Paul Harmon, Executive Editor of Business Process Trends, writes monthly email Advisors that are emailed FREE to anyone who signs on as a member of the BPTrends community. Advisors provide up-to-the-minute analysis and opinion on current issues, trends and directions. All BPTrends Advisors are listed here in chronological order, beginning with the most recent issue.

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• Processes vs. Projects
  Paul Harmon - July 27, 2010
  There has been some discussion on our BPTrends LinkedIn Discussion Group on whether a process is a project. Here’s our take.
  

• What Can Enterprise Process Work Accomplish?
  Paul Harmon - July 13, 2010
  Most organizations are focused on redesigning and improving their core processes. A growing number, however, are working to integrate and manage processes throughout the entire enterprise. What’s involved in this type of enterprise process work?
  

• BPM and Business Analysts
  Paul Harmon - June 29, 2010
  Who should be doing business process work at your organization? Is a business process professional just another term for a business analyst? Does it include the managers responsible for value chains and lines of business, or Black Belts, or human performance analysts? Here are some thoughts on possible process practitioner roles and how they line up with existing jobs in today’s organizations.
  

• Once More: What is BPM?
  Paul Harmon and Celia Wolf - June 15, 2010
  Given lots of recent discussion about what BPM is, or ought to be, we have decided to take another crack at it. It’s important, after all, to establish a context and a boundary for our BPM discussions.
  

• Preparing for Change
  Paul Harmon - May 25, 2010
  We are all vaguely aware that environmental changes may affect our businesses. The volcanic ash over Europe in April was a stark reminder of just how suddenly radical change can occur. Business process practitioners should be planning today for similar radical change in the future.
  

• The Changing Business Process Market
  Paul Harmon & Celia Wolf - May 11, 2010
  In the heady days of 2004, it seemed to many as if BPM was simply a name for a new kind of software that companies would use to organize their processes. Today, BPM means a lot more than that, and it is increasingly obvious that BPM is merging with several other technologies to provide a new vision of how organizations can be organized and managed.
  

• A Green Analysis of a Value Stream
  Paul Harmon - April 27, 2010
  Value Chains were popularized as a way of understanding how much a process cost and to identify which activities added what to the overall value of the outputs. In this Advisor, we focus on how we can use similar concepts to determine the environmental costs of core business processes.
  

• BPMN for Business—The Role of the Customer
  Paul Harmon - April 13, 2010
  BPMN (Business Process Management Notation) is one the more popular process flow notations used by BPM practitioners today. Business people using BPMN have concerns that are different from IT and they commonly extend the core BPMN notation to support those concerns. A good example is the key role of the customer swimlane on BPMN diagrams.
  

• Management, Strategy, Processes and Petroleum
  Paul Harmon - March 30, 2010
  In a recent article about how British Petroleum turned itself around at the beginning of this decade, the author focused on strategy and personality and didn't say much about process. As we read the article it seemed to have so much to say about process that we decided it was worth retelling the story from a process perspective.
  

• Process, Strategy Maps and the Balanced Scorecard
  Paul Harmon - March 16, 2010
  We recently attended a workshop on strategy mapping and it caused us to consider exactly what the role of process should be in strategy mapping and scorecard development. In this Advisor, we present our thoughts.
  

• BPM Conferences in 2010
  Paul Harmon - February 23, 2010
  In this Advisor, we will review some of the BPM Conferences scheduled in 2010 that will provide opportunities for learning about current tends and directions, methdologies and practices and technologies and standards in BPM.
  

• What's New at BPTrends
  Paul Harmon - February 16, 2010
  In this Advisor, Paul Harmon, BPTrends Executive Editor and Analyst and Celia Wolf, BPTrends Publisher, discuss some new initiatives scheduled for launch in Q1, 2010.
  

• BPM and Humility
  Paul Harmon - January 26, 2010
  In recent discussions with a group of business managers, we found ourselves confronted with some serious questions about why BPM hasn't been a more effective solution to the problems their businesses are facing. In this Advisor, we will attempt to identify the types of problems we believe BPM can solve and those they cannot - hopefully, with the right balance of enthusiasm and humility.
  

• The Year Ahead
  Paul Harmon - January 12, 2010
  We've been writing about developments in business and computing for almost three decades and we've been focused on developments in the BPM world since 2003. In this Advisor we will look forward to some of the developments we think are likely to occur in 2010.
  

• What Saves Money Most?
  Paul Harmon - December 29, 2009
  In this Advisor, we present a systematic look at some approaches to saving an organization money and the types of actions that are likely to save the most money while providing the largest overall improvement in organizational performance.
  

• Complex and Dynamic Processes
  Paul Harmon - December 15, 2009
  Various standards groups and vendors continue to work toward definitions and descriptions that put boundaries on complex and dynamic processes. Here's how we think about complex and dynamic processes and why we think understanding them is important.
  

• So How Did You Do This Year?
  Paul Harmon - November 24, 2009
  It's been a difficult year for lots of organizations. If you are asked to stand up sometime in the next few weeks and report on the state of BPM in your organization, what might you say?
  

• Change Management
  Paul Harmon - November 10, 2009
  It's one thing to analyze a business process, identify bottlenecks and then propose a new, more efficient process. It's another thing to get management and the employees that must implement the process to accept the proposed changes. Change management is a soft, but critical technology for making change more likely and less painful.
  

• BPMS and Organizational Process Sophistication
  Paul Harmon - October 27, 2009
  BPMS vendors are finding that it can be difficult to sell BPMS software tools to organizations that aren't knowledgeable about their company's business processes. Vendors are increasingly recognizing that they need to invest in helping companies model their processes and develop basic process monitoring systems and management capabilities before they can expect to see large scale roll-out of sophisticated runtime process management tools.
  

