Muscle Memory, Golf and BPM, Driven Day 2 Recap

Driven 2008 has come to a close, and we’re really thrilled with this year’s event. Many of the conference attendees stayed for the Lombardi golf tournament yesterday, which took place on the beautiful Fazio Canyons golf course at Barton Creek Resort and Spa. The weather was perfect and the golf was great.

On that note, I thought it might be timely to provide a quick recap of a session that Toby Cappello hosted on Wednesday. The session was called: “The Monday Morning Quarterback Discusses 10 Painful Lessons Learned.” Toby started things off with a golf analogy – one which he lived up to on the course yesterday!

The analogy went something like this: “BPM is like golf – you need to build muscle memory if you want to develop consistency and achieve success.”

In all honesty, I can’t really think of any other combinations of a technology (BPMS) and a discipline (BPM) that fits so perfectly with this analogy. It cuts to the core of Lombardi’s methodology. In fact, if you break it down even further you’ll see more uncanny parallels that help to visualize what exactly you’ll need to do to achieve success with BPM.

When we talk about starting with one small project first, it’s the same as starting off at the driving range. You have to walk before you run, and once you’ve seen some success on the range, you might take on another “project” over at the putting green. The obvious point here is that each skill that you need to learn in golf is much like the initial few BPM projects you roll out.

Eventually you move on to the sand trap, which you approach with a set of skills and capabilities for applying what you’ve learned elsewhere to improve your chances of success in the sand. Your method for learning different golf shots is analogous to the BPM methodology. You’re applying a set of strategies that help you add another shot to your repertoire. In BPM, you’re applying the methodology to deliver business value.

Don’t forget that all of your practice is building muscle memory for your swing. The same goes for BPM – as you apply the methodology in those early projects you are building muscle memory. Eventually, this muscle memory becomes the driving factor behind your success in BPM (and golf). Ultimately, that golf swing is so ingrained in your muscles that it becomes part of your DNA. You go on for years swinging in such a consistent manner that you are able to adapt to almost any lie, any new golf course (business change) and all the while you become a better golfer (business).

Toby also shared 10 common “lessons learned” that we wanted to share with you, so that you can refer back to them long after you get back to the realities of your every day jobs:

1. Remember metrics – think about them early – don’t undervalue reports
2. Don’t underestimate integrations and what it will take to do them
3. Phase is not a four letter word – “one and done” is not okay
4. Requirements documents are not process analysis – leverage process analysis skills early
5. A project longer than 90 days is not a failure – some processes are too complex for just 90 days
6. Java (.NET) developers are not ALL you need
7. Self-sufficiency requires dedication and commitment
8. Fund to Value – funding should reflect that the long term goal is to go from projects to programs to culture
9. Collaboration between business & IT is vital – playbacks, playbacks, playbacks
10. Ownership – Processes are business-owned

Sandy Kemsley also covered this session, and you can find her writeup here.

We had a great time at Driven 2008, and for those of you who couldn’t attend the conference we will be following up with session recaps here on Process People. Keep watching the blog for the next couple of weeks for recaps, pictures from the event, and as always, we welcome your thoughts in the comments section!