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Don’t Panic, It May be Simpler than you Think! Business Processes and Business Rules need not be Complex
Introduction:
Is SOA Governance a Confused Mess or Competitive Weapon?
The concern about SOA governance has ratcheted up as enterprises are aggressively looking for ways to get more value out of their existing services and resources (which is a perennial promise of IT solutions). In perusing the increasing commentary on the topic, it seems to me that SOA governance – what it is, its goals, its success requirements, its solution requirements, etc – is highly dependent on the perspective of the people involved.
The Business Architecture Ecosystem & Metamodel
Business architecture ties together a diverse ecosystem that represents your enterprise from a wide variety of perspectives. These include strategies, tactics and goals; business units; semantics and rules; capabilities, value chains and processes; projects and initiatives; and customers and suppliers. These business “artifacts”, along with the relationships among these artifacts, are the essence of business architecture. The complexity of most organizations is such that the business ecosystem cannot be readily visualized by the individuals managing and working within that ecosystem. By representing business artifacts in the business architecture metamodel, the ability to visualize complex business ecosystems becomes a reality.
Learn How the US Treasury Manages Consumer Complaints Using BPM
This webinar showcases how government agencies are using Business Process Management (BPM) to overcome the challenges of a shrinking economy, while still delivering, and improving, services.
In response to a heightened sense of citizen engagement, government agencies are striving to deliver improved transparency in addition to quality services. At the same time, shrinking budgets demand that agencies do more with less.
Do you know your BPMS Usage Patterns?
BPM is one of the key drivers for the success of your business. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) provide you with tools and technology to deliver the values of BPM. Effective enterprise deployment of BPMS requires an understanding of different usage patterns. An enterprise class BPMS must support these usage patterns, in addition to being scalable and highly reliable.It is important to understand these usage patterns and make sure that your enterprise BPMS meets all of them.
Improving Business Performance
Performance, whether on a stage of theatre or business, is all about “making it happen”. Whether a Shakespearean tragedy or strategic business initiative, the performance of the organizational unit is what produces results. The math is simple: One, someone writes the play (strategic plan). Two, everyone in the group rehearses their parts (departmental and individual performance plans). And three, the troupe orchestrates individual performances into a unified group performance (execution of tactical plans providing goods and services to customers).
BPMS Watch – Five Things They Left Out of BPMN 2.0
Last month I gave you five things to love about BPMN 2.0. This time it’s five they left out. As a member of the development team, I understand why they were left out. And as a BPMN educator and author looking to add value on top of the standard rather than just to summarize the spec, I’m glad they gave me room to do that.
Strategies for developing a Roadmap for your SOA initiative
There has been a lot of chatter lately about SOA failures, the “Death of SOA”, and Big SOA vs Little SOA. Many IT departments have been struggling to deliver the ROI that they promised their executive team when they raised the capital to start their SOA initiatives. There are two major reasons for these lack of desired results. First and foremost, is a lack of focus on architecture. Second is a lack of a well defined roadmap. Many, including myself, have written articles about the lack of focus on architecture. In this article I will provide a strategy for putting together a roadmap.
Is Your Change Management Program Impacted by Change Saturation?
Is Your Change Management Program Impacted by Change Saturation? Your Change Management program is in place and communications are going out regularly, but you find your associates disengaged, confused and very skeptical of the upcoming change. You talk regularly with your team and other associates, but you feel like you’re dealing with a disproportionate emotional reaction to each change-related communication that goes out. Do these situations sound familiar? If your Change Management initiative contains all the key components for success and you have been diligent with its implementation but still find the people within the organization unresponsive, you could be dealing with change saturation.
Business Process Management and Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing is changing the fundamental way in which information technology services are being delivered. It is also spawning a whole new series of terms and acronyms like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Business Operations Platform (BOP), Public Cloud and Private Cloud. It seems as though new terms are being coined every day. As both established and emerging vendors move into the Cloud Computing marketplace the definition of Cloud Computing continues to morph.
