This year, for obvious reasons, BBC will be a virtual conference. It will take place on October 19-23, 2020.

You can participate in livestreams of conference sessions and workshops (recordings are also available, so you can watch everything you want) PLUS new options possible thanks to the new format of the event:
* BBC Conference Extra
* Practitioner’s Chats
* BBC People’s Choice Discussions
* Virtual Coffee Roundtables and
* BBC Beyond

With nearly 100 presenters, 18 conference tracks and 4 trails there are hundreds of possibilities for you to learn something useful and meet new people.

Learn more about BBC 2020 and register. If you plan to attend BBC 2020 the following code “BPMBBC” will give you a 15% discount.

PS. You can also watch selected recordings of sessions from BBC 2019 to see how much you can learn there!

Below you can see answers to the questions regarding BPM skills in 2020 from the following experts:
Tony Benedict
Pierre Col
Keith Swenson
Steve Towers

Tony Benedict

Tony Benedict is a Partner with Omicron Partners, LLC, a strategy advisory firm. He is a senior level operations executive best known for transforming organizations, improving operational excellence and profitability. Most recently, he worked at HonorHealth as Vice President, Procurement and Supply Chain where he was responsible for over $600M in spend management. One of his accomplishments was in the restructuring of the procurement and supply chain organizations post-merger within 12 months and consolidating two ERP systems within 18 months while implementing $31M in cost reduction initiatives. Previously, he was Chief Information Officer, Vice President of Supply Chain for Tenet, and Vice President, Supply Chain, Vanguard Health Systems at Abrazo Community Health Network in Arizona.
He is currently serving as President and Director, Board of Directors for the Association of Business Process Management Professionals International and is a co-author of the Business Process Management Common Body of Knowledge versions 2, 3 and the recently released version 4.

WWW: http://www.abpmp.org
WWW: LI profile

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2020?

It would be the full spectrum of BPM knowledge areas, skills and competencies that go beyond just modeling and automating business processes. Automation is just one form of process improvement but it’s not the only avenue to improvements or business/digital transformations. I don’t recall where this came from, however, the concept is that the degree of one’s proficiency in any area of expertise has been shown to come from a mix of mentoring, training/education and experience with relative percentages at 10%, 20% and 70% respectively. This idea presumes that there is a set of foundational knowledge, skills and competencies in any profession that one must come to understand before one can gain proficiency from experience.

After 20 plus years, there should be no argument that good BPM practices create value for customers and organizations. ABPMP (Association of Business Process Management Professionals) decided to establish what the BPM the foundational knowledge, skills and competencies (KSCs) should be and that understanding led us to approach BPM practitioner roles as a continuum of learning and development comprised of set of KSCs and the experience that is acquired over the course of one’s career. The knowledge areas are addressed in our BPM CBOK (Common Body of Knowledge, more information here: https://www.abpmp.org/page/guide_BPM_CBOK) and are noted in the following graphic:

The skills and competencies are outlined in detail in our BPM Competency Model (available for free here: https://www.abpmp.org/page/CompetencyModel). All of the KSCs are embodied in a BPM Life Cycle model for constant renewal in the management of business processes for creating value for customers. The BPM Life Cycle Model is shown in the following graphic:

The experience component is acquired through “on-the-job training,” emphasizing that one has to routinely be doing the continuum of the work outlined in the BPM CBOK and BPM Competency Model over the required years to meet certain experience levels as a BPM practitioner: Technician (< 4yrs), Manager (=4<10yrs) and Leadership (->10yrs) levels. ABPMP has developed three levels of BPM Certification to test each level. This is shown in the following one-page summary graphic:

The BPM Foundation is multidisciplinary and as a practitioner moves up the career ladder in any organization, they are expected to lead people and manage change, especially at executive levels. Experienced BPM practitioners know how to lead cross functionally because they understand the horizontal nature of business processes and managed through years of experience, know when to throttle the amount of organizational change in business or digital transformations. This BPM leadership experience is correlated to an organization’s ability to deliver value to customers. (See McKinsey article cited in next section).

