Where process isn’t a dirty word

I recently attended the Criminal Justice Management event in London and presented a panel discussion on the topic of process efficiency within UK government. The event schedule was quite varied, with subjects on Intelligence Led Policing, Enabling Communication through Interpretation and Translation Services, Improving Performance Management and Boosting Workforce Capability and powered by both process […]

Technology, not politicians, will rescue healthcare

Watching the political theater in the US Capitol one has to wonder if there may not be a legislative solution for the American healthcare system. It seems as a country or government that we’re unable to agree on the approach or even on the scale of the problem. But there has to be something more […]

Taking a look at Business Process Management: The Next Wave

These are crazy times for change, threatening to disrupt so much of what we’ve worked so hard to achieve over the past decades of information technology and business process. The toughest part of disruption is knowing that what took so much energy to figure out can be so quickly plowed under by something smarter, faster […]

Process is data and data is process

We’re a funny lot. For years we’ve been talking about data and process as though they were two different things. Guess what…they’re not. Process involves the activities of getting work done and data both describes process and is also the beginning and end points of work. We consume data in processes and we produce data […]

The case for a BPM jack of all trades, master of…one…or two

When a good friend and I exchanged a few tweets back and forth the other day, it began like the usual exchange of views over some of those typical news items that the #bpm timeline throws up once in a frequent while. But the ‘twonversation’ with my twitter counterpart – a venerable thinker in technology, […]

I am a weirdo. I don’t belong here.

…that’s right. I don’t belong here. In fact, what the hell am I doing here? Before you jump to the wrong conclusions, those aren’t my words. You’ll know whose words they are in just a minute. But before that, I want to spend a moment to talk about something that seems to be (but probably […]

Is it even possible to design intelligent process?

Earlier today, I read something that made me snort on my afternoon coffee. Not just because it was funny, but because, to me it had some additional insight that I thought was worth sharing with you, especially when you think about Intelligent Processes and how they can be crafted for a BPM initiative. Here it […]

How could anyone confuse BPM and event processing?

I know, right? How could anyone make that mistake? The fact is that more than a few corners of the marketplace know very little about the difference between BPM (business process management) and what’s typically called CEP (complex event processing). These two concepts are very different and understanding those differences in today’s business climate will […]

Don’t punish me for using your process

I just had a 2 and a half hour hole blown in what had started out as a massively productive day. Indeed, I’m so frustrated as I write that I’m going to grab a quick bite and try to squeeze in a run during lunch hour.  Here’s the story and here’s why it matters for […]

Be much more efficient by defining your org’s work habits

How often do we think about the way we usually operate at work? Whether we’re performing an informal five-step process for evaluating a new proposal, or setting priorities for managing our time, how often do we think about consistency and efficiency? Our ability to improve the ways we do things depends on defining and shaping […]

A new user’s assessment of Asana’s productivity tool

This review was a collaboration between myself, Ron Webb, and John Tesmer (@johngtesmer). One of the teams I work on recently started a test of Asana, a product touted as “…the next big step in productivity”. We were looking for tools to help us manage the work we do on a regular basis. I’ll put […]

Escape process’ death valley, or how to tell a cat from a washing machine

Ken Robinson recently delivered yet another great talk on the state of American education.  He pointed out that countries that take a more organic approach (e.g. Finland) perform much better overall than those who take a mechanistic, standardized approach (e.g.  The United States with “No Child Left Behind”, emphasis on testing). Remarkably, the organic approach, […]

The CIO is driving IT toward a cliff

There’s an increasing perception across the enterprise that the role of the CIO as we know it won’t survive the decade. This isn’t anecdotal evidence, either, as respected institutions like the Harvard Business Review, the Economist and others are publishing studies that show that the average CEO is unhappy with the status quo of their […]

A different type of shark encounter

If you have been bitten by the process bug, like me, then you always see parallels between business, process, and everyday life. It drives my wife, mother, and friends crazy, but I always see them, and it is usually in the context of how I can make the process better at the airport, church, restaurant, […]

Google and the art of nudging your customers into a purchase

There’s nearly unanimous belief that email blasts and other one-way messages are becoming less and less effective. What’s less clear is how to manage the customer path to purchase with a serious of nudges. It all makes sense, right? We approach customers from a combination of directions and with a combination of messages, but where […]

Making a case for enterprise case management

Your processes are in a mess. You have no idea how much work actually comes into the organization. You want to invest in a Case Management tool but just don’t know where to begin. The vendors all pitch forward with suggestions and want a few coins for a decent licence sale so it makes sense […]