Jim SinurToday most processes are either for routine processes or lightly sprinkled with collaboration. I think there is a continuum for social processes that can help describe just how social processes are today and where we might want to go tomorrow. Please refer to the following posts for some background:
http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/05/02/design-by-doing-an-extension-to-bpm-behavior/
http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/04/26/process-modeling-doing-by-design/:
![MP900439345[2]](http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/files/2010/07/WindowsLiveWriterGotSocialProcesses_99A6MP9004393452_4.jpg)
Highly Structured Processes:
These are the typical processes that are built for every known condition and have to be changed when exceptions crop up. They can be people or system centric or a balance of both.
Light Collaboration Within Structures Processes:
These are processes where there is some mystery about certain steps and/or leverage knowledge workers for certain actions that can’t be made routine.
Heavy Collaboration Within a Guiding Process:
This is where the big picture and high level flow is known, but not all the details can be predetermined. The collaboration on the individual tasks is high and the outcome can lead to further unexpected activity. The basic steps from beginning to end are known, but that is about it. The collaboration, however is with a core of trusted, but not necessarily employed or contracted collaborators.
Heavy Collective Activity Within a Guiding Process:
This is very similar to the description above, but anybody can be included in the collaboration within certain targeting and security constraints.There will likely be exceptions to the targeting constraints as necessary.
Free to Roam Evolving Practices:
This is where you don’t even know if there is a process yet. Watching behavior that leads to desirable outcomes is the hallmark here. This may or may not turn into a repeatable better practice. Sequence may not have a consequence here at all.
Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Social Tags: BPM, Business Rules, Social
13 responses so far ↓
1 Carol Rozwell July 7, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Jim,
Really enjoyed your post on social processes. What you describe is an issue I’ve been wrestling with as I develop the presentation on how to create a culture of collaboration.
There is a related issue of how social or collaborative the processes need to be. In some cases, wide involvement from internal and external people can be very valuable for gaining the desired result. In other cases, there is less value from a wide sweep that garners diverse opinions.
As alway, the trick is to know what situation you are in.
2 Jim Sinur July 7, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I’m sure there will be more to fill in here over time
3 Daily Links for July 6th through July 7th | Akkam's Razor July 7, 2010 at 4:01 pm
[...] Got Social Processes? – [...]
4 Pieter van Schalkwyk July 8, 2010 at 12:56 am
Jim,
I like your classification of process types as a continuum ranging from the highly structured to the highly unstructured rather than the evolution from workflow to bpm to dynic processes to case management and lastly adaptive case management as we often see on the blogs and discussions at the moment.
It is a lot easier to explain and doesn’t divide it into technology camps.
Thanks
Pieter
5 Jacob Ukelson July 8, 2010 at 7:59 am
Jim,
Hi. In my experience people centric “Highly Structured Processes” are only a theoretical possibility, not something you see in real life. Once you get people involved, you’ll find that there are exceptions that fall into one of the other categories.
I also don’t think that there is a real difference between the “Heavy Collaboration” and “Heavy Collective Activity” – if the system tries to limit users in this regard (the type of people they can include in a process) – when needed they’ll go outside the system (e.g. email) to get the job done. The trick is provide appropriate mechanisms to make sure when users do “Heavy Collective Activity” they are supported and protected.
Any guess on the relative distrbution of processes into these different buckets?
Jacob Ukelson – CTO ActionBase
6 Jim Sinur July 8, 2010 at 9:09 am
Pieter,
I have been mulling this over for a while. I did want to be free of technology and not cattering to any one type of vendor.
Jim
7 Links 07/09/2010 July 9, 2010 at 3:30 am
[...] Got Social Processes? [...]
8 Architecture -> Goals -> Adaptive! « Welcome to the Real (IT) World! July 9, 2010 at 6:08 pm
[...] Jim Sinur – Gartner: ‘Got Social Processes’ proposes a range of process types from structured to ‘guiding’ processes with more and more social interaction. I wonder how others feel, but to me SOCIAL (or its kin E20) by its definition means open and uncontrolled interactions of people and not managed processes. I have posted a graphic about a spread of interaction types in March 2010 when I commented on Jeanelle Hills BPM predictions, but I see them as different technologies and concepts. Jim says that he wants to stay away from a technology discussions, therefore he does not consider HOW these technologies would practically integrate and interact. However integrated, adding ‘social’ free-text-snippets to orthodox BPM does not improve processes or make them adaptive. Only completely new technology can provide all these variants of process interactions. To become adaptive and thus allow any form of case or process, the BPM technology needs enable the user creation of new goals, tasks, rules, content and participants during execution. That has nothing to do with being ‘social’ and it isn’t ‘ad-hoc’ processes. You can read why in ‘Mastering the Unpredictable’! [...]
9 Jim Sinur July 9, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Actually a number of BPM vendors have sovled a good protion of the technological hows and there are common patterns of process technology combined with rules and constraints that can handle the guidance.
10 Lorenzo July 11, 2010 at 12:59 am
Very nice post!!
It could be useful to get some examples on the various degrees of “sociality” we can encounter in business processes
My experience is the lower the company dimension the larger the social (alias desctuctured) dimension of processes becomes, but how to capture it to let it improve people behaviour on the job?
11 Jim Sinur July 11, 2010 at 7:04 am
Lorenzo,
Simple extensons of onboarding processes leveraging social recruiting are surfacing today. Dynamic resourcing processes are surfacing regularly where anticpated labor/skill resources might occur for specific point projects is another. These are quite simple, but I expect to see many more surface going forward
Jim
12 ECM Quotes of the week « Adam Deane July 12, 2010 at 2:31 am
[...] Processes – Response by Jacob Ukelson In my experience people centric “Highly Structured Processes” are [...]
13 Wondering about the value of social media? Focus on ‘social’ July 20, 2010 at 6:23 am
[...] It also means we’ll need to develop some new views of process management. More on this later. In the meantime, check out these excellent posts from Elise Olding on Social BPM and Jim Sinur on Social processes. [...]