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

As mentioned earlier, the “one stop shop” for the commonly accepted BPM practices is the BPM CBOK (Common Body of Knowledge: https://www.abpmp.org/page/guide_BPM_CBOK) with over 400 pages of commonly accepted practices and our BPM Competency Model which is 13 pages of the detailed skills and competencies at each experience level (https://www.abpmp.org/page/CompetencyModel) which provides BPM Practitioners with the foundational level of knowledge, skills and competencies.

Most of the BPM books that are available assume that one has a baseline understanding of the “what” that comprises BPM. Many of the books tend to address approaches and methodologies on “how” to do BPM. There are some good books out there on methodologies (or techniques) that are usually written by independent consultants – it’s important to note that some of the differences in approach will be the scope of change: major cross functional processes versus functional (siloed) processes. The broader, cross functional scope is what you should look for in BPM books. There are also a few good books on mapping the customer journey, which is only a segment of BPM with respect to creating customer value through process. A suggestion is to read the Amazon reviews on any of these books and make sure the books have at least 80% favorable (4-5 stars) before making a buy decision. For BPM training, there is a small percentage of very thorough BPM training providers that will take you through a complete BPM Life Cycle during a 3-4-day workshop. There are also many niche players for process modeling/analysis/design using BPMN standards – with some of these providers using online learning systems.

There was a great article published by McKinsey last year titled: “The Business Value of Design.” Everyone should read it to understand the fundamental value in designing processes to deliver value and the leadership characteristics associated with process based cultures. There are many other published articles, white papers and webinars that tend to advocate the latest and greatest technologies for BPM. A word of caution – many of the technologies are immature and not widely adopted. Many of these articles (and /or webinars) are marketed by software companies pushing the next “big” thing. Before one follows trends and buzzwords, a simple question should be asked: “Is this technique, software, etc. commonly accepted by the BPM practitioner community such that the practices result in at least a 70% success rate?” If the answer is no, then it’s not quite ready for mass adoption. Another suggestion would be to read Gartner’s Hype Cycle for those technologies to give you an idea of where the technology is on that Hype Cycle. Most companies will start experimenting after the “trough of disillusionment” when all of the “bugs” are worked out and the licensing costs are more in line with the reality of implementations and ROI.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

It’s probably not a question of what is no longer relevant or practically applicable, it’s more a question of what is used less because something better became available and the existing fell into specialized niches. For example, if you look at process modeling standards, UML and IDEF0 were very common and early modeling tools utilized that standard. Now, all popular modeling tools utilize BPMN 2.0 standards. With the advent of low code and no code software tools, the utilization of BPMN modeling tools might be relegated to those processes that will remain being performed by humans rather than systems or robots.

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Pierre Col

Head of Communications for Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, SAP

Pierre Col has an extensive 30+ years background & expertise in Marketing & Communications and Analyst & Investor Relations for Internet, Telecom & IT companies. Before the acquisition of Contextor by SAP in 2018, he was Chief Marketing Officer of the French-based RPA software vendor.

WWW: Company website
WWW: LI profile

I have to say that, coming from an RPA software vendor, I am a bit biased when it comes about automation. But after Contextor acquisition in November 2018, I am now working for more than one year at SAP, and that helped me broaden my views on process automation. Indeed, created in 1972 by five entrepreneurs who were aiming to automate enterprise processes, SAP is all about automation. and as I spent time last year with my colleagues from SAP Intelligent BPM team to integrate SAP Intelligent RPA in a coherent and comprehensive offer, I think that I can answer from an holistic Intelligent Automation standpoint.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2020?

I believe that curiosity and mind openness are key. Many technologies appeared or spread during the last years such as RPA, AI with Machine Learning / Deep Learning, chatbots… Those tools are fully complementary to BPM, as they extend BPM capacity to further and better automate business processes with some agility. I would recommend BPM practitioners to understand those technologies in order to be able to leverage them when needed.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Of course, you will find a lot of useful books and online resources to learn those skills, and I won’t repeat what others said before.

