How BPMN Misses the Target

Posted on March 18, 2019 by kswenson

One bright hope for business process modeling, developed between 2003 and 2010, was the standard known as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). This would be the way to model businesses! But today, most people use a simple flowchart in everyday use. Why is that?

Just this week I received an email from a professor in Germany with some process models and with the apology: “Sorry, these are not in BPMN or any formal notation.” Well, they usually aren’t and it is time to start asking they question: why? Continue reading →

Models and Organizations Don’t Mix

Posted on March 16, 2019 by kswenson

This another installment in the series pointing out the problems with using a hand-drawn business process model. The last post was how a business process model fails in the promise to be easier than programming. Even if you get past that issue, and hire programmers to make the models, a static model is not really suitable for a human organization anyway. Continue reading →

Time to Stop Using Business Process Models

Posted on March 14, 2019 by kswenson

Whew! It has been a few months since my last post in October on my way to the EDOC conference in Stockholm. Presentations and papers went very well there, and I have been working on an entirely new concept. It all centers around realizing that having to tie an organization down to a fixed, manually drawn process is the main problem. Instead, a completely new approach is needed for supporting business processes: Emergent Synthetic Processes.

Continue reading →

Adaptive Case Meeting in Copenhagen

Posted on October 1, 2018 by kswenson

I will be participating in this presentation / discussion of new trends in Adaptive Case Management and other support for knowledge workers in Copenhagen on Oct 12. Morten Marquard will show the latest developments in DSR graphs, Thomas Hildebrandt will talk about their EcoKnow project, and I will be introducing the new subject of “Emergent Synthetic Processes”.

Name: Mastering the unpredictable? Effective, Co-created and Compliant Adaptive Case Management for Knowledge Workers
Where: University of Copenhagen
When: October 12, 2018 from 13:00 thru 16:00
Price: Free if you sign up in advance and you show up

The meeting will be in English. There will be lots of time for questions and answers. It should be a very good discussion, so if you are in the area, I hope you can make it.

Industry Templates and Process Re-use

Posted on September 28, 2018 by kswenson

In most BPM RFP’s there is a request for access to industry templates to allow for re-use and to get a head start. Most BPM vendors have some offering. The question is: are these of any value at all?

Continue reading →

What if the new Standard breaks the old tests?

Posted on July 19, 2018 by kswenson

Would you release a product to the public before you run the tests? Whether you are manufacturing, or software, or agriculture, or anything, if you have a set of tests, you would run the tests before providing the final product to the pubic. Makes sense, right? The world of technology standards is different. Continue reading →

RPA / BPM Implementation Strategy

Posted on May 22, 2018 by kswenson

There is a broad misconception that RPA about “business process” by itself. I have heard people say that they were going to switch from BPM to RPA. That is strange because the capabilities are quite different. It makes sense to use RPA and BPM together, and sometimes you can use one without the other, but only to solve different problems. Continue reading →

DMN TCK Turns Two

Posted on April 20, 2018 by kswenson

Attending bpmNEXT conference this week. It was here, two years ago, that we decided to start the DMN TCK effort. How far have we come? Continue reading →

Agile Best Practice: Start with the Empty

Posted on April 13, 2018 by kswenson

A co-worker on an agile project was showing me a feature he was perfecting, and it was looking pretty good with features to add and remove various settings as per the design. I wanted to try it. He said “sorry, the create function is not implemented yet.” It got me thinking…. Continue reading →

Joining the DMN TCK

Posted on April 3, 2018 by kswenson

The DMN TCK is a group of people united around a single desire: we want to see DMN succeed as a decision modeling paradigm. We want it to really work, and not simply be another passing fad. We want transparency of what the particular implementations can and can’t do, and we want an independent way to verify vendor claims. Do you have a vested interest in DMN? Maybe you should consider joining the TCK team to reduce your risk, and to assure the success of the DMN marketplace. Continue reading →

Thinking Matters

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