Business Process M*

One of the things that I've struggled with is the whole BPM thing. I've discovered over time that most people agree on what the BP part means, its the M that seems to hang people up. So, as I'm prone to do, I took a stab at describing how I see the M in BPM - both holistically and individually. Without further ado, M stands for:

• Modeling - Describing the business processes and understanding how they work together to accomplish the client process
• Management - Is the act of coordinating business processes and aligning/mapping the business models to the associated implementation(s)
• Monitoring - Tracking and understanding how processes are executing and the state of data flowing through the processes

The magic happens when you tie them altogether. You suddenly get the ability to create a full process lifecycle - understanding the business, operationalizing it and finally optimizing it as you see it in practice. Does it all work out in practice? Somewhat. LIke anything of this sort, BPM requires a real shift in the mentality of those undertaking the practice. Without shifting the culture, successes tend to be spotty, based around resources who are able to spot and subsequently take advantage of optimization opportunities as they arise (which should be easier to do with the right tooling, but that's a discussion for another day).