It's the process stupid

“We can’t solve today’s problems using same kind of thinking we used to create them.” Albert Einstein – how true!

At the end of 2006 I wrote a paper, and related blog which became known as the “Workflow Sucks” paper. I had reason to revisit the paper recently and it started me thinking about how things have changed in the past couple of years and what impact that has had on the “BPM” industry. My feeling was that I needed to revise the paper and start to review and reconsider some of the things I had said at that time.

Back then I tried to clear up a few “misunderstandings” by reiterating the fact that Business Process Management had its roots in Workflow technology and that many of the leading products were (and are), in fact, evolutions of the original forms processing packages. So there was no longer a need to debate what had become a moot point.

But the fact that most Workflow products were flawed, was, and still is, an issue – and is essentially why workflow never took off as many of us had predicted. The fact that most of the “market leading” BPM products have their origins in workflow ensured that the inherent problem in the gene pool rippled through to the new BPM species. So what was wrong with workflow? It's quite simple, the processes are too rigid.

Processes have to deal with the unexpected. This is not just about using a set of tools to deal with every anticipated business outcome or rule; we are talking about the management of true interaction that takes place between individuals and groups which cannot be predicted or encapsulated beforehand. This is because Business Processes exist at two levels - the predictable (the systems) and the un-predictable (the people).

Understanding the business processes exist at two levels (the Silicon and the Carbon) takes us a long way towards understanding how we solve this problem. The key point is to recognize that the unpredictable actions of the carbon components are not ad-hoc processes, nor are they exception handling. This is all about the unstructured interactions between people - in particular, knowledge workers. These unstructured and unpredictable interactions can, and do, take place all the time - and it's getting worse! The advent of Web 2.0, social computing, SaaS etc. etc., are already having, and will continue to have, a profound effect on the way we manage and do business.

My thinking at the time centered around what I called "Knowledge Intensive Business Processes" or KIBPM. KIBPM is, essentially Case Management – and my assertions at the time still hold true but things have happened, things have changed.

The Credit Crunch happened, the global recession happened, the cloud happened, globalization happened and the prefect storm happened. All bets were off!

These events are having, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the way we conduct business. But the particular “change” I want to look at here is the advent of the cloud and how Business Process Management will make the cloud a viable business tool.

The advent of cloud computing could have a greater impact on business use of IT than the PC revolution did in the 1980s. The flexibility and potential cost savings of using applications accessed via the web will fuel adoption across the board. There will be many ways in which the cloud will change businesses and the economy, most of them hard to predict, but one theme is already emerging. Businesses are becoming more like the technology itself: more adaptable, more interwoven and more specialized.

Furthermore, the take up of the cloud is going to have a profound effect on the way IT departments are accounted for. More and more of the expenditure will be seen as variable costs as we shift from a buy and own model to a pay as you go – and a shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure. This will also drive down the overall costs to the organization and make IT much more like a managed sevices provider. Furthermore, as we witness the inevitable drive to the cloud more business users will turn directly to on-demand cloud solutions to satisfy their IT needs. As a result IT’s dominance as the technology provider will reduce.

So what does it mean? – it means that it’s all about business services delivered on demand to the right place at the right time at the right cost. There will be an ever diminishing requirement for business users to fund the purchase and deployment of large enterprise applications – they will take specific services to do specific tasks when required.

This provides the business with improved ability to respond to or anticipate changing business demands and as a bonus, the organization becomes better fitted to exploit future business and computing opportunities. The downside is that the development is, more often than not, performed in isolation of the corporate needs and may run counter to corporate governance, standards and compliance issues. It therefore can be of limited value in the longer term.

This is where process technology will play a significant role. User driven development can be very disruptive and lead to anarchy. No control, no compliance, no ownership. Process enablement of cloud service will provide ownership, control and auditablity – making them compliant with the corporate demands without stifling innovation and change. This also sets the business free to mix and match existing premised-based applications like SAP, Oracle, and even early legacies with processes designed and run entirely on the cloud.

So instead of buying expensive software licenses and the requisite supporting infrastructure the eventual end users of the applications will access the processes and services they need when they need them - ensuring cost effective deployment and efficient project roll-out. The IT departments get what they need, the end users get what they need.

Process enabled cloud services will quickly become the ideal solution for those departments and organizations that need to develop and provision applications quickly and effectively at the lowest cost possible.

So does workflow still suck? Yep – for all the reasons given in the past, but it’s the only way we are going to be able to use the cloud for sustainable business advantage.