If You Think Process Management is Difficult, Check This Out

One of my buddies is a skater(Street name of Don Ho) that rolled with the likes of Tony Hawk and the Dog Town Boys pointed this gem out. I keep trying to explain what I do for a living and how hard BPM is to get done right. It works for about 5 minutes and then he shows me some really difficult skater/surf moves. Well he pointed me to the video below. After you watch it, you will say "BPM is a piece of cake"  :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnfO15cAHE

A Wave of Distributed Intelligence is on the Horizon

I would encourage you to check out Intelligent Business Operations(IBO)  and the Intelligent Business Process Management Suite (iBPMS) in detail, if you want better business outcomes in a time to market fashion. One of the best ways to do that is to attend the iBPMS Expo in Chicago starting on October 14th. If you want a quick sound byte to explore intelligent processes and agents, listen to the interview below:

Image From www.james-sinur.com

The Future of Intelligent BPM is Now

http://bpm.com/interview-with-jim-sinur.html

You can read more by accessing Gartner research on the topic, read my blog and consider ordering the following book: http://mkpress.com/aoBPM/

Agents Have the Power of Intelligent and Dynamic Interchangeability

Agents are powerful in many ways. in this post I would like to highlight the interchangeability of agents. Before we progress to that key feature of agents, one needs to have an operating definition of an agent.  What’s an agent? 

Backing away from technology for a moment, the everyday term, agent, provides a starting definition: “one who acts for, or in the place of, another.” A software agent is a software package that carries out tasks for others, autonomously without being controlled by its master once the tasks have been delegated. The “others” may be human users, business processes, workflows or applications. See http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/09/harnessing-business-complexity-with.html

Agents, like SOA, have the ability to dynamically aggregate, orchestrate sequence of utilization and have focused actions. The similarities start to fade when one considers true interchangeability of agent types. 

Agents are not Limited to Software:

Agent interchangeability is quite heterogeneous. Agents can be software, but they can be skilled human resources, machines or process snippets that already exist. This makes agents quite useful in managing resources in real time and dynamic modes. If an agent resource is busy or not available, another form of the same agent can take the action on behalf of another. For Instance, if a human resource can't deal with a task in time, a machine intelligent agent can take the persons place with proper checks and balances. This is seen in unmanned aircraft. 

Agents are not Limited to Central Control:

Agents can self organize when necessary. The interchangeability can be managed by goals (desirable business outcomes) and constraints (undesirable business outcomes) independent of central control. This does not mean that agents can't play well in a centrally controlled situation, but agents add the extra dimension of autonomy and independence when desired. Agents can live in a mixed mode as well. This becomes important when complexity inhibits a centralized response. 

Agents Do not Have Limits to Collaboration:

People collaborate well with other people in their network and technologies collaborate well within their architecture and technical environments. Take them out of their designed and established environments and business limitations and timing incompatibilities start to emerge. Agents can go beyond traditional boundaries in that they can leverage excess capacity in human capital pools foreign to organizations. Agents can also collaborate across technical boundaries like no other technological architectures unless vendors put artificial limits due to revenue issues. 

Net; Net: 

Agents are quite flexible in their ability to interact and interchange with intelligence. For complex outcomes and processes, this is very desirable feature. 

Want to learn more?  http://mkpress.com/aoBPM/

Harnessing Business Complexity with Agent Based Processes

We all know that there are significant business benefits that come with BPM. Agility and significant business involvement have delivered both tangible and intangible benefits, but as scopes of processes and the intelligence of the processes increase there are limits. The maintenance of central control over all the resources, goals and behaviors becomes complex to manage. Now start adding the new opportunities and features of social, mobile, big data, poly-analytics and cloud, now the complexity starts increasing faster than ones ability to manage it centrally.

The Need for Agents in Process Activity:

Because agents can act on behalf or in place of a process, sub-process, a process snippet or a resource, the intelligence that has been trapped in the core centralized process can be set free with goals, desired outcomes, constraints and rules to act on behalf of a process or a process manager. This approach uses the divide and conquer approach to complexity. This same approach works in guiding software and human agents towards supporting ever expanding change and dynamic business opportunities and threats.

The Ability to Design a Process for Life is Waning:

The idea that one can design a process or a case that handles everything including future changes in goals and direction is dissipating quickly once process scopes and their goals expand. This is why dynamic processes and adaptive case management for knowledge workers are taking root quickly in today's world.

Net; Net:

Folks want more process benefits, so processes will handle more complexity and process patterns as a result. This can only be done with more intelligent processes and intelligent agents supporting these processes. These agents can be technology or skilled human capital that can be interchanged dynamically. Welcome to the new world :)


Additional Material:

For more on Intelligent Processes, See http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/05/measuring-cumulative-intelligence-of.html

For more on Agent Based Processes, See http://mkpress.com/aoBPM/

New Book on the Next Wave of Business Process Management Now Available

On July 24th, we announced a new book on the next wave of BPM  http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/07/announcing-new-process-book-bpm-next.html.

Business Process Management (BPM) has successfully delivered benefits over a long period of time and continues to do so, but as process scopes expand to meet the nexus of forces, BPM needs to be enhanced and extended in order to tame the complexity. The idea of having all the intelligence centrally managed and delivered is a challenging, if not impossible outcome. This book strives to provide insights and outline strategies for transforming current BPM approaches and technologies by harnessing distributed intelligence in the form of intelligent agent technology.

