Articles

The Business Architect Must See the Forest for the Trees

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

Participants in business architecture discussion groups and training seminars often ask about the profile of the business architect. This is an important question because enterprises establishing and expanding business architecture efforts are seeking individuals to staff centers of excellence and project teams. What skills should such a person have? What attributes describe the business architect? In my experience, the most important attribute that I look for in a business architect is the ability to see the “forest for the trees”.

Developing an SOA Roadmap

Author(s):

John Moe

Principal Consultant, J Moe Associates

Although SOA is hardly a new concept, very few organisations have yet developed and rolled out a complete Service Oriented Architecture. There are many reasons for this, but I have found that in many cases there has not been a sound foundation built to ensure that the right architecture is used at the right time for the right problems. Also, business cases for SOA have been notoriously difficult to construct and sell to the purse string holders.

Optimize, Then Outsource

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The outsourcing of parts of IT into Cloud has become more then a prognosis, it has become a reality. Moreover, it has become hype, a new ‘big thing’.

The outsourcing of parts of IT into Cloud has become more then a prognosis, it has become a reality. Moreover, it has become hype, a new ‘big thing’. Not many analysts and practitioners, though, have realized that this hype differs dramatically from all others: this one means that all previous hypes, intended to improve and modernize in-house IT have failed.

Closing the Business-IT Gap Once And For All

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

It has been almost impossible to open a business or IT-related magazine for the past decade without seeing an article about the infamous gap between Business and IT and the misfortunes caused by it.

It has been almost impossible to open a business or IT-related magazine for the past decade without seeing an article about the infamous gap between Business and IT and the misfortunes caused by it. So, let us skip the description of these misfortunes and concentrate on the gap itself.

In Memory of Geary A. Rummler – A Giant in the Field of BPM

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Geary A. Rummler.

Successful Six Sigma Deployment

Author(s):

Marvin Wurtzel

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

The vast majority of Six Sigma proponents agree to the fact that the key to Six Sigma improvement success is the building up of an effective infrastructure. An effective infrastructure is the foundation for the success of the organization in its implementation of Six Sigma. It is also clear that the success of Six Sigma lays on the projects selected and their link to the strategy of their organization and the effectiveness of the value chain processes.

BPMS Watch: BPMN’s Three Levels, Reconsidered

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Several months ago, I got an urgent request from OMG – the organization responsible for BPMN and other BPM standards – to give a short blurb I had written a permanent URL on my website. The blurb was a promotional piece for my BPMessentials training called “Three Levels of Process Modeling with BPMN.” OMG proudly proclaims that BPMN assumes no particular methodology, but the notion of using it at three specific “levels” was just something I made up when I launched my BPMN course, to describe its value to different audiences. Now OMG needed it as a “reference” for their OCEB certifi

Is ‘Business-Driven SOA’ the way forward to SOA Success?

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Why do most IT professionals when they talk of SOA talk about products not processes?

Millions of marketing dollars are spent by vendors. Consultants purport to be experts ‘delivering’ projects using SOA tools and methodologies. Yet, if SOA is successful in delivering business change why don’t we see measureable evidence of this change?

Why do most IT professionals when they talk of SOA talk about products not processes?

Three Fundamental Prerequisites for Transforming Your Government Enterprise

Author(s):

Ken Mullins

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

Experience has shown that major change initiatives undertaken by government agencies seldom succeed according to plan. Too often, expectations are frustrated, budgets are over-run, schedules are exceeded, and/or programs are abandoned. Why is this story written so often, after the fact, about so many government programs? From years of working with federal agencies on some of their toughest challenges, I have found that leaders tend to underestimate the difficulty of the journeys they embark upon, at almost every stage of their more complex transformation initiatives.

Customer Centric Behavior and the Business Architecture

Author(s):

Ralph Whittle

Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant

What kind of enterprise are your corporate leaders building and designing for the future? Are they building and designing a functionally centric, a product centric, a process centric or a customer centric enterprise? These are questions that I frequently ask my students in the Business Architecture (BA) classes that I teach for the BPMInstitute.