Is your organization trying to become a process oriented organization at minimum cost? If so this blog will for sure answer some of your questions.

 

The "low cost" BPM Contenders

 

The "low cost BPM" is occupied by two systems: Intalio and Microsoft BizTalk.

 

• Intalio is a company that has been around the "BPM movement" since the late 90s.  Unlike Microsoft, they only deal with "process driven solutions" and were involved in the definition of some standards, including BPMN (Business process modeling notation).  Too bad the name they chose - Intalio - has no "B" on it (maybe there's a story behind it).
• BizTalk is a Microsoft product, that so happens to have "B" on its name.  Of little use, I might ad, because unlike Intalio, that truly understand the process, Microsoft has never quite bank on the great name they gave BizTalk (something for a a future blog)
  
  UPDATE!!! - In case you are interested, there are exciting new on the Microsoft front.  It seems that Microsoft is again trying to join SQL and BizTalk.  They were back and forth on this one but it seems they are on it again.  I got this from Richard Seroter’s Architecture Musing blog.  Check it here to check the article.
  

The Judge of the Comparison

 

For the record, I have experience with both systems, but I have a lot more experience with BizTalk. Since my passion is really the business process , and process oriented organizations , the tools are just the means to get to the objective, which is, to insure that business has a solutions that aligns with their goals and objectives.  Also the objective of this blog is not so much to give a scientific evaluation but rather, the start point for other, more in-depth discussions.

 

Vectors of Comparison

 

Because we talking about "low cost BPM" I have decided to focus the comparison on:

1. price
2. simplicity
   
3. resources availability
   
4. scalability

 

For small business (a.k.a "low cost), what really matters is a no-frills tool, that can make an exciting business idea work. Sometimes, these businesses don't even know if they're going to be successful, and therefore, the ability to scale, even though important, comes last. More important than scalability is "resource availability".  As the business evolves, changes may be required, and doing it (without breaking the bank) requires resource abundance, with different levels of proficiency.

 

Note: I'm not going to considering hosting plans at this time, because small organizations, with great ideas, could be less inclined to share their BPEL with another organization.  Something I'm going to see whether or not is a reason of concern in a future blog.

 

Intalio Enterprise Edition versus BizTalk Branch

 

I decided to compare the Intalio Enterprise Edition ($7,500 year) against the BizTalk Branch Edition ($9,000* first year + maintenance after that) .

 

*How did I get to $9,000 - The BizTalk Branch (one server, no portal*) edition will cost you $1,800, to which you will have to add the $6,000 for the SQL 2005 Standard, the Premium MSDN Subscription (so you can develop) or the $500 for one development seat, and the $500 Windows Server license.  Hosting or server aside, you are looking at $8,800, which will round up to $9000.

 

*I'm actually considering the small business would be developing an ASP.NET tool for web presence, and not use Sharepoint).

 

Considering only the first year of operations, you could say that their cost is very similar.

 

In terms of functionality, and therefore simplicity of deployment... well that's another story.

 

Intalio is a system that is a lot more business aligned than BizTalk.Intalio's BPMN editor "breeds" business, where as the Visual Studio 2005 XLANG editor, can be less than ideal.  All other Intalio components, like the business rules and the new (I haven't yet used it), AJAX forms, or even the Portal, are best-of-breed-systems that inject a lot genetic diversity into the mix, making it sometimes harder to master but, a source of great inspiration.

 

In terms of development, the advantage is clearly on the side of Microsoft, for the obvious reasons, even though, it will not be easy for you to find, BizTalkers that will be able to talk business with you. Most of them have this annoying tendency to align BizTalk with .NET, instead of Business.

 

Both solutions will scale (please remember that it's not volume we are talking but the ability to execute the process).

 

Conclusion

 

Intalio is a company that understands the process. If you are a true "business process person", and your business ideas depends on your ability to runs processes in a controlled and efficient manner, than I would suggest you go with Intalio.  In the long run, it will be more expensive, because those $7,500 come in every year, but you as an organization, will be more flexible and more "business process oriented."  Make sure you have partners around you that can tell you more about Intalio.  On the other side, if you are very comfortable with Microsoft, and you have only recently started to see the "Business Process Management" world, I would suggest you go with Microsoft BizTalk.

 

...before I go...

 

The reason  M2MSys uses both Intalio and Microsoft, is because we believe that the BPM revolution will eventually happen at the level of small business.  When business really gets BPM, then these two offerings will have matured, and we will be ready.

