Ian Gotts from Nimbus has recently posted an article on Redux that talks about BPM and Cloud. A good read with a nice and crisp “Definitions” section that explains the term Cloud App in a way that I fully agree with.

For cloud solutions (including all aspects of BPM in the cloud) the sky should be the limit, but in reality there are concerns that I hear over and over again when speaking to companies about a solution like ARISalign:

* Our processes are our competitive differentiator and we want our data about them to be absolutely secure. No cloud solution can offer this kind of security

* We want to own operational control over systems that support our business

It seems to be pretty difficult to even start exploring cloud alternatives when these two items are brought up. I would think that customer data is considered sensitive information as well. Nevertheless many companies are willing to use Salesforce.com and something must have caused this mind-shift towards putting your customer data into the cloud.

What do you think were the main drivers for companies starting to feel that it is “OK” to put their customer data in the cloud?

Looking at the cloud benefits that are typically being discussed (cost reduction, greater flexibility, IT shift from maintenance to innovation, etc.) I am looking for the one piece that contributed mostly to the success of CRM in the cloud. Maybe the same driver will move BPM to the clouds as well?
 

Just posted a new entry on Reduxonline.com and sharing it as usual on our ARISalign blog too:

When we started working on ARISalign, we spent a lot of time thinking about who can potentially contribute value to a process improvement project and who should be involved as a result.

Business & Tech analysts, Process Modelling experts, developers and IT architects are certainly involved in most, if not all, BPM projects today - especially when it comes to process automation. But what about the people who participate in a process as part of their day-to-day job? They are the ones that know exactly on a detailed level how a specific part of a process works. Mr. Jones who reviews incoming orders can tell you the review criteria that are important and he can tell you what needs to happen next with the order. Ms. Smith who works at the airline desk at the airport knows what needs to be done when a customer wants to change a flight or upgrade their booking from economy to business class. This information is vital as you need to understand the detailed specifics of the as-is process if you want to be able to improve it.

How do you collect this information today? Is it all done by a business analyst or process expert that performs interviews with folks that work in the context of a process as described above?

Who, in your opinion, is this process participant persona? How would you describe it and what do you think are the biggest challenges in terms of involving that persona in the journey of process improvement?

Let me kick this off by sharing some of my thoughts. The typical process participant is:

* A business user, not a technical expert

* Not a process expert and as such not interested in BPM notations or process modelling

* Someone with subject-matter knowledge

* Typically tied up in day-to-day work that is directly relevant to the business and doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on BPM or process improvement

* Interested in what the outcome of this process improvement initiative is and how it is going to impact the current working routine

I am curious to see what others add to this list. Why am I even asking these questions? Because I think it is critical to understand who you are working with if you want to get more out of it than misunderstandings and frustration.

My weekly blog on reduxonline.com just got published:

Have you ever heard someone say something like “Hey, let’s not invite more than five or six people to our meeting next week. If we invite more we’ll just be unproductive anyways…”?
I have heard that many times before.

You could draw the conclusion that the saying “the more, the merrier” is only true for having a party, but not necessarily for getting things done. You could also come to think that “social” is the natural enemy of productivity.

I don’t think that either is true. I have participated in meetings with 20 folks and it was highly productive. Social does not mean to involve huge numbers of people anyways - it just means interaction between people (which could be just two or three as well). So social is not a productivity killer by definition.

The productivity killer is something else: Misalignment.
Misalignment can have different underlying drivers. Different people have different perspectives, different personalities, different personal goals and so on. This is the true challenge and yes, it multiplies by the number of people that are trying to get on the same page.

