What separates a good university masters degree program from a great one?  I believe it can be summed up in 3 key factors:

1. Expert instructors, who are actively working in their field.
2. A curriculum with a strong practical focus.
3. Perspectives drawn from a broad range of real world experience.

These same 3 key factors were core design principles for our Level 2 BPM Developer course – which takes good BPM Developers and helps them transform into master BPM Developers.

Most of our customers have learned how to build successful process applications, but they are still unclear on how to best leverage Teamworks to address their more complex application requirements.  They want to know how to design, architect and implement very robust process applications … how to master the use of Teamworks. 

That’s why Lombardi field mentors lead the instruction of our Level 2 class.  Lombardi mentors are highly experienced implementation consultants that work shoulder-to-shoulder with customers – but as mentors their focus is on teaching the customer how to build the solution, rather than building it for them.  Their mission is to build self-sufficiency in our customer teams and transfer knowledge about BPM best practices and implementation techniques.

Our mentors and consultants helped design a Level 2 BPM Developer curriculum with a strong practical focus.  Through 6 half day instructional modules, we teach the most common complex requirement patterns encountered in the field and the best practices for addressing those patterns.  The course topics and hands-on exercises are based on experience gained by Lombardi field delivery teams across hundreds of customer projects.

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Last week, the Financial Times (FT) digital business reporter Stephen Pritchard published a podcast interview with Toby Redshaw, the CIO of global insurance giant Aviva on the importance of business process management.

Aviva currently has 23 live BPM projects. One, the “Joiners, movers and leavers” system, tracks staff across their time with Aviva, from both an HR, and an information and systems access point of view. It was built in less than 12 weeks using Lombardi’s BPM tools.

In the podcast, Mr. Redshaw claimed that BPM is the single-most important technology he has seen for helping to improve the business in his 28+ years. We couldn’t agree more!

To listen to the entire interview (7:05), go here

As the manager of our BPM Consultants, I get to see literally dozens of interesting customer use cases. One particularly interesting insurance customer recently described an example of their business processes where the decision being made within the process is as important (actually even more important) than the speed at which the work is being done. That is quite an amazing testament to power of BPM when you think about it.

At Lombardi, we say this all the time. Obtaining useful data about the quality of decisions being made – as well as the patterns that drive those decisions – is the first step in realizing the promise of BPM.

However, in order for data to be turned into “wisdom,” I think it is important for companies to realize that it has to be viewed through three primary filtering principles. They are:

1. Visibility – Show me information in a human-consumable format. It needs to provide details that can be understood by mere mortals.
2. Analysis – Allow me to ‘twist and turn’ and ‘slice and dice’ the information views so that I can extrapolate information from the data and deduce higher-level knowledge as necessary. 
3. Control – Once I’ve seen, analyzed, and judged what the data is telling me, allow me to take some immediate action on the source of data (the process) in a way that lets me materially affect the outcome. 

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Next week at the BPMInstitute.org BPM Conference in San Francisco, three Lombardi customers will be on hand to share their BPM success stories. The conference is being held downtown at the Parc 55 Hotel.

Details about their presentations are below. Also, stop by to see me and the rest of the Lombardi team in the Solution Showcase.

• Paul Tazbaz, Enterprise Architect at Wells Fargo, will present the best practices keynote session entitled “Architecting BPM through a Center of Excellence at Wells Fargo Bank”

Time: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 9:40 – 10:25 a.m. (all times are PT)

• Cheryl Mascaro, Enterprise Architect at Intel, will present a case study discussing “BPM vs. BPM – The Discipline and the Technology.”

Time: Tuesday, June 30, 11:20 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.

• Sean Perry, CIO, and Steve Nimmo, senior manager of business process and performance improvement, from Robert Half International (RHI), will share their BPM experiences in an end-user case study – “How Robert Half International is Delivering Results with BPM.”

Time: Tuesday, June 30, 2:10 – 2:55 p.m.

