What Kind of Gear is Needed for Social BPM?

by Jim Sinur | July 21, 2011 |

At one time in my life, I was an accomplished climber working my way up from being poor and only being able to free climb(no money for equipment). Then one day I saw what happened to a climber who had little equipment (a helmet, a rope, a climbing belt and a figure eight rope device). He had too much slack in the rope and fell from an overhang and slammed into the face below (the rope held thankfully). His injuries were too numerous to recite here, but suffice it to say I was going to have better gear and processes the next time I climbed.

The same can be said for gear needed for Social BPM. I’d like to start a discussion on helpful technology gears needed/desired for Social BPM. I’ll start with seven that seem to make sense to me and you can add more, if the spirit moves you to comment.

A Goal Seeking and Unstructured Process Engine:

While significant benefits can be had by having standard and structured processes, there is additional opportunity for knowledge workers by dealing with unstructured work. In order to handle dynamic event and goal driven processes; adaptive engine is necessary See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/11/16/goal-driven-processes-the-future-target-of-bpm/ and http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/05/20/can-people-change-as-fast-as-bpm-allows/

Enhanced Process Context and Presence:

While operating full processes is the history of BPM to date, there is an expectation that processes will be made of of process snippets and these process pieces will understand the context they are operating in at any given moment. The same would be true of all the process participants including operators and managers. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/09/16/tapping-into-collective-knowledge-will-drive-unstructured-process-activity/ and http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/11/11/with-unified-communications-emerging-can-follow-me-processes-be-far-off/

A Guided Role Based Work Environment:

While it’s easy to build processes that require all participants to learn the process and it’s inherent work environment, I envision role based workbenches that give guidance at all times. This guidance will be context sensitive and proactive in nature. For managers, it may be a suggestion of a tolerance change. see http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/10/12/the-drum-beat-for-bpm-usability-continues/

A Mobile Experience:

While not always necessary, mobile access to a process experience is becoming popular. Even if your workers are not on the road 24 * 7, many work at home or in various and dynamic locations. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/08/16/top-five-ways-to-sneak-up-on-bpm/

Community Links with Social Network Analysis:

Without access to either internal and/or external communities, the collaboration is limited to connected workers and highly paid resources. Allowing certified stringers is a way to expand your knowledge pool. By watch the way your people collaborate will help identify better practices. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/09/16/tapping-into-collective-knowledge-will-drive-unstructured-process-activity/ and http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/02/19/tapping-into-better-practices-by-watching-knowledge-workers/

Pattern Sensing:

You may be looking for opportunities or threats in your business on a day to day basis. Either way looking at context, events and people behavior will give clues as to appropriate and time to market responses. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/11/02/capturing-tribal-knowledge-a-big-challenge/ and http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/01/13/decisions-the-under-served-and-under-supported-partner-to-forward-progress/

Constraint Based Optimization:

The real fear of dynamic and social processes is feeling of a loss of control. While this is somewhat true there are coping mechanisms. One is adding constraints that keep people and processes from doing illegal, unwise and sub-optimal activities. The other is by adding intelligence through optimization routines like predictive analysis, simulation and resource optimization. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/12/01/dont-get-stuck-with-bad-policyrule-management/ and http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/07/28/process-intelligence-is-about-operational-action/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2011/07/21/what-kind-of-gear-is-needed-for-social-bpm/?nicam=Twitter&nichn=GBN&niseg=gbnBPM072111