• What is Your Process Problem Model?
  Paul Harmon - October 13, 2009
  Explicitly or implicitly, every process practitioner and every process methodology makes assumptions about the nature of business process problems. The Process Problem Model organizes the way a practitioner thinks about his or her goals and defines the things that the practitioner considers when he or she diagnoses a problem.
  

• Reflections on an RFP
  Paul Harmon - September 29, 2009
  Companies often issue requests for proposals from BPM consultants. Sometimes it is clear what the organization is looking for but more often than not, it is not. The confusion is due, in large part, to the lack of a common understanding of terminology in the BPM community. In this Advisor, we take a look at a typical RFP and interpret it from the perspective of the IT organization that created it and the BPM consultant who was asked to respond to it.
  

• BPM Software Products
  Paul Harmon - September 15, 2009
  The software market has changed considerably over the past several years and BPTrends is preparing to publish a new BPM software product report that describes the BPM software market as it stands in the fall of 2009 and presents reports on the leading BPM software vendors.
  

• BPM in Greece
  Paul Harmon - July 28, 2009
  I recently attended a KPMG BPM meeting in Greece and was very impressed with the sophistication of the BPM projects presented. This Advisor provides a glimpse of some of those projects, and clearly demonstrates that BPM is alive and prospering in Greece.
  

• Are You a Business Analyst?
  Paul Harmon - July 14, 2009
  Many business managers think that all Business Analysts are just Software Analysts focused on defining the requirements for software automation projects. Recently, however, there is a broader role emerging for BAs-one that might be called Business Process Practitioner which extends beyond software automation to include a focus on improving the performance of business processes across the enterprise. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when thinking about the role you would like to play.
  

• Business Process Problems
  Paul Harmon - June 30, 2009
  Here's a quick overview of the kinds of problems that business process practitioners confront. A process redesign team ignores any one of these problem areas at its peril. Incomplete redesigns come back to haunt the team that thought they could solve a specific problem while ignoring other key problems.
  

• Customers and Business Processes
  Paul Harmon - June 16, 2009
  Some theorists would like to separate customers from processes, imagining that processes are operations and that customers are outside the scope of process redesign. This is a dangerous idea that can seriously undermine the value of process improvement efforts. It is especially inappropriate in organizations that focus on providing services.
  

• Porter, ERP and BPMS
  Paul Harmon - May 26, 2009
  For years, ERP systems have been defying Porter's dictums on strategy. BPMS seems likely to remedy that in the coming decade. In this Advisor, we look at the relationship between competitive advantage, standard ERP processes, and BPMS.
  

• Artistic Processes
  Paul Harmon - May 12, 2009
  In March, two Dartmouth business school professors published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, "When Should a Process Be Art, Not Science?" The article raised some interesting points, and we'll consider them in this Advisor.
  

• Deming, IT, and BPM
  Paul Harmon - April 28, 2009
  Although those working in different traditions often imagine that they have invented something unique, it's not unusual to find different folks using the same approach under a different name. Here, we look at the histories of three such approaches - IDEF0, the Deming Workbench, and Burlton's Scoping Diagrams.
  

• Three Companies, Three Projects
  Paul Harmon - April 14, 2009
  Organizations differ greatly in terms of their process maturity and based on this maturity they approach their BPM initiatives differently. Here is a quick summary of three organizations and three different process projects that illustrate some of the differences.
  

• Empowering Employees for Tough Times
  Paul Harmon - March 31, 2009
  Many companies are responding to the economic downturn by laying-off employees. As they do so, they risk a negative impact on their customer service capabilities, creating unhappy customers and potential loss of business. At the same time, they are asking remaining employees to take on more responsibility. It's a good time to create an opportunity out of a necessity and to focus on empowering employees.
  

• The OMG/BPTrends BPM Case Study Competition Winners
  Paul Harmon - March 17, 2009
  This month, at its Washington DC technical meeting, the OMG is presenting awards to winners of the OMG/BPTrends BPM Case Study Competition. The winners were selected based on how well they demonstrated an understanding of how business process techniques could be used to improve their organizational performance. In this Advisor we reflect on the applicants, the winners and their projects.
  

• Value Chains and Other Processes
  Paul Harmon - February 24, 2009
  Value Chains have been around since the mid-eighties and the OMG is currently considering an RFP for a Value Chain standard. Meanwhile, companies like IBM have suggested that Value Chains are passé and that companies should focus on Value Networks instead. Most of the discussion is rather confused. Here's our take on what Value Chains are and why they are still important.
  

• Business Models vs Business Processes
  Paul Harmon - February 10, 2009
  Much is being written and discussed lately regarding how executives should be prepared to change their business models to take advantage of new opportunities. It's important, when considering business models, to distinguish between changing an organization's business model and changing its processes.
  

• Six Sigma, Lean and BPM
  Paul Harmon - January 27, 2009
  In this Advisor, we look at the relationships between Six Sigma, Lean and BPM. All three sets of methodologies are commonly used to improve business processes and they are increasingly used in conjunction with one another. A quick overview of their co-evolution provides some valuable insights for companies planning for 2009.
  

• What to Expect in 2009
  Paul Harmon - January 13, 2009
  We begin the year with a high level overview of what happened in the BPM market in 2008 and some thoughts about how the field is likely to evolve in the year ahead.
  

• Quick Wins
  Paul Harmon - December 23, 2008
  As times get tough, BPM practitioners will be challenged as they are called on to find ways to reduce costs. Quick Wins refers to changes that can be made without too much analysis or effort. Here are some heuristics you can use to help save money fast.
  

• Geary A. Rummler
  Paul Harmon - December 09, 2008
  Geary Rummler was my hero. I always thought he was the ultimate process guru. This Advisor will provide readers with a brief overview of Dr. Rummler's contributions to our understanding and practice of process change.
  

