Articles

Practical SOA management (end-to-end performance and problem resolution)

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

With IT Operations worried that SOA performance management is teetering on the brink of chaos, can they find anything to love about SOA?

There is a lot to love about the flexible solution design approach that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) represents. SOA facilitates discoverable and reusable software services, which developers love because they need not recreate existing code. Indeed, all sorts of software services, from browser widgets to serious business assets (IBM’s SOA catalog for example) are now easily downloadable.

The Human Performance System

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The human performance system (HPS) is a model that describes the variables influencing the behavior of a person in a work system. The HPS has been used by performance analysts and others for some 40 years to diagnose and even predict the likely behavior of human beings in given performance situations. The earliest version of this model was created in the 1960’s by Geary Rummler and Dale Brethower .

Business Decision Management – Part 1

Author(s):

James Taylor

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and CEO and Principal Consultant, Decision Management Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Organizations adopting business process management approaches often find that a process-centric approach risks assuming that only two basic components must be coordinated – existing systems and tasks performed by people. The problem with this is twofold.

Firstly, many existing systems are extremely “dumb” – they store data, manage it and regurgitate it on command. These “legacy” systems have been built to support the largely stable business of the past rather than to cope with today’s dynamic business environment.

Insight and Ideas

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Almost everyone is familiar with the famous Edison quote: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”. To know much about Edison’s life, is to know that was certainly true for him – and many other creative individuals when you take the time to learn how they worked. Yet, there is still a strong sense among many that great ideas come to the gifted in the way lightning strikes, unpredicted and unexpected.

Insights as Idea Sources

In my experience, great ideas more likely come from great insight.

Business Architecture: Coming of Age

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

What is business architecture? If you ask ten business architects, you’re likely to get ten overlapping definitions clustered, to varying degrees, somewhere around the correct answer. But what is that answer?

SOA Watch: Don’t Let the Vendors Drive Your SOA

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

So, why are organizations looking towards their “comfort vendors” and “comfort technologies?” It’s a matter of path of least resistance and lack of education.

Path of least resistance because the relationship is already established, and you don’t have to go through the hassle of getting to know new players, or many new players.

BPMS Watch: Ten Tips for Effective Process Modeling

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The BPMN specification presents lots of technical definitions and rules, but it does not teach you how to create process models that are effective in their primary mission – maximizing shared understanding of the as-is or to-be process. To do process modeling effectively, you need to go beyond the spec and learn a basic methodology, best practices, and specific diagram patterns to use in common situations. To illustrate the point, here are ten tips for effective modeling in BPMN.

The Secret Weapons That Lean Provides for BPM

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

Ever notice that executives can call attention to a problem but they don’t know what it takes to get it fixed? In contrast, workers have lots of ideas of how to fix things, but they don’t have the authority to get improvements made. And conversations between the two groups are too constrained or conflicted to drive corrective action. To make matters worse, neither group seems to know the whole process and be able to determine how changing one part might impact another. In short, we have trouble finding both the forest and the trees.

Realizing the Strategic Promise of SOA Requires Master Data Management

Author(s):

Tom Dwyer

Editorial Director and current Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) represents a more flexible approach to building IT solutions. Combining SOA with other complementary technologies and approaches further enhances the ability to build more agile solutions. These solutions are easier to change, provide improved access to time-critical information and are more aware of – and responsive to – business events throughout the value chain.

ERP, Old IT and the Rise of Something New

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Complex and proprietary ERP systems symbolize the final evolution of “Old IT”. They are the embodiment of a frame of mind that is inherent in the culture of the industrial economy and its great invention – the assembly line. That mindset attempts to organize every activity down to the lowest levels of detail. It makes rules and regulations for everything and then tries to run each activity over and over, faster and faster without changing anything. This is how you get greater and greater productivity at lower and lower costs; this is what we call efficiency.