I wouldn’t claim that I have the silver bullet for eliminating misalignment, but there are a few things that I have observed in projects where we had a large number of people collaborating. This should get you started thinking in the right direction:

* You need a good project lead / moderator
* You need a solid framework that helps to guide the team (agendas, topic owners, deadlines, etc.)
* Use some common sense when deciding who and how many should be involved
* Don’t get hung up on technology - concentrate on what you want to achieve

Do you remember the times when student parties were organized by 20 different people and all of them contributed something else? All communication happened via phone or face2face and maybe some email - it was challenging but it worked…
You know what? Such parties are still being organized, only that social media and collaboration technologies are being used by students today simply because they make it easier to get the job done. It is quite funny that for “private” usage no one really starts a lengthy discussion about how the technologies could be used and if they should be used at all. Instead, folks concentrate on the actual subject at hand (the party) and just use whatever makes it easiest for them.
 

I just posted a new blog on reduxonline.com. You should go over there and check out the site, but for your convenience I am posting the text here as well:

“Social” has really taken off in the past year, hasn’t it? Everything seems to be social these days - no matter if it is networking sites, blogging communities or even Enterprise Software. I think that it was our team around AlignSpace, now ARISalign, who broadcasted the term during CeBit in 2009 in a big press release where we announced that we’d be building a Social BPM platform. A few other guys had similar ideas at around the same time and within months the term was established firmly in the market. Gartner has even published some brand new research on it.

Are we really seeing something new here? What does “social” actually mean and did we have it before the term was used all over the place?

Let’s start with a quote from the Wikipedia definition: “The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals). It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not […].

OK, in our context, let’s focus on the bit where the definition talks about interaction. Interaction can happen in many ways: Face to face conversations, telephone calls, email exchanges, sharing documents and editing them together, participating in discussion forums, instant messaging, etc. Does any of this sound like it has been just invented within the last couple of years? Not really. All of the above are mechanisms for interaction that have been used for a long time already - no matter if the context was personal matters or business topics. Human interaction or “social” is a natural thing for us to do and this is certainly not going to change.

The only thing that is new is the fact that platforms have emerged that try to bundle various interaction mechanisms and to make them really easy to use so that anyone can participate.

No matter if you like the term “social” or not - you are already part of what it means and you might as well use mechanisms that make interaction with others as easy and effective as possible in order to achieve your goals.

My goal for today is to set up a visit at a friend of mine in Amsterdam. Tomorrow it is going to be a brainstorm with colleagues about the next development sprint. I will absolutely use “social” for both.

In the expanding global economy, many corporations can have branches, departments and subsidiaries that are distributed across continents and time zones. Building efficient and productive teams with far-flung offices can be a challenge to managers.

While e-mail, chats and intranets help these companies keep in touch, newer social networking technology can add the ability for teams to work together on a single project simultaneously.

ARISalign incorporates advanced online networking tools that help management and front-line teams work closely together on process improvement projects, from any location on the globe.

Business process modeling that breaks down silo walls between distant offices and streamlines communications between teams can be a powerful solution to the challenges of long distance operations.

ARISalign uses familiar “Web 2.0” social network tools such as threaded discussions, file sharing and an interactive white board to enable remote collaboration on BPM projects.

Team members use a dashboard with interactive tools that allow them to change and edit work in real time. When developing the model of a company’s structure and processes, the model is built in an online white board, which can be added to, commented on and changed by members of the BPM team.

ARISalign can resemble both Facebook-for-business and an online learning class. Like online learning, an ARISalign BPM project can be accessed from anywhere, not just inside a certain campus. The collaborative white board is available 24/7 – team members in any location on the globe contribute to the model while at work in their own time zone.

When meeting together on a project, ARISalign users anywhere can set up a meeting from their dashboard and “attend” online, with visibility into live changes in the BPM model as other team members add to and improve it.

Users have familiar Facebook-type tools at their fingertips including live chat and threaded discussions. Team members can start a new project, and invite others to join. Administrators of the project can control a discussion and edit the contributions of other users.

In today’s far-flung business environment, the ability to work together as a single team focused on a single goal can add a competitive edge. When working on streamlining business processes to make an organization more competitive, the company that uses the ARISalign social network environment can work together anywhere, in real time, building consensus while improving their processes.