• How Did Toyota Do It?
  Paul Harmon - November 25, 2008
  Just after World War II when Taiichi Ohno first started working at Toyota, he was told it took 9 Japanese workers to do what a single US worker could do in the same period of time. Ohno set out to change all that and we are all familiar with the results. In the past quarter, Toyota, which was already the most efficient and most profitable auto company in the world, became the world's largest producer of automobiles. In this Advisor, we briefly consider how Toyota managed to achieve this position.
  

• BPM in a Tight Economy
  Paul Harmon - November 11, 2008
  Clearly, most companies are preparing for a recession in 2009. For some, this means cutting travel and training budgets. For others, it means reevaluating or eliminating major programs. In this Advisor we consider how BPM is likely to fare in the months ahead.
  

• Outsourcing and Modeling
  Paul Harmon - October 28, 2008
  In this Advisor, we consider the problems companies face when they decide to outsource a process that they don't understand as well as they should. In essence, we suggest how companies that are not process-focused should approach a quick, high-level modeling task.
  

• Michael Hammer
  Paul Harmon - October 14, 2008
  In this Advisor, Paul Harmon provides his perspective on the contributions of Michael Hammer during the last two decades of his life.
  

• Business Process, BPMN and Business Rules
  Paul Harmon - September 23, 2008
  Business process rules and business process models are two sides of the same coin. Business process analysts often forget this, to their peril. If we want to describe processes so business managers can understand and improve them, we need to pay as much attention to rules as we do to processes.
  

• System Dynamics and Business Processes
  Paul Harmon - September 09, 2008
  This is the first Advisor in which we discuss a process modeling and analysis tool that members will find useful in analyzing the kinds of problems organizations will face as they plan for shifting energy markets and greenhouse emissions.
  

• The Greening of Process
  Paul Harmon - July 29, 2008
  Everyone is talking about the high cost of energy and about global warming. In the next few years, businesses throughout the world are going to be struggling to reduce their energy consumption. Some will advocate the use of expensive new technologies. A recent study suggests that most companies would be wise to approach the problem as a process redesign problem.
  

• Processes, Rules, and Managerial Responsibility
  Paul Harmon - July 15, 2008
  We take a very broad look at the idea that executives bear responsibility for what their organizations do. Every executive is, of necessity, a process manager - especially when the process starts producing unacceptable results. Even executives who don't think of themselves as process managers must have a thorough understanding of how things get done inside their organizations, the relationships among the core processes and the performance measures.
  

• What Do Business Process Managers Manage?
  Paul Harmon - June 24, 2008
  There has been a lot of talk about the importance of process management. What exactly do process managers do? What skills do business process managers need, and what results should we expect from a program to improve process management?
  

• Fujitsu's Process Discovery Technology
  Paul Harmon - June 10, 2008
  Fujitsu has just introduced a new automated approach to process modeling. It's impressive and it reminds us of how much better BPMS products can be. At the same time, it can lead to some interesting insights into what business analysts actually do.
  

• BPM in Europe
  Paul Harmon - May 27, 2008
  Here's a quick update on BPM activity in Europe. A lot is going on in Europe this year. European companies are as active as North American companies in process, but there are some interesting differences in their approaches.
  

• Measurement and Services
  Paul Harmon - May 13, 2008
  The April 29, 2008 Advisor on Process Measures could have easily caused readers some confusion, especially in light of the April 15, 2008 Advisor on the difference between Manufacturing and Service processes. In this Advisor we reconsider process measures in light of our comments on Service processes.
  

• How Do You Measure Processes?
  Paul Harmon - April 29, 2008
  There are lots of ways to measure business processes. In this Advisor, we'll take a very broad look at what can be done and suggest some things to consider when you approach process measurement.
  

• Manufacturing and Service Processes
  Paul Harmon - April 15, 2008
  Manufacturing processes really do differ from service processes. This is important when you consider that most BPM methodologies were developed when people were focusing on manufacturing. In this Advisor, we'll consider what the differences are and why they are important.
  

• Lean versus Six Sigma
  Paul Harmon - March 25, 2008
  After we last wrote on Lean Six Sigma we had several readers write to argue that Six Sigma and Lean were, in fact, quite different. In this Advisor, we look at both and consider how the two approaches complement and contrast with each other.
  

• BPM, BPMS and SOA
  Paul Harmon - March 11, 2008
  In the BPTrends BPM Market Survey we published in February, we found that most practitioners discriminate between BPM, which is a broad approach to process change, and BPMS, which describes a software approach to automating process management. They also increasingly link BPMS and SOA. In this Advisor, we consider how they all fit together.
  

• Moving from Level 2 to Level 3
  Paul Harmon - February 26, 2008
  Surveys suggest that most organizations are CMMI Level 2 organizations and that they want to move to Level 3. In this Advisor we'll consider how some organizations have done this in the past and what's involved in planning the transition.
  

• Process Governance
  Paul Harmon - February 12, 2008
  At every meeting we run into more questions about process governance. In some cases, the question comes from someone who is interested in how we train individual process managers, and in other cases the question focuses on how to set up and manage an enterprise governance program to support processes. Here's an overview of what seems to be happening in the area of process governance.
  

• BPM vs. Process Improvement
  Paul Harmon - January 29, 2008
  We believe organizations ought to balance their emphasis on Business Process Management and on Process Improvement. An organization that puts all its emphasis on continuous improvement and ignores strategic and redesign considerations is setting itself up for a disaster. Similarly, an organization that only focuses on BPM and ignores continuous improvement is going to get a sub-optimal result. You need both.
  

• The Year Ahead
  Paul Harmon - January 15, 2008
  In the first Advisor of 2008 we will take a look in our crystal ball and suggest what we think the most important BPM themes are likely to be during the coming year.
  

• BPM at the end of 2007
  Paul Harmon - December 18, 2007
  Most readers probably became aware of Business Process Management sometime after 2003 when BPM started getting lots of attention. In this year end summary, we will take a very high level view of what has happened in the last five years and hint at what might happen next.
  