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I'm sure you noticed the increased focused on the media on the healthcare nightmare.  Actually, the healthcare nightmare is a fallacy.  There are several nightmares, or to be more precise, there are nightmares within others nightmares, making it a "fractal of nightmares.”  Of all the healthcare nightmares, healthcare billing is the one I'm most familiar with, from both an IT perspective and a business perspective.

 

Compared with telecom billing, healthcare billing is a vastly more complex discipline.  Its innate complexity has allowed companies such as EDS, ACS, IBM (and others) to amass colossal amounts of money, with pure brute force IT (low innovation).  Even though from a billing process standpoint, the steps are similar, the exceptions, and successive regulative decisions, make it a lot more complex.  The bottom line is that unlike the a simple telecom billing record, which represents two atomic events (call start and call end), the healthcare billing record (HIPAA 837), spans over long periods of time, encompassing many events.  Processing such records is more complex because each event has to make sense not only individually but also within the group of other events.  Imagine each record as a state machine that has to be validated transition by transition.

 

This blog entry will give you 5 ways to survive in the healthcare-billing world and it will allow you to prevent common mistakes, allowing you to make a lot better predictions and effort and cost estimates.

 

• Recommendation #1 - RESEARCH THIRD PARTY TOOLS - Third party tools to validate the record can be of great assistance.  There are not that many tools available that are able to validate all 6 levels of HIPAA.  Examples include Redix , EDIFECS or Informatica (comparison on a future blog).  Be aware that all of these tools represent a walk on memory lane, to times pre-XML, which may not gel all too well with your objectives.

 

• Recommendation #2 - IDENTIFY A HIPAA MENTOR - Rapidly identify a person with as many years of experience in HIPAA as possible.  Do not be fooled.  HIPAA came out in 1996.  Do not pick someone that just knows healthcare billing and lacks deep understanding of HIPAA.  The expertise combo is ideal but if not possible, go with a HIPAA expert.  Don't get me wrong, people with healthcare billing are very important.  Nonetheless, you will see that those with HIPAA experience are already familiar with the concept of electronic commerce.  Ask that person to be patient with you and to not only give you the answers to your questions but also the thought process.  In return, teach that person technologies such as XML.  If you cannot find HIPAA subject matter expert, contact M2MSys .

 

• Recommendation #3 - TRANSLATE EARLY EDI to XML - the standard chosen during the late 90s to standardize the healthcare billing record was EDI.  This is unfortunate because, XML was at that time just about to emerge.  When comparing EDI to XML, the word cumbersome comes to mind.  Don't get me wrong.  EDI is still to this day widely used (think of Wal-Mart).  Nonetheless, we did not evolve from the Stone Age for lack of stones.  Try to convert early to XML.  The XML eternal rivals - Stylus Studio and XML Spy have now EDI engines.  From a cost standpoint, they are very expensive and they might help you get into the semantics of the record a lot easier.  In addition, once converted to XML, you will have access to far more powerful tools to get into the file, whether for testing or debugging reasons.

 

• Recommendation #4 - UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE BEFORE DESIGNING- healthcare is a complex matter, made worst over years by greed AND low technology investment.  It will take you a while for you to understand how technology can help matters.  For instance, optimizing a simple part of the system, may lead to significant improvements, but the process is made of many subsystems, that may reduce significant the impact of your changes.  Try to the process from beginning to end.  I understand your customer/superior may want immediate results.  Resist the urge and invest as much time as possible in designing and understanding the process.  Don't forget healthcare is about exceptions.  Don't just design based on the happy path.  Make sure you design all paths.  If possible, use a design methodology.  I recommend you use BPMN to design HIPAA solutions.  If possible, ensure that your design is compatible with some type of architectural concept.  I strongly recommend you use resource-oriented architecture to your HIPAA solutions.

 

• Recommendation #5 - PLAY IN THE SAND BOX - it is almost impossible to design HIPAA system without hitting the boundaries of another system.  The complexity of the healthcare billing lead to creation of a lot of inter-related systems, in which, a vast array of people and organizations, have a stake.  My recommendation is for you to try to understand what they are, and make those people allies.  If you try to play outside of the box, you will be weakening your design considerably.  Dialog, even though frustrating at times, is key for the success of any healthcare solution.  Healthcare is complex issue and making it more efficient will not be achieved over night.  Resist the temptation of making the killer application.  Collaborate.

