Say it aint Silo May 4, 2009
Posted by workflow in BPM, BPM Applications, Business Silo Management, Business Silos, workflow.Tags: Business Silos, Silos, workflow
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Much of what we do in the BPM/Workflow space has to due with bridging the gap between business silos within organizations. All businesses of a certain size have them, and in the majority of cases they contribute to inefficiency. However since all businesses have them, are business silos not always a bad thing. Therefore what should you look for to determine when bridging a silo is just, a bridge to far.
Silos come into being for a number of reasons like: companies or generally hierarchical in nature, they may have had mergers and acquisitions, poor planning or just different requirements. Sometimes silos are formed instantly but generally they form over a period of time.
So when is a silo a good thing or at least not all bad?
Well in some cases similar IT systems may be replicated in various degrees within an organization but due to different requirements these may be a requirement. This could be related to the general cultural or geographic requirements of a silo.
Silos provide a level of security. They intrinsically act like firewalls.
Finally there is the possibility of information overload. Putting all the information in one place when the majority of information and features might be visible but inapplicable across the business silos is unwise.
It is important to consider when developing BPM applications what the negative effects will be for technology with respect to silo bridging. It is also important to consider the political effects as well but that is a blog for a different day.
BPM Standards (Here we go again) November 19, 2008
Posted by workflow in workflow.Tags: Ecosystem, Standards, Technology, workflow
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There is a debate going on about BPM standards. Two most recent articles were written by Ismael Ghalimi and Rhashid Khan. They discuss the merits of having a BPM Ecosystem. This ecosystem is based on interoperability standards that span across vendors and BPM related technologies and applications. The ecosystem provides “a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms(biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical (abiotic) factors of the environment.”
In these articles (http://www.bpmlab.org/2008/11/07/developing-a-true-bpm-ecosystem/
http://leadershipbpm.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/the-bpm-ecosystem-2/) they discuss what the ecosystem should be and its use of standards.
The thing about standards in IT is that they are very hard to agree on. There are a few reasons for this:
1) There is no central organisation akin to the IEEE like there is for Electrical Engineers that governs the industry. In BPM the organisations that come up with these standards are loosely defined. If we had a central figure with near dictatorial powers then perhaps they could make this happen.
2) In engineering standards are the key to everything they do. The same amount of discipline is not installed in the average IT professional. There are many “cowboy coders” but there are not cowboy engineers. Due to it being a less regimented culture to begin with there will be less standardisation and fewer people who follow the standards.
3) There is no real punishment for not observing standards like there is in engineering disciplines.
4) It is very simple for someone to invent a new “standard”. They can also easily modify an existing standard and call it something else.
5) Microsoft (the company who provides alot of the underlying technology on which many BPM vendors rely) will always follow standards but only upto a point.
Mr Ghalimi and Khan seek to illustrate how the use of standards or lack of use of standards will improve the industry as a whole. However I think that without a very strong governing body in place and strong cultural shift this simply will not happen so the argument is a bit academic. If there is to be a standard that everyone agrees on it is a long way off and may only come about through consolidation and not agreement.
Revenge of the Workflow / BPM keywords November 10, 2008
Posted by workflow in workflow.Tags: BPM, website analysis, workflow
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A while ago I went through the list of several Workflow / BPM vendors homepages. I listed a few of the words that were often found among them. I figured this was a somewhat unscientific was to determine what were the types of things that potential clients would be looking for in BPM products. I have since gone back to my survey and added a few more sites. Here are my results for key words that appeared on 30% or more of the websites.
| achieve |
| application |
| automate |
| based |
| better |
| BPM |
| business |
| capability |
| change |
| collaborate |
| compete |
| complex |
| control |
| cost |
| customer |
| define |
| deploy |
| design |
| efficient |
| enterprise |
| environment |
| execution |
| fast |
| finance |
| help |
| implement |
| improve |
| information |
| integrate |
| intelligent |
| management |
| modeling |
| monitor |
| optimise |
| performance |
| process |
| productive |
| project |
| rapidly |
| resource |
| service |
| software |
| solution |
| streamline |
| system |
| task |
| time |
| user |
| work |
| Workflow |
One thing I noticed absent from the list was acronyms for things like BPMN, BPEL or OMG.