• Organization Analysis vs. Organization Transformation
  Paul Harmon - December 11, 2007
  Most business process methodologists talk about enterprise change. It's important to distinguish between the, more or less, objective analysis and redesign most companies undertake and what is involved in a real organization transformation effort.
  

• Business Process Methodologies
  Paul Harmon - November 27, 2007
  There are a number of Business Process Methodologies available to companies that want help in approaching process change. In this Advisor, we provide an overview of the leading, public BP methodologies.
  

• A New Type of Activity
  Paul Harmon - November 20, 2007
  In the first edition of Business Process Change I suggested that business managers diagramming high level processes might sometimes find it useful to discriminate between three types of activities: (1) activities performed by employees, (2) activities performed by software applications, and (3) activities performed by a mix of people and applications. Recently, I encountered a fourth type that is worth noting - an activity that is performed by a group and can't be precisely specified in advance.
  

• Enterprise Modeling
  Paul Harmon - October 23, 2007
  As some Business Process Modeling tools are absorbed by BPMS vendors, others are declaring themselves Enterprise Modeling tools. What exactly is Enterprise Modeling and how does it differ from Business Process Modeling?
  

• Using Balanced Scorecard to Support a Business Process Architecture
  Paul Harmon - October 16, 2007
  Many companies use Balanced Scorecard, or some variation of it, to organize their performance measurement and management evaluations. With only a little extension, Balanced Scorecard can become a key element in a Business Process Architecture.
  

• Thoughts from the OMG's 2007 BPM Think Tank
  Paul Harmon - September 25, 2007
  In late July, thought leaders concerned with BPM standards met at the OMG BPM Think Tank to consider the state of BPM standards. Here's a quick summary of their discussions.
  

• The State of the BPMS Market
  Paul Harmon - September 18, 2007
  The BPMS market is definitely consolidating. During the last five months, Software AG bought webMethods, TIBCO bought Spotfire, IBM bought TeleLogic, and Metastorm bought Proforma. We argued that 2007 would be the year that everyone recognized the relationship between BPMS and SOA. Similarly, we believe that 2008 will be the year that everyone recognizes the important relationship between BPMS and BI. Thus, while the market is consolidating, it is also expanding and growing in new ways.
  

• Exploring BPMS with Free or Open Source Products
  Paul Harmon - July 31, 2007
  Some BPMS vendors are offering free versions of their products to help companies learn about the technology. In addition there are some open source BPMS products. In this Advisor we look at what options are available for an individual or company that wants to explore BPMS prior to making a major investment.
  

• An Overview on Some Business Process Methodologies
  Paul Harmon - July 17, 2007
  Every group that's working on process change seems to describe their approach in a slightly different way. In this Advisor we suggest a broad view of what's involved in process change, and then suggest how the different methodologists have tailored their approaches to focus on different aspects of process change.
  

• Value Nets and Value Chains
  Paul Harmon - June 26, 2007
  A growing number of analysts are advocating that companies consider the use of Value Nets and are comparing and contrasting them with Value Chains. IBM consultants often refer to Value Nets as Business Component Models (BCM). In this Advisor, we consider both Value Chains and Value Nets and suggest why both are needed.
  

• Innovation and Process Change
  Paul Harmon - June 19, 2007
  This Advisor will take a look at Innovation. What is the relationship between Business Process Change and Innovation? An article appearing in the June 11, 2007 issue of Business Week suggests that 3M's Six Sigma program may have reduced 3M's ability to innovate. Is this likely? What is Innovation anyway? How should companies with Six Sigma programs react to the current interest in Innovation?
  

• The OMG Moves Ahead on BPDM, BPMM, and a Finance Framework
  Paul Harmon - May 29, 2007
  The OMG Technical Committee met in April and launched several new business process initiatives, including a new effort on notation and the BP Metamodel, a BP Maturity Model and a business process framework for finance. In this BPTrends Advisor we will discuss the OMG's existing and evolving standards and the OMG's upcoming BPM Conference: BPM Think Tank 2007.
  

• BPM and Project Management
  Paul Harmon - May 15, 2007
  There's process management, which is associated with the day-to-day management of processes, and then there's BPM Project Management, which is required every time a company undertakes a major project to improve a business process. In this BPTrends Advisor we consider some of the things a good BPM Project Manager needs to do.
  

• Who Brings What to the Party?
  Paul Harmon - April 24, 2007
  Suddenly, everyone agrees that business and IT will come together to organize and collaborate to improve company processes. It sounds great, but we need to be sure we identify what each group will bring to the party to assure that process initiatives are planned, designed, implemented and managed to optimize corporate performance.
  

• What's Happening With BPMS?
  Paul Harmon - April 17, 2007
  This Advisor provides a quick overview of the BPMS market - What's happening in the vendor community? What BPMS applications are being developed? And, what's happening with BPEL and BPMN?
  

• Model the Customer Process
  Paul Harmon - March 27, 2007
  Here is a powerful idea that can help you pull together a group of senior managers to have a discussion of how your company is performing. Don't begin by modeling how your business does its work - begin by modeling the process your customer goes through to interact with your company (and your competitors too, for that matter).
  

• Process Maturity Models
  Paul Harmon - March 20, 2007
  We hear more about maturity models all the time. Most people associate them with CMM, audits, and a five stage model of organizational development. Now, the OMG is considering adopting a Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM). A closer look at this maturity model suggests that it can function as a methodology for organizational transformation.
  

• What is a Management Process?
  Paul Harmon - February 27, 2007
  Many analysts routinely define processes as core, support or management processes. Several business frameworks specify management processes. In this Advisor, we will discuss the nature of management processes and consider who should be responsible for them.
  

