The State of BPM
What a depressing article. I had a few concerns with this article - here are a few:
- The conclusion that IT should drive BPM couldn’t be more wrong - the "B" stands for "Business", not IT. BPM is not just about technology/app integration.
- The article seems to confuse BPM (business process management) with BPM (business process modeling). These are very different things and require different strategies & tools. The article also states that BPM is not about business process improvement - this is only true if you assume BPM is only focused on business process modeling.
- Several bombastic claims are made with no evidence to back them up (SaaS BPM has failed, limited standards adoption, etc.).
- Process simulation is not as overlooked as this article indicates. Many vendors have specialized in this space for years (some are in our BPA program).
- There is an additional, nascent area the article missed known as Human Interaction Management (HIM). HIM1 is a set of patterns for structuring, supporting and controlling human work practices (as described in the book "Human Interactions"). HIM should not be confused with BPEL4People, btw.
The article also seems to imply that business people are not using modeling tools due to their preference for tools like Excel. This is a shortcoming of tool vendors, not business people. Why not let business people use their familiar tools to generate the models? The concept of forms-based model generation has been around for a long time, however most vendor tools do not adequately support it. I expect this will change as this space and related standards continue to mature.
1 I think my reference to HIM broke my principle to avoid new acronyms. As the great philosopher Groucho once said: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others".