I would mention here some free MOOCs provided by SAP, to discover Intelligent RPA, to learn how to build your own RPA bots and to automate around S/4HANA ERP.
And as Artificial Intelligence is spreading everywhere, I consider that having explainable and ethical AI capabilities is very important for our future. That is why I also recommend that MOOC, “Creating Trustworthy and Ethical Artificial Intelligence”.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I can’t imagine a skill you acquired in the past becoming totally useless, or no longer relevant: it might be less applicable in some contexts, but the skills you have acquired are part of your experience, they shape the way you can consider business problems and imagine new solutions.
Of course, some skills or technologies can be over-hyped and not fully applicable yet in the day-to-day life of the average company. Nevertheless, it is important to keep an eye on it, in order to be able to use it when it starts making sense.

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Keith Swenson

Keith Swenson is Vice President of Research and Development at Fujitsu North America and also the Chairman of the Workflow Management Coalition. As a speaker, author, and contributor to many workflow and BPM standards, he is known for having been a pioneer in collaboration software and web services. He has led agile software development teams at MS2, Netscape, Ashton Tate & Fujitsu. He won the 2004 Marvin L. Manheim Award for outstanding contributions in the field of workflow. Co-author on more than 10 books. His latest book, “When Thinking Matters in the Workplace,” explains how to avoid stifling creativity and enhance innovation through the appropriate use of process technology. His 2010 book “Mastering the Unpredictable” introduced and defined the field of adaptive case management and established him as a Top Influencer in the field of case management. He blogs at https://social-biz.org/.

WWW: https://social-biz.org
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @swensonkeith

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2020?

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

This has been particularly difficult for me to put together this year, because really many things have changed outside of the BPM field, that actually have profound, but as yet unrealized effects on the field.

When we look at BPM from 2003 – 2018 we see a focus on process modeling, and other kinds of modeling. Decision modeling is the latest in this trend. What is a process model? It is after all a depiction of what the people in the organization think the preferred way of handling a business problem is. This has always been negatively affected by the fact that much of this knowledge is tacit, and not consciously known by the workers. So interviews work to a limited extent, but the real process is more difficult to suss out. The next technique was one of Agile trial and continuous improvement: approximate the process as best you can, measure performance, and incrementally improve the process. But all of this is really traditional development: a programmer take the logic and codes it in a process model, in web services, or in glue code.

Today we are in the age of Alpha Go and learning software that is trained, and not programmed. These game-playing computers did well in extremely complex games like Go where the number of rules is small, but the possible combinations very high. The technique is likely to be even more useful when the exact rules are not known, like the rules of a business process. AI should watch the behaviors of the individuals, and be able to draw up rules of engagement of the business processes. Those rules may be completely opaque to the workers, managers, and programmers. That does not matter. What matters is that the rules work. Learning systems are likely to be able to route work to people far more efficiently than any externally applied process logic.

What this really means is that the traditional skill of modeling a process, and programming applications, is no longer relevant. Let me temper that: these will still be used to create BPM applications for another 10 years or so, but the demand for this will drop quickly. Instead, we will find that forward thinking organizations will deploy learning systems to watch the organization at work, to automatically identify processes that are stuck, and to proactively route them forward for completion. The process might be difference every single time, but that does not matter: the goal is efficiency of the organization, not regularity of the process.

I have attempted to explain all this in my book “Beyond the Business Process Model” where I outline not only the trend toward learning systems replacing bespoke BPM applications, but also outline the parameters that would be needed to make it all work. I must warn you: this idea has not been very well received in the industry, and there has really not been much uptake in readership of the book.

I think that process modeling and decision modeling are currently at their maturity. It will take a decade to swap out the current bespoke application approach, to a learning approach. The skills that you will need for that newer technology will be data science and deep learning. We are seeing this same trend in many areas that were traditionally implemented using standard programming techniques. We all need to learn new skills, and I can promise, it will be a fascinating ride.

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Steve Towers

Steve is the original Outside-In Pioneer, Amazon Best Seller, an Operations, BPM and Customer Experience Expert recently named Global Top 30 Guru, CEO BP Group and Loves the Mountains!