• Systems Analyst, Business Analyst, BPx
  Paul Harmon - February 20, 2007
  The current interest in BPMS is likely to turn the business analyst into a business process expert. At least that's what SAP has proposed. In this Advisor, we explore this idea and speculate on the future role of the business analyst.
  

• Once More: Porter on Competitive Advantage
  Paul Harmon - January 30, 2007
  Michael Porter described the importance of the value chain and argued that companies could only achieve competitive advantage by linking a good strategy with highly integrated value chains. In this Advisor, Paul Harmon reviews why Porter's ideas are still your company's best bet for a prosperous 2007.
  

• The Year Ahead
  Paul Harmon - January 23, 2007
  In this Advisor, Paul Harmon and Celia Wolf consider the BPM market in 2006 and speculate on the major developments we expect to dominate the BPM scene in the coming year.
  

• Six Sigma and BPM
  Paul Harmon - December 19, 2006
  Six Sigma is going through more changes today than at any time since it emerged in the 1980s. The revitalized Six Sigma movement is exploring Lean and BPM and generally reinventing itself. Anyone working on process change in a company with Six Sigma should be excited by the opportunities this creates.
  

• How CEO's Think
  Paul Harmon - December 12, 2006
  At the recent Shared Insights BPM conference in Boston, there was a lot of discussion about how business executives think about business processes. In this BPTrends Advisor, we offer our own view of how business executives approach process management, organizational design and performance improvement. We face a major challenge as we continue our efforts to convince the executive suite of the value of a process approach.
  

• Business Process Standards
  Paul Harmon - November 28, 2006
  Standards take time and effort to create. Sometimes they are widely adopted and are a tremendous help, and at other times they are largely ignored. In this Advisor, we look at the whole range of standards being developed for the Business Process community and speculate on some of the likely winners and losers.
  

• Knowledge Workers, Experts, and the Analysis of Knowledge
  Paul Harmon - November 21, 2006
  Analyzing and improving the performance of skilled knowledge workers isn't getting any easier. Luckily, a lot of people are focusing on the problems and new technologies are becoming available to help practitioners. In this Advisor, we'll consider a few of these new technologies.
  

• Business Performance Management Keeps Evolving
  Paul Harmon - October 31, 2006
  Evolving in parallel to Business Process Management and BPMS, Business Intelligence (BI) vendors have continued to use the term Business Performance Management to refer to providing performance information to senior executives. Recent consolidation moves suggest that this segment of the market is evolving rapidly.
  

• The OMG, Process Metamodels and Now - Process Maturity
  Paul Harmon - October 17, 2006
  The OMG continues to expand its efforts in the business process standards arena. It has wrapped up its Rules and Business Process Modeling Notation standards. At its September meeting in Anaheim, it not only reviewed its business process metamodel standard, but considered a business process maturity model.
  

• The BPMS Market and the Majors
  Paul Harmon - September 27, 2006
  The BPMS market continues to heat up. One sign of this is the recent move by IBM, SAP, and Microsoft to define BPM for their respective communities. Clearly the majors are still tentative, but they are beginning to establish a presence in the BPMS market.
  

• Getting Senior Executives Involved in Business Process Management
  Paul Harmon - September 19, 2006
  Everyone says you ought to involve senior managers, but it isn't that easy. Several BPM programs have lost the support of senior management, even as they were succeeding. We need to think harder about exactly what BPM is about and why senior executives are reluctant to embrace it. And then, we need to determine what we can do to demonstrate the value of a BPM approach to improving the overall performance of the enterprise.
  

• The Management of Processes
  Paul Harmon - July 27, 2006
  Some companies are creating systematic, top-down Process Management Systems. Others only focus on Process Management when they are trying to improve business processes. Process Management is critical to corporate BPM success and should be treated in a systematic manner.
  

• Alternative Approaches to Process Analysis and Modeling
  Paul Harmon - July 19, 2006
  There are a number of process analysis models that are designed to focus on more complex human interactions. One example is the RAD approach of Oulds and Harrison-Broninski and another is the Closed-Loop Business Interaction Model of Winograd and Flores. Both are useful in special circumstances, but neither replaces a basic workflow diagram.
  

• The First Big BPMS Failure
  Paul Harmon - June 20, 2006
  Every new technology is acquired by some teams that aren't knowledgeable enough to properly apply the technology to appropriate situations. Thus, it is only a matter of time until we read an article describing a company that acquired a BPM Systems product and spent a few million dollars to achieve a notable failure. I figured I'd beat reporters to the punch and describe why this is inevitable.
  

• Six Sigma and BPM
  Paul Harmon - May 30, 2006
  BPM and Six Sigma practitioners continue to struggle to determine how the two approaches to process can be integrated most effectively. Given the investment that many organizations have in both approaches, arriving at a common approach is imperative.
  

• BPM Methodologies and Process Maturity
  Paul Harmon - May 16, 2006
  There are a number of BPM methodologies available today. Most were developed when companies' business process work was relatively immature. As companies have become more mature, newer methodologies are being developed to support more sophisticated BPM efforts.
  

• A Single Instance of ERP
  Paul Harmon - April 25, 2006
  In recent discussions with business people engaged in business process work, the goal of standardizing ERP continues to play a major role in many discussions. Most companies use ERP, and most have different versions to support different processes in different locations. Getting the processes standardized so that the company's ERP software can be simplified is a major driver of many business process projects.
  

• The OMG and BPM
  Paul Harmon - April 18, 2006
  There are a number of international standards bodies working on business process related standards. The OMG, following its merger with BPMI, has emerged as the most important group working on BPM standards and their BPM Think Tank scheduled May 23-25, 2006 in Arlington, VA. will be one of the most important standards meetings this year.
  

• Process and Strategy
  Paul Harmon - March 27, 2006
  In a Nov-Dec 1996 HBR article on strategy, Michael E. Porter described the idea of Activity-System Maps as a graphical approach to assuring an organization's strategies and processes are truly aligned. It's a technique worth thinking about.
  