 

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You have been noticing an increase focus by the BPM world in the concept of “complex event processing” (CEP) and Intelligent Process Automation (IAP).  Whereas the concept of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is an acronym introduced by IDC (International Data Group), mostly software vendors such as Oracle, TIBCO, BEA, and IBM use Complex Event Processing (CEP).  Both approaches arose from the need to process the massive amounts of events, the event-driven economy generates.

 

What is M2MSys' approach to the "Intelligent Process Automation" (IAP) and "Complex Event Processing" (CEP) concepts?

 

At M2MSys, we call it "Cognitive Business Process" and we have been formally developing it since 2004.  The Cognitive Business Process is formal bundle of methodologies that make it more powerful and more scalable then both IPA and CEP.  At the core of the Cognitive Business Process advantages are the prescriptive Lean Six Sigma methodologies, inclusion of the sensor network based on low cost nodes (machine-to-machine) that are able to collect and process both hard events (sensors) and soft events (WEB 2.0), and systemics through the complex adaptive systems designs.

 

So you can better understand the power of the above mention methodologies, I have decided to summarized them in the table below.

 

Methodology	Advantages
Lean Six Sigma	Increased Efficiency – the combination of Lean Thinking and Design for Six Sigma ensures that we will only develop what generates value to our clients, and we will build it right the first time, avoiding expensive retooling. Continuous improvement- by including Six Sigma in the architecture of the business process we assure we will be able to make the process innately compliant with Six Sigma best practices, which in return will make the continuous process improvement not only affordable but also key to our success. Critical to quality and Voice of Customer – ensuring that each process has well known critical to quality factors and by surveying as often as possible our clients, we will ensure a very high level of customer satisfaction.
Sensor Networks   (Machine-2-Machine)   (Web 2.0)	Increased information value – distribution of processing power and intelligence into the network divides the workload among low cost elements that transform data (events) into information, allows for more events to be collected and thus increasing information value. Affordable elegance – high-level processes only work with information derived from data versus the IPA and CEP brute force approach.  This removes cumbersome complexity from high-level business processes leading to a far easier shared understanding. High scalability – the immense volumes of events required to make intelligent decisions is of such magnitude that a centralized solution will have difficulties addressing it.  Unlike the centralized approaches of IPA of CEP, the CBP leads to highly scalable solutions.
Systemics	System is more than the sum of the parts – using complex adaptive system design, the overall is able to become more than the sum of the parts, i.e., its functionality will surpass those of the individual processes.  These are areas that neither CEP nor IAP use and that are paramount to understand the power of these new breed systems, also called reactive systems (versus functional systems)

 

After reading this blog, I’m sure that you will understand the extreme important of IAP and CEP, especially CEP, in your future BPM designs.  Rest assured that up until 2007, few companies were solely focused on the concept of the intelligent business process.  I'm happy to tell you that M2MSys formalized its interest in 2004.  We did it in fact in such way that our name is a reflection of our passion.  For the record M2MSys is the juxtaposition of “M2M” (machine-to-machine) and “Sys” (systemics).

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You are probably one of those people that hate being fined for speeding, not wearing safety belt, or worst, for forgetting to bring titles and registration (paper!) to prove that you pay insurance, or you own your car.
 
In a couple of blogs in the past, we discussed the fact that in the event driven economy, products are free of charge.  On this entry, I will focus on the consequences of the event-driven economy into fines.
 
Today the government uses a brute force approach to reducing the frequency and consequences of accidents.  The approach is the much hated "ticket,” or "fine.”  Many of the violations for which you can receive a fine, run into your freedom rights, and in some situations, violate your equality rights in the society.  Before you double you heart rate, allow me to explain, by using a fictitious character called "John Doe" and "Peter Trouble.”
 
John Doe is driving calmly along Pacific Highway in his convertible.  There is almost no traffic, and John wants to have absolute mobility to look into the any direction (it helps if you have driven a convertible).

 

 

Has he approaches San Francisco, traffic increases and he decides to buckle up.  At the time he is about to do it, a police officer spots him, and decides to go stop him.  If you are like me, you probably hate those blue lights, and the sound of the siren is enough to make me sick!

 

 
In your mind, you have done nothing wrong.  You were able to drive without getting into an accident, and yet you have to pay the ticket.
 
Now, let us run another example.  "Peter Trouble" decides to the same exact thing and while looking into the ocean, he veers out of the road, and he injuries himself badly and total health costs reach $1M.
 

