This is the final post on the problems of business process models for automating work, and one that sums it all up: hand drawn business process models simply are not agile enough.
Business Process Models are Not Agile
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Tag Archives: notation
How BPMN Misses the Target
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
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
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.
BPM 2010 Keynote
I just sat through the BPM 2010 keynote speech given by Phil Gilbert which I thought was worth a quick note here.
He was asked to talk on the future of BPM, but clarified that he would really just focus on the the next decade with three main topics: Continue reading
BPMN vs. professionals, 2.0
Last week brought us a vigorous debate about the role of BPMN, where I took the controversial position that “BPMN 2.0 is no longer for Business Professionals“. Adam Deane collected quotes from the major contributors. Sandy Kemsley calls it “The Great BPMN Debate of 2010” and her post is a very fair summary of the debate, but missing one important aspect of it: what is a typical “business professional” and what do they desire? Continue reading
BPMN 2.0: no longer for Business Professionals
Jim Sinur in his post BPMN for Business Professionals: Burn Baby Burn points strongly to the conclusion that BPMN is simply not suitable for business users. I am not surprised as this has been a topic of the case management crowd since March (see Is the Checklist mightier than the Model?). Continue reading
Searching for BPMN / XPDL Incompatibility
For you who read this blog on occasion, please help. I am looking for any valid BPMN diagrams that can not be represented as standard XPDL. Many people understand that XPDL is a superset of BPMN, meaning that everything from BPMN can be represented as XPDL, while the converse is not necessarily true. There are, however, a few vocal opponents who claim that XPDL can not be used to store BPMN.
OK. Both BPMN and XPDL are complex subjects. Continue reading
Model Portability Landmark
WfMC announced last week the BPMN Model Portability Validation test. This is a test that certifies that a BPM diagram, of a specified complexity, can be accurately exchanged between tools that have passed the test.
The test starts with a diagram that incorporates all the required BPMN elements. Continue reading
Model Strategy & Performance
In an earlier post, I introduced the concept of a “Model Preserving Strategy” versus a “Model Transforming Strategy” and defined them as two approaches that a BPMS can take in the lifecycle of a business process. I then posted a couple of situations where the Model Preserving Strategy is a better choice, but it is not always a better choice. This post is dedicated to those situations where the Model Transforming Strategy shines.
The main reason for transforming a model into another form, is to realize performance improvements. Continue reading
Thinking Matters 