• Market Consolidation
  Paul Harmon - March 21, 2006
  BEA's acquisition of Fuego this month is only the latest in a series of business process acquisitions. A trend toward consolidation has definitely begun and there will probably be some other acquisitions before the year is out.
  

• SOA and BPM
  Paul Harmon - February 28, 2006
  While business managers talk about business processes, IT managers talk about Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). In many ways, they are simply two sides of the same coin, and both business and IT managers need a working knowledge of how the two conceptual approaches complement each other.
  

• Process and Innovation
  Paul Harmon - February 21, 2006
  Lots of people are talking about Innovation and lots of books are being published on the topic. It's something most BPM practitioners will want to study and make use of in 2006.
  

• Value Chains vs. Process Silos
  Paul Harmon - January 31, 2006
  We've recently talked with several people about how they have organized their processes and we worry that some companies may be creating process silos while losing the broader vision of an integrated value chain.
  

• The State of Business Process in 2006
  Paul Harmon - January 17, 2006
  In this Advisor, we provide a brief overview of the key developments in BPM in 2005 and suggest some of the things that are likely to happen in 2006.
  

• Core, Management, and Enabling Processes
  Paul Harmon - December 27, 2005
  The distinction between core and support processes has been around for at least two decades. Some of the newer approaches divide support into management and enabling. However it's done, it's important to be sure that process modeling addresses both the core and the support processes.
  

• Organizing to Learn More About BPM
  Paul Harmon - December 20, 2005
  For the last couple of years, as business process has received more attention, groups of practitioners have been working to arrange local meetings for those interested in discussing BPM face-to-face. In the US, the primary group has been the ABPMP (Association of Business Process Management Professionals). In Europe, the BP Forums in the Netherlands and Belgium are playing a similar role. If you want to meet with others to talk about BPM, here's what's coming.
  

• CMM and BPM
  Paul Harmon - November 29, 2005
  A variety of efforts are underway to define business process maturity models. A maturity model can help your organization think about where it is and where it is going.
  

• Standardizing Business Process Notation
  Paul Harmon - November 15, 2005
  There are standard workflow notations emerging, but alternatives continue to proliferate. Isn't it about time to standardize on one workflow notation and use it throughout the business community?
  

• ERP, CRM, and BPM
  Paul Harmon - October 25, 2005
  There have been a number of interesting developments, this year, in the ERP and CRM markets. In this Advisor we consider just how close ERP and CRM are to the current BPM movement, and then speculate on what might happen in the future.
  

• The OMG and BPMI
  Paul Harmon - October 18, 2005
  The OMG and BPMI have formally merged and their future direction began to emerge at the OMG's technical meeting in Atlanta in September. Here's our take.
  

• BPM, BPR, Six Sigma and BPMS
  Paul Harmon - September 27, 2005
  The Business Process Management market includes a number of segments. In this Advisor we estimate the relative size of the Business Process Redesign (BPR), and Six Sigma market segments and compare them to the BPM Software (BPMS) market segment.
  

• The VCG and the SCC
  Paul Harmon - September 20, 2005
  We have been continuing advocates of business process frameworks as an approach that speeds the development of enterprise architectures and performance measures. At the moment two groups, the Value-Chain Group (VCG) and the Supply Chain Council (SCC), are each working on general business frameworks. Each has merits and you might want to support one or both.
  

• Business Rules
  Paul Harmon - July 26, 2005
  The relationship between business rule systems and business process modeling methods is complex and can be confusing. Most companies are interested in both approaches and are trying to figure out how to integrate business rules and process-based approaches.
  

• The OMG-BPMI Merger
  Paul Harmon - July 12, 2005
  The Object Management Group (OMG) and the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) have merged and are working out the details of the relationship. The merger has some risks, but it also has the potential to accelerate the movement to useful business process standards.
  

• Building Bridges for Interoperability
  Paul Harmon - June 28, 2005
  Proforma, a popular modeling tool, and several BPM Suite vendors, have joined to form a new consortium and have announced a new Common Interchange Format (CIF) designed to facilitate the exchange of business process models between business modeling tools and BPM Suites. We expect that most companies considering BPM development will find this consortium very encouraging.
  

• The US Government's Performance Reference Model 1.0
  Paul Harmon - June 21, 2005
  Some of the most innovative work on business architecture is being done by the US government agencies as they seek to implement the Clinger-Cohen act. Any BPM manager interested in corporate architectures should keep up to date on these developments.
  

• Enterprise Transformation
  Paul Harmon - May 31, 2005
  There is a movement afoot in the Six Sigma community to integrate Six Sigma, Lean, Business Process Frameworks, and Business Process Management efforts. It's a welcome development that should be broadly supported.
  

• BPM Systems
  Paul Harmon - May 17, 2005
  The BPM Systems market continues to grow vigorously as new applications are announced and new vendors enter this already crowded market. In this BPTrends Advisor we try to summarize the state of the BPMS market in the spring of 2005.
  

• Sarbanes-Oxley: The Next Phase
  Paul Harmon - April 26, 2005
  Most companies are currently scrambling to complete their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance projects. Once all the documentation has been submitted, the next step is the audit to determine whether or not the documentation is in compliance with the guidelines. Is your company ready?
  

• Managing Business Processes
  Paul Harmon - April 19, 2005
  Organizing mangers to manage processes takes time and effort, but it provides a big payoff. How well organized is your company's business process change management program?
  

• Process Change Patterns
  Paul Harmon - March 22, 2005
  There are many ways a company can approach the redesign and improvement of a business process. This BPTrends Advisor provides a brief overview of the range of options every manager faces.
  

• The Creation of Business Process Standards
  Paul Harmon - March 08, 2005
  Any large company is concerned that BP methodologies and tools generate results that can be shared across the enterprise. To facilitate consistency and communication, standards are created. In this BPTrends Advisor, we'll consider the various business process standards efforts currently underway.
  

