Jim SinurEven as BPM is proving itself as a driver for increased productivity and reduced costs, it will have to look to the next horizon to fully exploit its full value to organizations. Today BPM is leveraging structured processes and the result has been fantastic to date. BPM will have to keep moving to new frontiers. As my daddy always said “the more you more; the more you more” We want more out of BPM and it will have to step up to the long term challenge of supporting work that is not as structured and predictable.
Just watch knowledge workers for while, like doctors, lawyers, executives, research types, engineers, service developers, and marketing people. Their work is not straight forward and structured. They require processes that can flex, but guide them with fixed process snippets when they reach certain states of completion. This means that the ebb and flow of work will require both unstructured and structured processes. When organizations aggressively tap into collective knowledge inside and out side their organizations, BPM will have to behave differently. BPM will have to support morphing work driven by emerging goals and dynamic decisions and be able to identify potential best practices. Work will move from gaseous to liquid to solid over time where appropriate and stay in certain states where it makes sense.
Today processes are by and large predictable and generally internal to organizations, Yes, we are seeing processes break out into value and supply chains, but this is just the start of linking organizations and individuals to do business. As organizations start tapping into collective knowledge, industry networks and even social networks, processes are going to have to shift to support this new kind of activity. This will require fundamental changes in BPM technologies and the BPMS. I look forward to the challenge myself. Get ready for the next wave.
Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Green Optimization Simulation Tags: BPM, Business Rules, Green, Optimization
3 responses so far ↓
1 Twitter Trackbacks for Tapping into Collective Knowledge Will Drive Unstructured Process Activity [gartner.com] on Topsy.com September 16, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[...] Tapping into Collective Knowledge Will Drive Unstructured Process Activity blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/09/16/tapping-into-collective-knowledge-will-drive-unstructured-process-activity – view page – cached Tapping into Collective Knowledge Will Drive Unstructured Process Activity — From the page [...]
2 BPM Frontier: Dynamic Processes - Process Is The Main Thing October 24, 2009 at 4:33 pm
[...] “Tapping into Collective Knowledge Will Drive Unstructured Process Activity” - Jim Sinur predicts that organizations acceptance of collective knowledge, industry networks and even social networks will result in fundamental changes in BPM. His another post on the same subject: “White-collar and unstructured processes go together like cheese to wine“. [...]
3 Dr. Ravishankar Gundlapalli February 7, 2010 at 1:28 am
Jim – Awesome article touching upon a very important subject, one that I have been working for the past couple of years. We actually built a web2.0 app for bringing out and streamlining the collective intelligence of a large group of experts. Would love to connect with you regarding this.