There is a great deal of confusion in the business process management suite (BPMS) market.
Pick the Right Type of BPMS Solution
read more
It Takes Two to Tango: SOA and BPM – Part I
SOA and BPM are two buzzwords you hear or read about in every magazine (well almost all) you open, IT conference you go to, analyst or vendor you talk to. Also, a lot of discussions (or should we say gossip) are focused on the relationship between BPM and SOA. People are curious to know more on their relationship, on how long it would last, etc, the usual stuff you get to hear in the start of any romantic relationship. In order for us to understand the extent of their relationship lets take a closer look at their nature and characteristics and predict if they are meant for each other.
Collaboration for Innovation: Making Innovation Happen
There seem to be two roads to innovation; a high road and a low road, if you like.
The high road is to transform your organization into a learning, nurturing force that uses Systems Thinking to synthesize disparate ideas into what Fritjof Capra calls “emergent forms” – new ways forward that emerge from a primordial sea of barely restrained creativity.
The low road is to follow the example of such Empires as the Mandarin Chinese and Victorian British.
There seem to be two roads to innovation; a high road and a low road, if you like.
Business Architecture and SOA
To understand the relationship between Business Architecture and SOA, we first need to ask the question what are these two types of architecture? For a description of SOA, see my July SOAInstitute article “Key Components of SOA” at http://www.soainstitute.org/articles/article/article/key-components-of-soa.html. So the next question is “What is Business Architecture”? While there are many available definitions, here are a few that I found useful.
BPMS Watch: Go Beyond Checklists to Pick a BPMS
I’ve just finished up four new reports in my 2006 BPMS Report series: Lombardi TeamWorks, BEA AquaLogic BPM, EMC Documentum Process Suite, and Cordys Composite Application Framework.
The BEA report replaces Fuego; the others are new, bringing the total to ten, plus an overview report that explains the common evaluation framework and report format.
Rhode Island Devises a Blueprint for Change
Founded in 1643, the State of Rhode Island was the thirteenth colony to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Now known as the “Ocean State,” Rhode Island has approximately one million citizens. With 140 state and quasi-public agencies including 15 to 20 major agencies, the state has approximately 15,000 employees, with 10,000 in the executive branch. The state’s annual budget is around $6.5 billion.
In 2003, the state was running a budget deficit of approximately $180 million.
Case Study: Using ISO 9001 Quality Management Standards to Achieve BPM Objectives
The Logistics Management Division for NASA includes the Wallops Island Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters. It has four branches, 50 civilian servants, and 225 contractor personnel. The division has 12,000 Civil Service and contractor personnel. The flight project support operations are ISO 9001 certified, with the processes fully documented. For the institutional support services, the processes are documented in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The goal was to be certified by August, 1999.
The Changing Face of FBI IT
The mission for the FBI has evolved dramatically since 9/11. The FBI is transforming its IT systems to support counterterrorism, intelligence, law enforcement, and administrative missions. BPM is vital to the FBI’s continued transformation and evolution and provides the FBI with a cross-functional view of processes.
Web 2.0 and Brokered Web Services
Web services were created around the notion that it’s easier to discover and leverage somebody else’s service, rather than write your own from scratch. Also, it is much easier to create applications made up of many services, allowing change to occur at a pace faster than anything we’ve seen in the industry thus far.
The idea of Web services was to create a standard interface, programming model, description language, and a directory which would allow this to happen in and between very different systems.
Business Architecture: Where it fits in the Enterprise Architecture
Most organizations routinely overlook Business Architecture. Those organizations that do consider it seem to think of Business Architecture as something distinct and separate from Enterprise Architecture. It is not.
Enterprise Architecture is not about technology; it is about the enterprise—the whole enterprise. It is about the people: internal and external. It is about the business processes: strategic, core and support. And, it is about the technology that supports the people and enables the business.