BP Group was established 28 years ago to grow the professionalism of Business Process Management through upskilling, methods and technology associated with business processes and customer experience management. Since 2006 we have helped over 100,000 individuals qualify as Certified Process Professionals across 118 countries. In 2018 Steve become a startup investor in The Experience Manager, the worlds first customer experience employee engagement tool.

WWW: https://www.bpgroup.org
WWW: https://www.theexperiencemanager.com
Latest bestseller: Dare!
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @stowers

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2020?

Are your skills growing beyond the technical and becoming aligned with customer success, or are you still playing the tune of times gone by?
The biggest challenge facing BPM professionals in this next decade will be enabling organizations to progressively embrace customer centricity. Without that capability long standing companies will wither and die as the digital tsunami sweeps away redundant business models. Sounds apocalyptic and in many ways it is.
A good basis for understanding the skills needed is provided by the transformation underway in the one of the world’s largest Utility companies. We have distilled six key factors in terms of evolving the process skillset as:
1. Integrating process into every aspect of the business
2. Engaging the organization around successful business and customer outcomes
3. Embracing new (and simplified) techniques to connect the dots across the enterprise
4. Evangelizing the reason process exists is to deliver successful customer outcomes
5. Encouraging everyone in the company to get ‘process’ and its fundamental contribution to their future careers and organizational success
6. Equipping the business for tomorrows unknown challenges and creating the attitude to see around corners, rather than looking in the rear-view mirror for answers to ‘where are we going next?’
We discuss in detail these attributes in greater detail in our new bestselling book Dare!

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The greatest learnings are nearly always evidential based complemented with innovation. What I mean by this is understanding and modeling the approaches adopted by global leading companies and especially when it comes to applying techniques that deliver immediate and sustained success. Only by consistently delivering business results will BPM remain relevant and accordingly the need is to demonstrate that this current project/program/initiative is moving the needle to deliver triple crown benefits – simultaneously lowering costs, improving service and growing revenues. Is your work doing this?
There are many theoretical books (still) being written on the theme of BPM however look for those more practical works that share case studies and real, hard as nails results. Understand how those people created success and seek to model their attitudes, behaviors and structures into your own work and that of colleagues.
Naturally I recommend the work of the BP Group where we continue to codify the success of leaders and companies and make them accessible for individuals and organizations upskilling themselves for long term success. The codification is now in version 12 of the CEMMethod, accessible through our Certified Process Professional program.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Complex and syntax driven tools may have been the thing of yesterday however as the attention spans of customers and leadership teams has decreased to nano seconds that work takes too long. Immediate results become the validation to do more with BPM so keep it simple, direct and immediate.
Essentially industrial age mindsets are no longer relevant. We are not building factories and production lines we are enabling customers to achieve success in every experience they have with our organization. That shift to Outside-In thinking and practice is pervasive in high achieving companies we all recognize as delivering us as customers the best products and services. How many of these direct techniques and approaches have you embraced into your work recently?

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PS. By popular demand (thanks Doug)
I thought you may also enjoy some more market overviews:
a) Broad one by Trend Watching: https://trendwatching.com/quarterly/2019-11/5-trends-2020/
b) Tech oriented by CB Insights (14 Tech Trends To Watch Closely In 2020): https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/top-tech-trends-2020/
BTW: you may also enjoy their 2019 report “What’s Next In Enterprise IT” which mentions Workflow Automation: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/16-enterprise-it-trends-2019/
c) Last, but not least “Tech Trends 2020” by Deloitte: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends.html

I think that one of the best sources of knowledge about Business Process Management is the “Fundamentals of BPM” book along with the MOOC courses based on it.

You may recall from my post “Back to school 2019: free online courses for BPM professionals” that while awesome MOOC course “Fundamentals of BPM” (run till 2017 by QUT) is not available anymore in an interactive form, video recordings are available.

Professor Marcello La Rosa kindly allowed me to present them in a form more convenient than the original PDF (available on http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/mooc/).

Below you can find links to pages with videos.

Enjoy (and stay tuned for more interesting materials about BPM soon)!

