Chris Adams Responds to: Gartner’s Article by Jim Sinur

In the article titled "BPMN for Business Professionals: Burn Baby Burn," Chris responded:

I have to agree with Jim here.

I recently returned from NYC where I had a conversation with a very frustrated CIO new to his company. One of his first challenges was to settle the internal havoc and chaos in the company regarding how their flagship process was to be executed. This is an enterprise process spanning multiple departments and included the company’s sales, marketing, professional services, and executive teams.

He thought he was doing the company a service by finally documenting the process visually….and he invested in the BPMN notation to do this. He presented the map to the company, stating proudly that the enterprise process was finally documented and in visual format. Unfortunately for him, all of the business people in his office simply took the BPMN representation as “pseudo-code”, and rather than the people argue over the actual flow of the process, they asked a million questions about the shape and icons used. He was resigned to having to go back to the drawing board and “simplify” the model.

This is a true example to me where the B in BPM must be respected….in fact, it is the first letter in BPM. Business people do not want to learn another application, much less a process notation. They want to either make more money, get their day-to-day job done faster, or make their own job easier….and they want to do this in the context in which they are already accustomed.

While BPM can ultimately lead the horses to water….it cannot make them drink.

To read the article and additional commentary, click here.

Relevant Links:

Chris Adams Responds to: "Stalking and Capturing a Business Process" by Dan Woods

Who Is Drive The BPM Initiative In Your Company? IT, Business, or Both?

Chris Adams

VP Product and Technology

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