IT gets easier in the Big Easy

The following are excerpts from the recently published "BPM for Dummies: Software AG Special Edition" by Kiran Garimella, Michael Lees and Bruce Williams (Wiley Publishing):

Business Process Management (BPM) is a set of methods, tools, and technologies used to design, enact, analyze, and control operational business processes. BPM is a process-centric approach for improving performance that combines information technologies with process and governance methodologies.

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With BPM, you can automate the execution of many process tasks that may have previously been handled manually. You can combine new and existing services to do this. For tasks that still require manual handling, BPM will coordinate the workflow and direct action by notifying people and presenting them the information they need to perform their work.

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BPM provides visibility into the state of current processes, and extracts the key metrics that are important to how that process affects the business. This way, you can judge how effective your processes are now, and then design processes that will improve performance against these metrics.

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Because BPM enables shifting the bulk of IT effort from sustaining support to solutions development, and because solutions are composed of orchestrated services, IT staff (and particularly business analysts) elevate their roles from IT practitioners to process engineers. Most IT shops have many “code-heads” who just want to write computer code. Unless you’re a software development company, this isn’t your core competence. Over time, train your IT developers to become more process-centric, and enable some of your developers to become process engineers.