Part 1: Process identification and discovery

Interviews

Introduction to BPM

Process Identification

Essential Process Modeling

Advanced Process Modeling

Part 2: Process analysis and redesign

Qualitative process analysis

Quantitative Process Analysis

Process Redesign

Part 3: Process implementation and monitoring

Process-Aware Information Systems

Process Implementation with Executable Process Models

Process Monitoring & Closing

Fundamentals of BPM

As you may recall in a last year edition of this post I wrote that 2  great MOOCs by professors Marcello La Rosa, Marlon Dumas, Jan Mendling and Hajo A. Reijers (available on Future Learn and QUT) are no longer available, but this should change in 2019.

While (sadly) there is still no possibility to sign up for those courses in a normal form I have a great news for you!

You can access all the videos via Fundamentals of BPM website:

http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/mooc/

(you need to look for part “Links to all video materials are available here (Copyright 2015-2017, Queensland University of Technology. All rights reserved).”).

Those links will lead you to PDFs with links to the videos.

UPDATE:
Professor La Rosa kindly allowed me to present content of those PDFs in a form more convenient for you.

Materials from a short introductory MOOC, “Business Process Management: An Introduction to Process Thinking“ (about 1,5 hours!) are available on a following pages:

Business Process Management: An Introduction to Process Thinking – Week 1

Business Process Management: An Introduction to Process Thinking – Week 2

Business Process Management: An Introduction to Process Thinking – Week 3

Stay tuned for similar presentation of materials from a comprehensive MOOC “Fundamentals of Business Process Management”!

Apart from those two awesome courses you can also expand your horizons using other sources. Since there were no significant changes there you can use my previous post.

In the following weeks I will update this post with more information about other interesting courses and materials useful for people interested in BPM.

But before then, I wanted to share additional news with you

BPM Tips is a Media Partner of the Building Business Capability 2019 conference.

If you plan to attend BBC 2019 the following code “BPMBBC” will give you 15% discount.

More info about this coming soon!

1) Fundamentals of BPM

Normally the list started with awesome MOOCs by professors Marcello La Rosa, Marlon Dumas, Jan Mendling and Hajo Reijers, but sadly this autumn both Future Learn and QUT editions are not available. However, the authors are working towards a new MOOC to be made available next year.

You can also buy the updated version of the book “Fundamentals of BPM”, which is a source of content for the course:
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662565087

On a website of the book you can also find slides, video lectures and many other useful resources:
http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/supplementary-material/lectures/

You can watch the recordings from 2014 on YouTube too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL2LDY1TRcen1SCPmL1BY_yA1DijztcmIh&v=G05JD9RLoUw

Luckily there are additional interesting courses to pick from (plus one more option I mention at the end of the post). Most of them are not about “pure” BPM, but IMO they provide lots of inspiration whether it is Lean, Design Thinking, or even using sketching for visual communication

This time the list is experimentally organised by learning platform.

2) Coursera

If you like to learn on the go you will appreciate nice mobile application Coursera offers. Most of the courses are by default paid ones (with access to all the content, possibility to check yourself and interact fully with others plus get a certificate), but you can always select the free path (called “Audit the course”) and access all the videos plus some of the course content. Courses on Coursera are MOOCs, so they have start and end dates, but you can switch sessions if you are falling behind (you may need it since they all start on the same date…).

2a) “Design Thinking for Innovation” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-innovation)

Course description: “Today innovation is everyone’s business. Whether you are a manager in a global corporation, an entrepreneur starting up, in a government role, or a teacher in an elementary school, everyone is expected to get lean – to do better with less. And that is why we all need design thinking. At every level in every kind of organization, design thinking provides the tools you need to become an innovative thinker and uncover creative opportunities that are there – you’re just not seeing them yet.”
Created by: University of Virginia
Taught by: Jeanne M. Liedtka
Starts: August 30, 2018

2b) “Digital Transformation” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/bcg-uva-darden-digital-transformation)

Course description: “Digital transformation is a hot topic–but what exactly is it and what does it mean for companies? In this course, we talk about digital transformation in two ways. First we discuss the pace of change and the imperative it creates for businesses. Next we provide the context for this transformation and what it takes to win in the digital age. Then we walk through BCG’s proprietary framework, which helps you identify key areas to digitize, including strategy, core processes, and technology.”
Created by: BCG, University of Virginia
Taught by: Michael Lenox, Amane Dannouni, Sonja Rueger, Ching Fong Ong
Starts: August 30, 2018