• Service Oriented Architectures and BPM
  Paul Harmon - February 22, 2005
  The whole idea behind creating a stack of SOA modeling layers, from SOAP to BPEL, was to make it possible to organize web services as business processes. In this BPTrends Advisor we'll consider the current state of service-based BPM and think about what the future might hold.
  

• BPM Governance
  Paul Harmon - February 08, 2005
  Companies are increasingly concerned about how to organize to manage a business process centric enterprise. It varies from one organization to another, but there's a growing agreement regarding some of the best practices.
  

• BPEL and BPM
  Paul Harmon - January 25, 2005
  There's a lot of confusion about the role that BPEL and similar standards will play in the emerging BPM market. In this BPTrends Advisor, we try to clarify things a bit.
  

• Centralizing Control in the Decentralized Company
  Paul Harmon - January 11, 2005
  Companies are becoming more decentralized, both as a result of opening offices and plants throughout the world, and as a result of outsourcing many of their operations. To help manage this, a corporate business process architecture is a must.
  

• Business Process Trends in 2005
  Paul Harmon - December 21, 2004
  We observed a number of interesting trends emerging in the world of Business Process and Business Performance Management in 2004. In this BPTrends Advisor we discuss some of the most significant trends of the past year and predict some of the major developments we expect in 2005.
  

• What BPTrends Readers Are Concerned With
  Paul Harmon - December 14, 2004
  We are preparing to publish a major BPM survey in early 2005, but decided to give everyone a first look at what our members and readers are telling us they are doing, thinking about and concerned with.
  

• Aligning Six Sigma and BPM
  Paul Harmon - November 30, 2004
  There's been a lot of talk at BPM and Six Sigma conferences about aligning Six Sigma and BPM. We think it is an important trend and in this November Advisor we discuss the differences, commonalities and convergence of these two approaches to BP Change.
  

• BPEL Application Servers
  Paul Harmon - November 16, 2004
  IBM, Oracle, BEA, Microsoft, and SAP all seem intent on creating BPEL servers. How is this going to affect the BPM market?
  

• From Saving Money to Realizing New Opportunities
  Paul Harmon - October 26, 2004
  Every internal BP group spends some of its time focused on cost saving initiatives and some of its time focused on improving and developing processes. As global markets continue to change rapidly, maintaining a balance between these activities is an important and difficult challenge.
  

• Report from the Delphi BPX Conference
  Paul Harmon - October 12, 2004
  We spent last week co-presenting the BPX Summit with the Delphi Group in San Diego. This Advisor reports on the events and activities at this important and successful conference.
  

• Business Process Outsourcing
  Paul Harmon - September 28, 2004
  BPO is getting a lot of press. This BPTrends Advisor discusses some of the fundamental issues worth thinking about when considering this important issue.
  

• The OMG Continues Its Work on Business Process Standards
  Paul Harmon - September 14, 2004
  The latest OMG Technical Committee meeting was held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on the 23-27th of August. This BPTrends Advisor reviews the standards the Business Enterprise Integration (BEI) Domain Task Force is working on. We had hoped that some of these standards would reach final form at the meeting, but the deadlines for final submissions and voting were delayed until later in the fall or early next year.
  

• Business Processes Lifecycles and ROI
  Paul Harmon - July 27, 2004
  This BPTrends Advisor presents a brief discussion of the basics of process lifecycles, process phases, and ROI, and what it implies for those working to facilitate process change.
  

• What Lifts Productivity?
  Paul Harmon - July 13, 2004
  Productivity is the key to making more goods and services available to more people at less cost. It is what makes the worldwide rise in living standards possible. In spite of its importance, economists still debate over what drives productivity. In this BPTrends Advisor we consider some new research that suggests it is a balance between technology and human performance.
  

• ISPI and Human Performance Improvement
  Paul Harmon - June 29, 2004
  This BPTrends Advisor focuses on the ISPI and Human Performance Improvement. HPI is a much under appreciated aspect of business process change and in this Advisor we consider the many ways in which the International Society for Performance Improvement has contributed to our understanding of HPI.
  

• The Importance of Six Sigma
  Paul Harmon - June 15, 2004
  In May, Michael Flaherty, of Reuters, wrote an article criticizing Six Sigma. Like many popular articles of its kind, it contained some fair criticisms, but then went on to draw a number of inappropriate conclusions. In this Advisor we provide a more accurate assessment of Six Sigma and the current role Six Sigma plays in business process change, and we report on our attendance at the recent ISSSP Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, AZ.
  

• Modeling Organizations
  Paul Harmon - May 25, 2004
  This Advisor discusses process and organization diagrams and notations, and discusses the relative merits of standardization.
  

• The BPM Continuum
  Paul Harmon - May 11, 2004
  There is a natural relationship between BPM languages, tools, and suites. This month's BPTrends Advisor describes a continuum that clarifies the basic relationships among them and suggests what you give up for what you get.
  

• Supply-Chain Council Update
  Celia Wolf - April 27, 2004
  The Supply-Chain Council held their World North America 2004 Conference and Expo in late March in Chicago. This Advisor reports on SCC 2003 accomplishments and new initiatives and developments planned for 2004.
  

• ABPMP Chapters Becoming Active
  Paul Harmon - April 13, 2004
  The Association of Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Business Process Management practitioners. This BPTrends Advisor discusses the growth of the ABPMP, the establishment of new chapters and their recent and planned activities, and provides information for those interested in becoming members.
  

• Business Process Notation
  Paul Harmon - March 23, 2004
  This BPTrends Advisor provides an overview of the status of business process notation and predicts likely future directions and developments.
  

• The Evolution of Six Sigma
  Paul Harmon - March 09, 2004
  This BPTrends Advisor discusses Six Sigma and the increasing role it is playing in the evolving BP market.
  