 
The truth is that "John Doe" was ticketed and "Peter Trouble" was not.  Because cars do not have black boxes (yet!), Peter's insurance company pays for all the damage.
 

What happens in the event driven economy?

In the event driven economy, things will look slightly different.  The insurance company contracts with you and you both sign a service level agreement.  Unlike today, this service level agreement will include the conditions you have to meet to drive, as well as all the events for which you are covered.  All of these rules will be uploaded into your car's computer that will be responsible to monitor your driving and determine your risk at all times.  Even though you will be free to make all decisions, your car could have a saying on what happens.  For example, if you decide to take 2 pills to sleep, and in the middle of the night your kids needs to get to the hospital, your car will allow you to drive if you don't exceed 10 miles an hour for 30 minutes, enough to get you to a police station, or to the nearest hospital.  While doing that, the car will be identified as being driven by a driver under the influence.

 

 
In case you are asking, you car determines your reaction to random tests that are also uploaded by the insurance company (example: your reaction time to enter a code and password).
 
As you did see, I did not use any futuristic vision, of intelligent roads.  In this scenario, we only used the concept of event.  The event to determine whether or not, you're are driving the car under the rules
 

What are the benefits of the event-driven economy?

 

1. The individual is able to act based on his/her beliefs.
2. The individual right to privacy is respected, and data is only shared when individual enters into an accident.
3. Insurance company's rules will become 100% transparent (combats asymmetric information)

Mother-Nature is already event-drive… replicate!

People sometimes think that in an ants nest, there is some time of hierarchy.  In fact, there is no centralized command.  The queen's mission is to lay eggs.  Period.  The mission of the "attack ants" is to protect the nest against any perceived invasion.  The "worker ants" are responsible to find food, and maintain the operation of the nest.

 

 

Conclusions

In the event driven economy, from a law standpoint, the tyranny of the majority will decrease and eventually be eliminated all together.  Society will be able to regulate itself, by listening to key events.  We will have more freedom, but your freedom will be more aware of the freedom of others.  It is a tradeoff that overall, will make your society equal and balanced.

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Do you remember the last business process you designed that interfaced with a commoditized web service? For the sake of argumentation, let us suppose that your business process required that a package X be transported from point A to point B. Let us also suppose that your only requirement was price, which should be determined at run time. The simple price requirement opens endless possibilities. To solve this problem, let us suppose you decide to query a UDDI directory. Because price is so important to you, you assign a person in your team to query the service directory, and update the process communication exchanges to be able to communicate with every single new service. As you can see, this process is extremely time consuming and expensive.

 

Current Web service technologies (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI) define how you should build the SOAP command(s) to interact with a web service. They operate at a syntactic level. Today's web services broke the interoperability barrier allowing web services to be used across heterogeneous platforms but they still require significant human interaction to: (1) search for the right services and (2) mediate the data required to be exchanged between the services. We need to evolve to a new paradigm, in which web services, sensors, personal devices, and domestic appliances can search, filter, and manipulate information to implement their objectives (goals).

 

Welcome to the Semantic Web! The semantic web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. In the Semantic Web, processes are able to communicate with each other to achieve their goals. For instance, you want your refrigerator to replenish your food stocks at the lowest prices and highest quality. Even though the lowest price is easy to assert, the best quality is often subjective, but do not panic, this is where BPM crosses Web 2.0 (something for future posts).

 

One of the key components of the semantic web is the Semantic Web Services (SWS). The research of SWS (started in 2001) builds upon a variety of disciplines such as Semantic Web, knowledge representation, formal methods, software engineering, process modeling, workflow, and software agents. A key objective of SWS is to automate Web services-related tasks, like discovery, publication, selection, composition, mediation, monitoring, invocation, and adaptation, whereby the use of semantics increases the degree of automation.

 

SWS community has been enriched by a number of large group projects and initiatives, like OWL-S, METEOR-S, WSMO, WSDL-S, IRS, has resulted in four submissions to W3C and the first W3C recommendation on semantics for Web services, Semantic Annotations for WSDL (SAWSDL), as well as an increasing number of open source tools, use cases, and prototypical applications.

 

As you can imagine, the mechanics behind the Semantics Web Services are not simple. There are new concepts that you will have to be familiar with such as ontologies, modeling and descriptions of quality of services (QoS), services level agreements (SLAs), and non-functional properties (NFPs) of Web services, policies, agreements and contracts related to SWS.