Also, Brandon Baxter, Lombardi’s senior product marketing manager, will present “Clear Directions for BPM Success.” Brandon will talk about how comapnies can ensure long-term BPM success by using proven project development and deployment capabilities. He will also be on the BPM vendor panel discussing “Tips for Starting and Maintaining a Successful BPM Initiative.” Those are always fun.

Time: Tuesday, June 30, 3:50 – 4:35 p.m., and the panel runs immediately afterward.

We hope to see you there!

Like all enterprise software solutions, the person implementing a BPM strategy must contend with a chasm between the business and IT. The two speak different languages, have different priorities and tend to justify results in a different light.

So which side do you approach first?

There’s a tendency for enterprise software to gravitate to IT. And why not?  IT gets it, right? They understand the technology and the inherent benefits it brings to the table. And IT is constantly justifying new software, hardware and services through the annual budget reviews. So it seems natural for anyone wishing to see a BPM solution deployed to look at IT first.

I believe this is a mistake.

Despite conventional thinking, the right place to begin conveying the benefits of a BPM deployment is on the business side of the house. That’s because BPM has to be looked at not for the technology, features and specs, but for its ability to change and improve the business.

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If you’ve been reading the Process People blog, you might have noticed that we talk a lot about an iterative approach to deploying BPM. What we haven’t touched on as much is that the iterative approach is an element of the overarching methodology. Looking in on the methodology from the highest level you will get a view of a three-phased approach – which ultimately results in iteration. But we want to provide a big picture of how all of the different parts of our methodology tie together, and how each point of emphasis leads into or loops back to key areas of the other two phases.

I realize that in some organizations, “phase” is a four-letter word. With BPM it is a must… it is the foundational element that leads to continuous process improvement and ultimately maximum business benefit. But don’t just take our word for it, just look at the countless customers who have used this methodology and achieve enormous success because of it.

Definition Phase

The definition phase is probably the most critical portion of the entire BPM adoption lifecycle. This is where you set the expectations for the BPM project, define metrics to measure the project and create a framework so that the focus remains on delivering business value throughout all three phases.

In this phase organizations should:

• Take the broader initiative and narrow it to a specific departmental level
• Define the business milestones and associated metrics
• Develop the business case
• Ensure that there is a common thread throughout the whole project (Business value)
• Get the business to drive this phase

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I’ve had a surprisingly difficult time conveying my own definition of “Iterative Development” in the past, so I thought I’d take a stab at explanation via analogy. Let’s compare your Business Process to a trip from Austin, Texas to El Paso, Texas.

The most important aspect of my trip is arriving at my destination.  No matter what interesting things may happen on the way, if I don’t end up in El Paso, my trip has failed.

The same is true about your Business Process.  No matter what else goes on, there is an objective to your process and you have to accomplish that objective.

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Showcasing the success of your initial BPM project is often times requested from other departments, but it’s also required to help drive adoption across the entire organization.

If showcasing your initial BPM deployment can help gain process adoption and ignite enthusiasm in other areas of the business, then you’ll get more and more value out of your overall BPM initiative. That being said, here is the first in a two part series of posts that will help you to showcase your BPM solution within your organization.

Get ‘em excited!

Everyone has had to sit in a presentation during their lunch break that seemed like a never-ending PowerPoint slide show. Now imagine watching someone explaining a process flow diagram that has no relevance to you. Then follow that with a “live” demonstration of someone clicking through a bunch of screens acting as a participant in the process that you didn’t get. Trust me, it can be very painful.

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Recently we had the pleasure of announcing that the Finnish Sales Division of the Nordic and Baltic telecommunications service provider, TeliaSonera, is deploying Teamworks and Blueprint. The news was picked up by KMWorld.

This should be a very interesting deployment that we’ll review later after their initial playback and first round of results.

The company will use Lombardi to support sales of business services in Finland, as well as its activation and provisioning and other core business processes. We expect to be able to help them increase their service levels and improve customer satisfaction by designing and automating their business processes so they can be easily controlled and managed.

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