• XML BP Languages: An Update
  Paul Harmon - February 24, 2004
  This Advisor provides an update on our 2003 report on efforts to create XML Business Process Languages and considers the role that the new BP notation, BPMN, might play in this rapidly evolving area.
  

• BPM is NOT Just About Technology
  Paul Harmon - February 17, 2004
  In this BPTrends ADVISOR we restate our commitment to provide our members and readers with a wide variety of perspectives on all aspects of Business Process Change and describe why we believe that BPM is best understood as a generic term used to describe the many different paths to managing business process improvement.
  

• Business Process Trends in 2004: A Practical Perspective
  Paul Harmon - January 27, 2004
  In the first 2004 BPTrends Advisor we speculated about the strategic drivers behind business process change. In this Advisor we focus on some specific Business Process initiatives we think companies should consider in order to thrive in 2004.
  

• Business Process Trends in 2004 - A Strategic Perspective
  Paul Harmon - January 20, 2004
  The interest in all aspects of Business Process grew tremendously in 2003, and 2004 promises to be an even more exciting year for those interested in Business Processes. In this Advisor we speculate on the leading strategic changes that will drive business process change in 2004 and make some suggestions for ways to think about business process change in your organization.
  

• New Organizations for Second Generation BP
  December 23, 2003
  In this BPTrends Advisor Paul Harmon reports on 2nd generation BP and two new industry groups established to develop high level BP frameworks for the Customer Chain and the Product Design Chain.
  

• Institute for Process Management - A New Research Initiative
  Celia Wolf - December 16, 2003
  This BPTrends Advisor reports on the activities of the new Institute for Process Management at Babson College.
  

• Simulation and Business Process Change
  Paul Harmon - November 25, 2003
  A discussion of the value of using simulation during the analysis of business processes, and as a tool for Business Activity Monitoring.
  

• The Association of Business Process Management Professionals
  Paul Harmon - November 18, 2003
  The first November Advisor presents a brief overview of a new association for business process change professionals which you might want to become involved with.
  

• Business Process Change Today
  Paul Harmon - October 28, 2003
  The second October Advisor presents a brief overview of the range of business process change options available to managers, and discusses those which are most likely to play a major role in business process change in the next 2-3 years.
  

• Hyping BPM
  October 14, 2003
  The first October Advisor discusses the delicate balance between promoting new and valuable technologies, and misleading managers about what new business process technologies can deliver.
  

• Does IT Matter?
  Paul Harmon - September 30, 2003
  The second September Advisor reflects on a recent article by Nicholas G. Carr, "IT Doesn't Matter," that appeared in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review.
  

• The Chief Process Officer
  Paul Harmon - September 16, 2003
  The first September Advisor considers why a company might have a Chief Process Officer and what the CPO might do that isn’t already being done by someone else
  

• Model Driven Architecture in Practice
  Paul Harmon - July 29, 2003
  This July Advisor reports on the OMG's June MDA workshop where experts gathered to consider how MDA is being used today. We discuss the advantages current MDA efforts have achieved to date and consider the problems still to be overcome.
  

• Six Sigma, SCOR and Human Performance Improvement
  Paul Harmon - July 15, 2003
  This July Advisor discusses the differences and the synergies among three important methodologies currently being deployed in the implementation of business process change initiatives in organizations today.
  

• The XML Business Process Language Standards Wars
  Paul Harmon - June 17, 2003
  This June Advisor discusses the development of XML Business Process Languages and provides an update on the ongoing efforts of vendors and Internet standards groups to formalize XML standards for business process representation.
  

• E-Business and Business Process Change
  Paul Harmon - June 10, 2003
  This June Advisor discusses the impact of the Internet and e-business on the way business is conducted today - from managing the supply chain to the buying and selling of goods and services. Today's successful business process managers will be Internet savvy and will be prepared to incorporate the new Internet technologies into their organization's business processes.
  

• Motorola & Polaroid: The Case for Integrated Business Process Improvement
  Paul Harmon - May 27, 2003
  This May BPTrends Advisor talks about the need to make certain that all business process change and management initiatives are integrated with corporate strategies and existing business processes, and that all options are considered before implementing new initiatives.
  

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
  Paul Harmon - May 20, 2003
  This May BPTrends Advisor discusses the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and talks about some possible implications for business process managers and analysts.
  

• CRM Automation
  Paul Harmon - April 29, 2003
  An overview of the CRM Application software packages, including Microsoft's new offering, advice on integration, and a look at future directions.
  

• The TeleManagement Forum’s eTOM Framework
  Paul Harmon - April 22, 2003
  This April BPTrends Advisor discusses the TeleManagement Forum, a consortium of Telecommunication companies working together to share information about business and IT developments in telecommunications, including eTOM, their industry specific business process framework.
  

• XML Business Process Languages
  Paul Harmon - March 25, 2003
  This March BPTrends Advisor provides a brief overview of XML Business Process Languages, including the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) and the IBM-Microsoft-BEA initiative, BPEL4WS, and discusses likely future directions of standardization efforts.
  

• Advisor: The Business Process Market
  Paul Harmon - March 18, 2003
  This March BPTrends Advisor discusses how one might organize an index of business process vendors and associations and provides a brief overview of the market as we see it today. We hope you find it useful
  

• The OMG's Business Process Metamodel RFP
  Paul Harmon - February 25, 2003
  A brief discussion of the new OMG RFP for a business process modeling metamodel that's compatible with UML, and discusses the rationale behind this decision.
  

• Business Activity Monitoring
  Paul Harmon - February 18, 2003
  This Advisor discusses Management Dashboards or Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), and provides a brief overview of the concept, how it is being used today, and where it is going in the future.
  

• Business Process Architectures
  Paul Harmon - January 03, 2003
  A brief discussion of the growing importance of a division or corporate business process architecture.