 

Therefore, to answer the question of how the Semantic Web influences BPM, I would say, that the semantic web is going to allow the true adaptive business process (not talking about cognitive here). Today's BPM is just a faster way to crank out pieces of flexible cement written in BPEL (or similar). If you want true adaptability then you need to be able to assign to the process, beliefs, intentions and desires, and allow them to communicate with each other to implement our goals.

 

P.S. - These networks of services will require regulation. In fact, this will be the topic of future blog entries, because this is a paramount topic, missing from most discussion.

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People often ask me - "What is the shortest way towards BPM "guruness"?". I always reply that BPM is such a large field, that there is no such thing as a BPM Guru. Some people are more technical oriented, others are more business oriented, and others specialized on human workflow, while others are experts on BPM performance. After saying this, I'm quick to add that reading a lot, about some key topics, will allow people to get a far better understanding of how all disciplines come together. You know you are heading on the right way, when you understand for the first time how when you become able to combine several disciplines together to justify a decision.

I would also suggest that you always keep "the eye on the ball." BPM is about business. While your market value may go up if you know about BPM technicalities, such as the famous difference between "Petri Nets" and Pi-Calculus, your value is truly dependant of how much more efficient, effective, and adaptable you design your customer's processes. With the exception of Porter, Hammer and Fingar , the list of books below represents a list of topics. I would suggest you look for other alternative authors for some of the topics. Also, be aware that there is still intense discussion on key aspects of BPM. Be ready for controversy and avoid entangle yourself on too much details. Focus on the bottom line, and all those details will come to you at a later stage.

Feel free to share our comments about the list, and happy readings!

