspiration.  Sometimes, there is little difference between a prison and a homeowners’ association. It just depends on your Weltanschauung, doesn’t it.

P.S.  I love my homeowners’ association. They have the right Weltanschauung.  Now if we only had a cool system like the one in scenario 2.

I think many of us are still guilty of applying industrial disdain to our software development activities.  We tried to fix our carelessness, starting seriously in the 1980s. We tried lots of things: Participation, socio-technical analysis, etc.  We made good progress, but too much software and too many business applications still feel like they were designed by people who will never have to use the applications.  They reek of industrial disdain. And they are painful.

In my previous post, I issued a challenge to CEOs and process owners.  This challenge also extends to software developers and to system designers.  In a future post, I will talk about BPM – Business Process Management – and the concept of Lived-In Processes.  Lived-in processes are the antithesis of industrial disdain.  Lived-in processes, brought about through process discovery, validation, design, simulation, optimization, and continuous improvement, force the designer to act like users and experience the "to-be" process first-hand.  As some of Bill Rosser’s most recent research shows, empathy is a powerful partner for BPM success.  It is also the antidote to industrial disdain.

I studied Weltanschauung under my old mentor, Trevor Wood-Harper.  Trevor was a pupil of Peter Checkland and the co-creator of the Multiview methodology, a manifestation of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).  Multiview and SSM, both force us to think deep thoughts about our worldview: our Weltanschauung.  I liked Multiview in 1987, and I like it even more now that we are spending so much time on Business Process Management (BPM). 

By way of example, here is how Weltanschauung works.  Answer this question: Do you see the world as an ordered and systematic machine, or do you see it as a boiling soup – uncontrollable, densely complex, and ultimately unknowable?  Your perspective is your Weltanschauung.  And your Weltanschauung will color how you interact with the world. 

Weltanschauung one: The World as Machine.

If the world is a machine, then we are all just cogs and gears in the machine. We are parts and we have discrete functions.  We are interchangeable and our contributions are ultimately capable of being rendered by software, since software applications are really just alternative manifestations of our total contribution.  This is a reductionist perspective. This kind of thinking, if applied to BPM, is deadly.  Don’t do it. 

Weltanschauung two: The World as Chaotic Soup. 

If the world is a chaotic soup, then order and systematic behavior are only illusory manifestations and aberrations.  Human actors are unpredictable, capricious, random, and unreliable.  They do not always know the reasons for their actions, and they are not always consistent in their interactions.  Human actors and actions cannot be rendered by software in a 100% reliable fashion. Software applications can only approximate the reality that we call home.  This is a more ontologically rich view of the world. This kind of thinking, if applied to BPM, is jaded and distrustful of what our eyes and ears tell us. By all means, please take this approach.

Success by way of Weltanschauung: Your BPM Weltanschauung will determine your BPM success.  If you expect your BPM participants to behave like cogs and fit into your workflow map as one pieces together a puzzle, then you deserve what you get.  If, on the other hand, you adopt a Kaizen approach to BPM and assume that your first pass process flow is only a start, that your current understanding is only a rough approximation of reality, then you are on the right track.  BPM demands continuous improvement.  Why?  Because the world we live in is more like a soup than a machine. 

Do you live in a machine or a soup?  I live in a soup, and I will prefer soup to machines any day. I have developed my Weltanschauung.  I have had the same one since 1987.  What about you?  By the way, there are more than two Weltanschauungs.  These two are just the easiest ones to digest in a Saturday-evening posting, after an all-you-can-eat-rib-dinner and sweet, sweet iced-tea.  We folks in the South have a weltanschauung or two about iced-tea, you know.