Category Archives: Business Process Management

This section covers various aspects of Lightweight Business Process Management

Rethinking BPM based on Lean Principles

5 December,2015

[Click here for the Lean BPM Manifesto.]

In 2001, software development was in a mini-crisis. Software projects were being specified in ever-more elaborate terms. Methods like the Rational Unified Process and Waterfall project planning were being utilized. And yet software projects were failing at increasing rates or being delivered late or being delivered with the wrong requirements. That year, a group of software developers came out with the Agile Manifesto http://www.agilemanifesto.org/. This manifesto based on Agile and Lean principles created a revolution in software development leading to much improved outcomes. Today it is not uncommon for software to be released to production on a daily or weekly basis in small valuable increments with rapid feedback and iteration. In the past quarterly releases to production would have been considered good.

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Zero-code BPM is not a Myth

18 November,2015
Zero-code BPM

Zero-Code BPM

A debate has been raging in the BPM community regarding Zero-Code BPM. The question is whether business processes can be run without coding. The debate has been not about desirability (everyone agrees it is desirable) but rather about feasibility.

One of the proponents of the view that Zero Code BPM is possible is Keith Swenson. In his post Zero-Code BPM Systems he makes several points. One point is that code comes in many forms. In particular visual drag and drop is code because it requires code-like thinking. A second is that a no-code BPM system will not “look” like a BPM system. This is because BPM systems as currently conceptualized are about detailed control rather than about individuals self-organizing to perform work.

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How Businesses are Missing Out on One of the Most Powerful Collaboration Techniques

13 October,2015

The primary way that businesses collaborate on processes (other than specialized applications) is via a mix of EMail/Chat + document-oriented-collaboration . An example of a modern document-oriented collaboration system is Google Docs. But do businesses realize that there is a better way? It turns out there is a much more powerful collaboration technique available and it has been sitting right underneath our noses all this time.

It is a technique used by software developers on a daily basis and goes by the techie name of Source Code Management .

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Hyper-productivity with Lightweight EMail Processes

3 October,2015

EMail is the most widely used tool for notifications and discussions. But it is less well appreciated that EMail is also the most widely utilized (lightweight) business process management (BPM) tool in use. Most users may not even recognize that they are using email as a business process tool.

Here are some example lightweight business processes in a company

  • Collaborate on a design (Engineering)
  • Collaborate on a Sales Cycle (Sales, Marketing and Legal)
  • Collaborate on a Blog Post (Marketing)
  • Collaborate on a Customer Issue (Support)
  • Collaborate on an Issue (General)
  • Collaborate on an Invoice (Accounting)
  • Collaborate on a Contract (Buyer Legal and Seller Legal)
  • Run a Sales and Operations Planning Process (All)

etc.

Unfortunately using EMail to collaborate on lightweight business processes can become an exercise in frustration.It is difficult to track the ‘true’ current state of the process . Instead the state of the process is represented by some combination of comments scattered over several threads and dozens or hundreds of attachment versions strewn about. For anything but the simplest processes this approach rapidly spins out of control.

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