Book	Short Description	Where you will use?
	An Introduction to Information Theory - although it was written in 1980, it does extremely well the role of teaching the core ideas about Information Theory. The book is geared towards non-mathematicians, but it is not a book for dummies.	Messaging and Reporting Strategy - messages (events and transactions) are at the core of BPM because messages are the mechanism that triggers processes. This book will help to look at data from a holistic perspective, and to look early on for data sources, and to define the role of each attribute in the overall sense of process triggering and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
	Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution - Michael Hammer made the case that the division of labor, defended by Adam Smith, put in place by Henry Ford in his assemblies lines, was not sustainable in a post-industrial era, characterized by changes in customer bases, competition, and a high rate of change. A new organization (a re-engineered organization), had to re-emerge under the supervision of a strong leader with vision, who, using information technologies, consulting closely with suppliers to reduce inventories, and empowering employees, would build a more efficient organization . Hammer actually defended "the undoing of the Industrial Revolution."	Process 1.0 - This book will allow you to make a transition from a more traditional perspective that sought labor division to be the best organizational pattern. The book introduces the concept of re-engineering.
	IT Doesn't Matter-Business Processes Do - The book makes a parallel between BPM and the spreadsheet revolution. It also introduces the concept that BPM as the digitalization of the process, and makes the case that CRM, ERP, etc are processes cast in stone, which are very difficult and expensive to customize. The author also defines the future role of IT stating that it will become the organization's provisionary of Business Processes	Selling BPM to senior management - even if you have a strong project sponsor, eventually you will need to sell BPM to others within the organization. This book will allow you to do so very efficiently. I usually buy this book and offer them to the people I'm trying to have buy in. People like the fact that is easy to read, and they always get impressed of getting it free of charge!
	Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance - Michael Porter is the founding father for strategies in a competitive context. The book introduces two very important concepts. The first is the Value Chain and how it translates into cost leadership and differentiation. The second is how synergies are created and when diversification might work.	Organization's Process Catalog - this book will make you look to an organization from a holistic perspective. You will go beyond the single process from a department to be understood how each process influences the organization's value chain. You will also be able to understand how to drive synergies by including suppliers, employees, customers, regulators into the process. In the long term, this book will lead in your first steps towards BPM patterns and will increase your ability to reuse your processes.
	Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave - this book describes in simple, really to understand terms, a radical new way of process thinking and technology in the way that leads to the transformation of how IT has been seen since the 1960s. It describes a process-oriented organization, in which there is no lag between management intent and execution. The book goes on to describe that a process-managed enterprise makes agile course corrections, embeds Six Sigma quality, and reduces cumulative costs across the value chain. It pursues strategic initiatives with confidence with transparency, management control, and accountability. The book also makes a unique point. Process management is not another form of automation, a new killer-app, or a fashionable new management theory.	Process 2.0 - this book introduces the concept of the process of a mash-up of several disciplines that come together into the process. Unlike the process defended by Michael Hammer, the process introduced by Fingar is holistic in nature and more efficient, due to the increased emphasis on quality via six sigma. Without this book, your perception of BPM will be rather technical, especially if you are trying to enter the world of BPM via SOA or BPEL. This book will teach you to see that SOA is just one of the many disciplines of BPM.
	Human Interactions - this book is a study of how humans work, and how it can be modeled by information technology techniques. The book shows how to deal properly with human issues in the workplace, transform the working relationships on which success is founded, and leverage intangible assets. The book closes the BPM gap between automated processes and human-driven processes. This is paramount because processes don't do work, people do. Indeed, technology support for human interactions is the missing link in today's BPM systems.	Human Workflow - something you cannot every forget is that BPM combines both automated workflow and human workflow. As you will soon witness, the processes with most benefit to the organization, involve a lot of human interaction.
	Lean Six Sigma for Service - One very interesting thing about this book is that it focuses on services rather than traditional focused on manufacturing of similar books. Lean Six Sigma for Services fills the need for a service-based approach, explaining how companies of all types can cost-effectively translate manufacturing-oriented Lean Six Sigma tools into the service delivery process. The book as many case studies detailing dramatic service improvements in organizations from Lockheed Martin to Stanford University Hospital, allowing you to find proven ways to reduce service costs by 30 to 60 percent, improve service delivery time by 50 percent and expand capacity by 20 percent without adding staff.	Process Design - BPM is about designing processes that can be easily changed. That doesn't mean that you can design a less than stellar process and then improve it over time. By applying prescriptive Lean Six Sigma concepts, you will see yourself designing very mature processes, and that will be able to accommodate a lot more change. The objective is to built-2-adapt and build-2-last.
	Business Process Driven SOA using BPMN and BPEL - this book will give you the technicalities behind BPM. The interesting part of this book is because it is a 3 in 1. It will allow you to correlate the influence of BPMN (business process modeling notation), BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)	Technical BPM - as a BPM expert you will soon see that without the necessary technical expertise, all your business knowledge will seem like the world's most advanced airplane, grounded because of lack of gas.
	Business Rules Management and Service Oriented Architecture: A Pattern Language - this books introduces the concept of Business rules management system (BRMS), which enables enterprises to automate certain decision-making processes. The book will give you the theory basis so you can understand ANY type of business rule engine.	Processes with Change Built-in - BPM cannot be a faster way to create concrete processes. BPM needs to be about processes that have change built-in . One of the ways to allow processes adapt to change is to externalize decision-making process into expert systems (business rule engine).
	Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving - unlike what you could conclude from the title, this book will teach you how manageable steps on how to infer information from data. You will be able to correctly manage goals and objectives, how to collect and critically analyze data and information and relatively simple math techniques to make sense of numbers and turn them into knowledge.	Business Activity Monitoring - one of the most powerful disciplines of BPM is business activity monitoring (BAM). Many people look at BAM as they look to the traditional reports, or business intelligence. In fact, they are very different, because BI is a subset of BAM. This book will assist you make that transition by allowing you to see how data relates to other data.

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Because you share a passion for BPM, I’m sure that you have already asked yourself the question – “What are the pre-requisites to make a BPM project AGILE?” 

Over the years, I have come to realize that there is  a point of equilibrium in which “agile” (efficiency) and effective (quality) work in conjunction and do not oppose each other.  Outside of that point of equilibrium, they actually cancel each other, and in extreme cases, they become mutually exclusive.

While you have probably seen “agile” in other contexts, being agile in BPM is particularly important because, labor is one of the largest expenses with any BPM project.  Nonetheless, BPM’s strong quality foundations, require it to be more than just agility.  BPM needs to be all about quality.
 
Like you, I have worked in many BPM projects in different environments.  Sometimes I was on site, others I worked remotely.  Sometimes I worked in large teams, while in others I worked in small teams.  Sometimes I worked embedded in customer teams, and in others, I had customers embedded on my teams.  Even though the combinations are almost endless, I can safely say that the best results did not come from team of stars, or customers with endless resources.  The best results came from teams that CARED the most about the customer.  Being "agile" and "effective" is not only the result of great technical ability but also the result of caring about results from the customer's perspective.
 
The table below summarizes my lessons learned and they are the recipe I use to combine "agile" and "customer" in successful BPM projects.

