Jim SinurWe are at a significant point in the maturity of BPM as a management discipline. The organizations that have been leading the charge in BPM are taking it to a new level, hence my previous posting on What’s Hot in BPM? http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/10/22/whats-hot-in-bpm/
There is also a new wave of fast followers that are lined up to jump on the BPM bandwagon and they have been the dominant question askers at our most recent BPM and Symposiums here in the U.S. I’d like you to see the top 5 hot question areas for BPM that I have sensed.
![MPj04395510000[1]](http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/files/2009/10/WindowsLiveWriterWhataretheHotQuestionsinBPM_6AD6MPj043955100001_2.jpg)
1 What are the Benefits of BPM?
This question is popping up from the next wave of organizations wanting to attempt BPM and we have good news. Based on surveys, award programs and inquiries, we are seeing rates of return north of 20% and payback periods less than one year for larger efforts and less than 90 days for more scoped efforts.
2. How Should I Get Started?
We have been advising not to just jump into buying BPM technologies, spend time either educating your folks or trying a proof of concept. Process discovery is a great place to start and benefits can flow early even if the discovery efforts start with butcher paper and pencil. Process modeling tools can help, but are not necessary unless the scope is wide and deep.
3 How do I set up Organizational Supports?
Establishing a process competency center is first prize, but you might have to sneak up on it by getting a small group of skilled process folks to work on a number of small projects before you put together a process program with clearly defined roles.
4. Which BPM Technologies Should I Use?
I would suggest that technologies with good enough process modeling tools be used initially, but some times setting up “a good enough process model” plus iterating in a BPMS simply will work as well. Keep in mind that looking wide for context and drilling deep for benefits in a time boxed way works well.
5. How do Business Rules Help BPM?
Business rules afford better agility when certain parts of the process are volatile. By determining likely change points in your process ahead of time, a business rules capability can help agility. IN some cases business professionals can change the rules themselves. In advanced situations, business rules can help with advanced decisions and goal directed flows. The business rules act as constraints.
Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Tags: BPM, Business Rules
4 responses so far ↓
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2 Terry Schurter October 27, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Great post Jim, thanks for sharing!
I am personally finding one question that keeps circling around the world of BPM and that still seems to be a real challenge for many people.
1 – How do I get started? (sound familiar?)
However, in this case the question is really about what steps to take prior to implementing technology behind BPM. The challenge is the gap between implementing an elegantly designed process with technology and coming up with that “elegant process design” that will actually deliver the goods (one of the topics I cover in my recent book with Peter Fingar). The fact of the matter is that moving from the “as is” to the “to be” elegant process design remains more of an art than a science – with lots of opinions on the best way to get there. It’s kind of like the movie The Matrix…
it’s the question that drives us mad!
Terry Schurter
3 Jim Sinur October 27, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Elsie Olding has written an excellent documnet on how to get started. I will be presenting some materials at the business rules forum on Nov 3rd in Vegas. It’s called BPM: The First 100 days. Maybe I’ll see you there
4 James MacDonald October 30, 2009 at 3:41 am
On the question of getting started… what I have experienced that seems to work is to make sure enough time (more than you would initially think) is allocated for user acceptance testing and revisiting the process design to tweak and change until it suits the users actual way of working rather than implementing a business analyst theoretical version of the process. individual end-users have lots of nuggets of know-how that needs to be discovered and workied into the process for it to be effective…