Rocks in the stream: Applying Lean to IT, HR and Accounting
Finding the Customer
Customer focus is a critical element in lean thinking. Do you set the pace of production to the customer demand rate (the Takt time)? Is the Voice of the Customer (VOC) used in product and service design? The answer is always an emphatic “Yes”. The customer is always critical to improvement activities.
The Business Architecture, Value Streams and Value Chains
Many companies are considering a Business Architecture (BA) initiative as part of their corporate strategy. While researching and analyzing the BA, they are rediscovering Michael Porter’s value chain. Many find this reawakening quite logical, while some may get confused between the terms; value chains and value streams. This article will provide an explanation and synthesis of these remarkable and enlightening concepts. First, I will clarify and define the basic terms so that I can explain their architectural relationships.
The Rule Driven Center of Excellence: Improving Requirements Engineering at the Internal Revenue Service
The Guidance and Outreach Office of the Business Rules and Requirements Management Division of the Internal Revenue Service contributed to and reviewed this article.
Architecting Enterprise Business Model
This is the second in a series of eight articles that should see the light of day on both BPMInstitute.org and SOAInstitute.org during 2009. It looks to the author like the perfect opportunity to build a profound methodological case for two fundamental parts of the modern Enterprise Development Methodology (EDM): Enterprise Architecture & Processes. The first such article, making the basic case for EDM, was just recently published on SOAInstitute.org1 .
Achieving Business Agility with SOA
You would think that for many SOA evangelists and practitioners the current challenging business climate would be the perfect opportunity to walk the walk on the main promise of SOA – business agility. Agility is defined as: “Nimbleness in the face of unexpected obstacles”. Well, we certainly have a whole bunch of those at the moment.
Although the vendors are pushing this value proposition heavily at the moment, the take-up is still hampered by a lack of real business success stories. And, of course, lack of budget.
“Bootstrapping” Your Company’s Productivity Program
Introduction:
You’ve just been asked by your boss to develop and implement a productivity program to reduce waste and improve quality. Several of the executives are retrenching into a defensive posture: preserve cash, freeze discretionary spending, cut operating budgets X% across the board, accelerate early retirements, layoffs, and sell off non-core assets. Others are advocating more investment in R&D, rolling out new products / services, and even rethinking the business model. Your company’s livelihood is at stake. The expectations for you personally are even higher.
Process Ownership and Governance; Paradigm Shift
After 3 decades of Total Quality Management, Process Reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma and now Business Process Management, it is mind boggling to observe that only a few companies have an excellent process Governance in place and consistently manage their processes.
It is certainly valid to ask ourselves why we are not doing better and what can we do to remediate to the situation. The literature from the ABPMP BPM CBOKTM to the different Gartner reports and our understanding of process ownership and governance has certainly improved tremendously over the last 5 years and yet we still count only a few companies that manage by process year after year.
After pondering the question for a while here are a few thoughts on the question and some suggestions on how to approach Governance and Ownership in a way that can lead to better results and a sustainable process culture.
The Dilemma of BPM
There are few business professionals today who do not know what Business Process Management is or do not have, at least a general idea of what it’s about. The number of articles and papers being written about BPM has increased at a rapid pace over the past five years to the point one cannot open a business magazine or newsletter without some reference to the tools and technologies that are available to make your organization truly process-centric.
Secret to Becoming a Lean/Agile Enterprise: Leaders Acting Well Together
Much of the discussion about collaborative methodologies like Lean, Agile and Design Build has, in the past been about creating continuous flow of value, team dynamics, technical practices and even the project management techniques required to get effective and acceptable products delivered and/or deployed. What teams in all environments quickly find out, however, is they are dependent on other organizational dynamics outside their purview, like securing customer involvement, issue escalation, resource allocation, even facility management becomes important.
BPMS Watch: Five Things to Love About BPMN 2.0
BPMN 2.0 is almost here. If all goes as planned, it will be voted on by OMG members in June. Assuming it passes, that doesn’t mean BPMN 2.0 is officially adopted and available in commercial tools, just that it has entered the “finalization” phase when tool vendors can start building it in. Even though the diagram notation of BPMN 2.0 appears little changed from previous versions, it represents a big step forward.