 

Technique	Description	Advantages
Delta Team	Small team of experts (no more than 7-8 people) with little or no expertise overlapping, consisting of an Architect (overall technical design), Engineering (Infrastructure), Business Subject-Matter-Expert (business expert, project manager, customer interface), 1 to 3 Senior Developers (more becomes difficult to manage and it may indicate that some of the work needs to be off-shored) and a Technical Business Analyst (documenter, tester, release manager).	Everyone is aware of the overall picture of the project No overlapping skill removes personal unhealthy rivalry allowing the team to focus on efficiency (save energy) and effectives (quality) Any project progress success is visible to all and thus represents motivation to all Ability to easily switch to all "hands on deck" mode
War Room	A room at the customer site that allows eye contact to everyone in the team and the ability to maintain a conversation with anyone in a normal tone of voice	All discussions are public and team members decide to tune in if the topic influences their work. Absolute focus on the project itself, as lack of privacy prevents non-productive conversation to take place. Customers love it because they perceive it as total commitment.
Temporary Pair Programming	Two programmers, or the programmer and the architect, work together at one keyboard, if the programmer gets behind.  One types in code while the other reviews each line of code as it's typed in.	Most efficient way to overcome "hard-to-catch-bugs" Increases the team bonds which is key for productivity
Post it on the wall	Document every discussion with one or more large sticker "post-it" and place them on the wall.  Do not worry if you get to the end of a project with a thick layer of paper on the wall.  This technique resolves the problem with "white-boarding"  in which important thoughts can be accidently erased	When people write on the white large stickers they introduce visual clues that allows them to remember what was discussed preventing important thoughts/ideas from being forgotten, or to be remembered very efficiently.
Intranet	Customer staff is always very curious about the "Delta Team" and the "War Room.”  If you don't want to be surprised with nasty gossips, make sure you publish the objective of the BPM project in the customer's intranet.  Load documents (requirements, functional specs, and detail design), timelines, etc.  You are doing a BPM project and you should always "eat your own dog food.”	BPM still equates in people's mind to lay-offs.  To be as agile as possible, you have to remove any fear from any of your customer contacts.  While respecting your customer rules, make sure to communicate often and accurately.
Avoid Meetings	It is fair to say that formal meetings are the kryptonite of agile teams.  Make sure that you communicate with your customer, that any contacts should be established with Business Subject Matter Expert/Project Manager.  In case is not available the Architect will be able to replace him/her.	Meetings are the best way to infect the agile behavior of a team, with some non-agile habits of your customer.  You may be surprised of how fast developers can acquire the habits of the customer.

     
Let me know if you agree, or if you have a different recipe.

 

P.S. - If you like what you see here, you maybe happy to know that we call call this methodology eXtreme Delivery or  xDelivery™ , which we use on our  Turn Key service.

 

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You may be thinking that BPM is already difficult to implement in corporations that government is the last place where you would want to go. Fear not! If you like big challenges, and you already have deployed some incredible BPM projects in the corporate world, then government will definitely test your abilities. In fact, it may prove addicting, especially if you believe, as I do, that increasing the efficiency of the government machine is personally rewarding. Having been involved, since 2006 in BPM projects for large state government agencies, I have acquired some hard-learned lessons that share with you below.

1. Be onsite with a strong, small team of experts - Do not make the mistake of building processes away from the customer. Do not forget BPM is about capturing all institutional knowledge. Be on site, in a room that everyone knows belongs to “this hyper-cool project.” Look for a small and multidisciplinary team. BPM is radically new way of doing IT, and you want to show it by not being onsite with a legion of low paid grade IT people, like the incumbents have. Also make sure your team, is shielded from other more traditional incumbents. BPM is something traditional government consultants do not want to expand. They will destabilize you at the first opportunity.
2. Do not use include government members in your team - BPM is a huge cultural shift to which most people, independently of whether or not they are on a corporation or government, are not ready to make. Even though, I'm a firm believer in mixed teams on small-medium size companies, on large organization, such state government, I do NOT recommend it. See below my secret to transition BPM solutions to the government agencies.
3. Have your own infrastructure - BPM projects are about, among other things, to translate the value chain of the organization into a catalog of processes. In doing so, you will immediately reach the edges of government, composed by service providers and citizens. To reach them, you will have to rely on web portals, which are difficult to configure in terms of security and availability, especially recent government security breaches, have been tight to the demise of high profile government officials. To avoid any complications, negotiate your own independent channel to the web, as well your own infrastructure. There are government procurement rules that you can use to do so (sorry… this blog is not about government procurement).
4. Have at least one policy expert on your team - whatever area you are working on, you will always need your own business expert. If you rely exclusively on the agency employees to supply you with the business knowledge you will take a lot longer, and you will make mistakes, while designing the processes. The reason has nothing to do with knowledge but with availability. Learn to explore the fact that government business is highly regulated. Bring on a person that knows to interpret those regulations, and asks the right questions to adapt federal or state law.
5. Transition with scheduled drills - plan early to transition the management of the BPM solution to the agency. Remember that you are doing something radically different from other incumbents that love to leave behind a legion of low-paid IT consultants. The best way to do it, is by planning drills in which you practice security breaches, equipment failure, service outages. Senior government officials love drills and will welcome you involving their teams.