Great news, it is now available on to purchase now. Buy it now at bizanalyst

Great news, it is now available on to purchase now. Buy it now at bizanalyst


If you want a quick video tour, please click here  http://animoto.com/play/1TMn2CxJti9ay3JBVSnfXQ
If you want a quick audio tour, please click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz5UsMVCVJ0

Art Projects for 3Q 2013

It has been a hectic quarter with completing a new book with some strong authors and consulting. Despite all the new consulting activity and new volunteering efforts , I was able to finish some art projects. I was commissioned to complete a skate board by my buddy "Don Ho" Crist, who actively skated with Tony Hawk. It turned out pretty cool for Oil Paint on wood.

 My youngest daughter loves the Brooklyn Bridge, so I surprised her on her birthday with a special work printed on metal. This was a done with my new 24 inch HD WACOM board. She loved  "Sun Rise Bridge".

 I also want complete a fractal that was softer in texture and came up with "Dream Catcher"

 For a view of my whole portfolio, see www.james-sinur.com :)  Fractals are printed on metal and paintings can be on canvas or metal. 

Tibco Product Suite Potential Rated on the CPIQ

In May of this year, I documented a way to measure the cumulative intelligence of a process http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/05/measuring-cumulative-intelligence-of.html  and tested it out on all kinds of real processes (see list below). I tried it on simple processes and what I thought were innovative processes. I was asked by Tibco to rate the potential of their product family on the CPIQ. For that rating see http://www.tibco.com/blog/2013/09/03/tibco-products-support-intelligent-processes/. Keep in mind that that the CPIQ, in this case, rates the potential of using products in their full potential. It does not rate how easy it would be to reach that level.  

Traditional Applications and Processes http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/05/first-test-drive-of-cumulative-process.html

Smart Medical Process http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/05/smart-medical-process-rated-on-cpiq.html

Smart Retail Process http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/06/smart-retail-process-measured-on-cpiq.html

Smart Airport Processes http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/06/smart-ground-operations-processes.html

Smart Farm Processes http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/07/smart-farm-operations-processes.html

Jabil Circuit Inc., a Fast Growing Global Manufacturer, Incrementally Transforms Itself with Intelligent Supply Chain Processes

Imagine transforming a manufacturing organization that is growing very fast while maintaining completely satisfied customers. This is a risky proposition that is happening now at Jabil Circuit Inc. because of a culture change enabled by an intelligent business process management technology. Top management wants to move from a program based lean six sigma culture to a culture of 150,000+ problem solvers and innovators. This means that everyone needs to feel enabled for great results while super-charging lean six-sigma to a real time response focus.  IT will have to change along with the business from a utility to an enabler. See http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/07/incremental-transformation-is-here-today.html for an explanation of incremental transformation.

The Challenge:

The problem not only lies in the culture change, but the ability to enable rapid change in and around brittle systems. Leveraging doing by design and mistake proofing (Poka-Yoke in Kaizen thinking) in this speed of adaption and adoption without negative impact on customers will require a change in the way IT and business work together. How to leverage BPM around SAP and a global enterprise service bus(ESB) while making “shadow IT” legitimate.

The Solution: Partnering Around New Goals and an iBPMS:

The new goals need to be set to transform IT and its partnership with the business

The iBPMS provided Jabil with the tools to handle compliance and cooperation through localization with core inherited practices (Situational Layer Cake) and combine application layers into one platform. It also managed all the necessary technical ingredients for success in a real time Lean environment (Data Persistence, Process Modeling, Business Rules, Decision Making, User Interface, Metrics, Reporting) while providing enforcement of guardrails and standards.

The iBPMs also supplied the Lean Six Sigma needs of the following:

·        Process metrics are gathered automatically

·      Capabilities embrace Visual Management

·        “Design for change” makes Kaizen easier

·         Automated process controls are easier to Poka-Yoke

·         Browser-based tool eases IT deployment burden

Net; Net:

This aggressive use of culture change enabled by an iBPMs is paying dividends for Jabil as the organization continues to grow rapidly without customer issues that can’t be resolved at the “speed of need”

This is a highly summarized case study based on Jabil’s Success Using Pegasystems technology 

Don't Stop Believing in Change

Reaction to change is quite dependent on how we as participants believe. The secret sauce of change is how the aggregate of individuals respond to the change. Obviously culture, history and communication are crucial to the success of change. If the culture is stodgy, the odds are stacked against change success. If the organization has had a history of failed change, you have a big challenge. If  the communication of the new change is not targeted and not clear, good luck. I think "belief" is the bigger issue than all of these combined.

Belief in the Change Authority:

If the person(s) in charge of the change is someone who you feel has a handle on their job and has a reputation of success, it's easy to buy into the change. If the person(s) have either and unknown or mixed history, there will be a period where people will be watching carefully. Reputation and past history can play a key role here. A new face sometimes helps in this situation as they may get a honeymoon period.

Belief in the Motive of the Change Authority:

Belief about the motive of the person(s) who is charge of the change is crucial. If the change authority is viewed as having the best interest of the customers, employees, partners and business owners in mind, the change will be viewed as slightly positive even it it means some personal pain. If it is skewed heavily in one direction, there is great threat to the outcome of the change effort.

Belief in the Goals of the Change:

If the goals of the change seem to be on point with some known and visible measures of success in place ahead of time, the change has a good chance. If the goals are unrealistic, not just a stretch, you are fighting up hill to begin with for any given change. This is why incremental change towards transformation is a helpful aspect of business process management.

Net; Net:

Belief is the key ingredient to success, but the most important belief is the one that surrounds you. The result of the change, short or long term, really isn't as important as your belief about yourself. If you ever get confused about your worth and value, in the midst of change, remember the words of my personal favorite song. "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. It has gotten me out of many of a funk :) Ignore the 80's look, but listen to the words and feel the emotions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjzHMhBtf0

Additional Change Related Postings:

http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/06/people-change-is-bpms-roadblock.html
http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-ying-yang-of-change.html