The Agility Challenge For BPM

Business Process Management (BPM) software is becoming an increasingly relevant option for the day-to-day management of business processes. BPM controls process lifecycles with support for process modelling, execution, monitoring and optimization. The conventional system’s process control was not capable of governing highly variable change requests in a situation-specific and purposeful manner that is, adapted to change request content and project context. For example, both minor and drastic changes followed the same process steps, which placed unnecessary strain on the organization and reduced overall process efficiency.

The Agility Challenge

The recent economic turmoil has elevated the importance of “agility” for enterprises. There are way too many systemic factors that are causing chaos and volatility. In this climate, agility – meaning the rhythm of rolling forward new solutions and rolling back current offerings – has to be synchronized with both market oscillations and anticipated market receptiveness. BPM suites are the critical enabler and catalyst for achieving such dynamic agility.

There are two interdependent and critical requirements for agility in business process management solutions:

·         The first is the ability for business stakeholders to quickly – and incrementally – introduce change. The change “delta” from business analysis to execution has to be almost seamless and instantaneous. What is required to change is what gets executed is the new mantra. This “change” spans creating new solutions for existing and new markets. It also includes deprecating or re-positioning existing solutions.

·         The second – and perhaps more important— is the ability to respond quickly and adeptly to a given situation. This “ability” to respond, based on a situation, applies to business functions, lines of businesses, as well as the enterprise as a whole. Here you have the execution of adjustable process machines that can manoeuvre, adjust, and respond for a given context.

For BPM to be flexible, agile, and dynamic, it needs to adapt to situations, applying the best BPM asset (process, policy, etc.) for the given situation. Newly discovered processes or policies could be enacted. Others could be deprecated. The granule of the situation can be an entire mission- critical BPM solutions or specific user interactions.

All this may sound a bit like process fiction. But it is actually achievable. More importantly, it is a fundamental requirement for true business agility.

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