Before I go, I would like to ask you a question. Were you ever burnt by a government project?

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You know this as well as anyone. Processes cannot be a faster way to do more of the same. You cannot be designing processes that are not able to keep up with the change. Your processes have to have CHANGE built-in.

I'm sure you already have your own recipe. Allow me to share with you, mine:

1. Use Business Rules - remove from the process any ability to make decisions. Isolate the expert systems outside the process.

2. Use Human Workflow - if the expert system fails to return an answer, escalate to a human and allow them to lead the process execution

3. Use Business Activity Monitoring - the only way to know where you heading is by tracking where you are over time. BAM is your map towards your objectives. Please see the the entry "How to pick bullet proof KPIs for BPM design ".

4. Log Exceptions and incorporate resolution - don't just track exceptions. Exceptions are the only way by which your system is going to be able to learn. Ensure that your design forces the user to enter its knowledge into the expert system of choice.

5. Make it simple - avoid long and wide processes. If your process is longer than two pages, or wider than one, you are probably doing something not very efficient. Usually it is an indication that you are including too much expertise inside your process. Put it out!

There other ways to built-in change by using systemics . If you're only now starting, I suggest you design your processes with this in mind. If you ready for the next level, I suggest you contact us. You will be surprised!

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I'm sure you noticed that on this past Wednesday, Michael Hammer died in Boston, from complications of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 60. Along with Michael Porter, and Peter Fingar, they defined our vision of Business Process Management (BPM), so this is a less bright day.

To make it easier to all of us, here is the list of the 5 top contributions of Michael Hammer towards BPM.


1 - "Reengineering the Corporation", the book - this best seller book introduced, for the first time, the concept of "management process design" to the masses. The book was on The New York Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list for 41 weeks and took Hammer, in 1996, to Time magazine’s list of “America’s 25 Most Influential People.”

2 - Coined the end of Adam Smith era - Michael Hammer made the case that the division of labor, defended by Adam Smith (capitalism's high-priest), and masterfully put in place by Henry Ford in his assemblies lines, was not sustainable in a post-industrial era, characterized by changes in customer bases, competition and a high rate of change. A new organization (a re-engineered organization), had to re-emerge under the supervision of a strong leader with vision, who, using information technologies, consulting closely with suppliers to reduce inventories, and empowering employees, would build a more efficient organization . Hammer actually defended “the undoing of the Industrial Revolution.”

3 - Started shaping the modern process - Michael Hammer defended that corporation ought simplifying and reorganizing business departments by having workers break down their activities into logical, bite-size pieces, then take a “clean sheet” approach to reassembling their work for greater efficiency and productivity. This “clean sheet” was a less formal shape of what we call the PROCESS.

4 - Empowered the Information worker - Michael Hammer defended that in these new organizations (re-engineered organizations), managers ought to switch from supervisory roles to facilitators. They ought to become enablers, and mentors of those who they manage, empowering them to perform value-adding processes themselves, making sure their contribution would be recognize to those at the top. You may not know this but he once wrote - "I’m saddened and offended by the idea that companies exist to enrich their owners. That is the very least of their roles; they are far more worthy, more honorable, and more important than that. Without the vital creative force of business, our world would be impoverished beyond reckoning.”

5 - Educated us all about "powerful ideas gone bad" - as you so well know, reengineering became synonymous with downsizing, in which CEOs confused re-organization with ad-hoc automation. This misinterpretation led to the firing of workers in droves. In a Time interview, Michael Hammer declared - “It is astonishing to me the extent to which the term re-engineering has been hijacked, misappropriated and misunderstood,” adding that ideally, re-engineering should promote greater production and create more jobs.

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