2c) “Introduction to Operations Management” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations)

Course description: “Learn to analyze and improve business processes in services or in manufacturing by learning how to increase productivity and deliver higher quality standards. Key concepts include process analysis, bottlenecks, flows rates, and inventory levels, and more. After successfully completing this course, you can apply these skills to a real-world business challenge as part of the Wharton Business Foundations Specialization.”
Created by: University of Pennsylvania
Taught by: Christian Terwiesch
Starts: August 30, 2018

2d) “Process Mining: Data science in Action” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/process-mining)

Course description: “Process mining is the missing link between model-based process analysis and data-oriented analysis techniques. Through concrete data sets and easy to use software the course provides data science knowledge that can be applied directly to analyze and improve processes in a variety of domains.”
Created by: Eindhoven University of Technology
Taught by: Wil van der Aalst
Starts: August 30, 2018

2e) “Six Sigma Principles” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/six-sigma-principles)

Course description: “This course is for you if you are looking to learn more about Six Sigma or refresh your knowledge of the basic components of Six Sigma and Lean. Six Sigma skills are widely sought by employers both nationally and internationally. These skills have been proven to help improve business processes and performance. This course will introduce you to the purpose of Six Sigma and its value to an organization. You will learn about the basic principles of Six Sigma and Lean. Your instructors will introduce you to, and have you apply, some of the tools and metrics that are critical components of Six Sigma. This course will provide you with the basic knowledge of the principles, roles, and responsibilities of Six Sigma and Lean.”
Created by: University System of Georgia
Taught by: Bill Bailey, Gregory Wiles, David Cook, Christina Scherrer
Starts: August 30, 2018

2f) “The hidden value – Lean in manufacturing and services” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/lean-manufacturing-services)

Course description: “Lean is a powerful methodology that enables managers and employees to shift their mindset and helps companies to keep their business sustainable by creating competitive advantage. Today, in an increasingly complex and dynamic world, where companies struggle to maintain competitive advantage, Lean is more important than ever.”
Created by: École des Ponts ParisTech, BCG
Taught by: Aurélie Delemarle, Thomas Frost, Salvatore Cali, Elsa Blume
Starts: August 30, 2018

3) OpenHPI

This is an e-learning platform offered by German Hasso Plattner Institute. It offers a mix of MOOC and on demand courses (i.e. archives of past editions). All courses are available for free. Mobile application is available.

3a) “BPMN Meets DMN: Business Process and Decision Modeling” (https://open.hpi.de/courses/bpm2016)

As you can see from the URL this is a self-paced course based on a MOOC from 2016.
Course description: “This course introduces concepts of business process modeling using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) industry standard. Participants will learn the elements of process models and their precise meaning. Based on a thorough understanding of business process models, the last part of the course covers decision models using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN). Decision models complement process models by representing concrete, operational decisions, both with their structure and their decision logics. The course centers around concepts and language to describe and analyze business processes and decisions. It does not cover methods on how to model, improve, monitor or implement business processes. Still, a deep understanding of business processes and decisions is a useful basis for these activities.”
Taught by: Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske
Starts: Self-paced

3b) “Human-Centered Design: From Synthesis to Creative Ideas” (https://open.hpi.de/courses/ideas2018)

Course description: “Make sense of design research data, learn to frame a problem from a user’s perspective, and generate lots of new ideas: This course will introduce you to the basics of design synthesis and brainstorming techniques.”
Taught by: Karen von Schmieden, Mana Taheri, Lena Mayer
Starts: September 19, 2018

4) OpenSAP

As you may guess from a name this is an e-learning platform with content by SAP. Technology behind it is the same as in the case of OpenHPI, so you also have a mobile application etc.

4a) “Be Visual! Sketching Basics for IT Business” (https://open.sap.com/courses/bvis1-3)

Course description: “Join this free, online openSAP course ‘Be Visual! Sketching Basic for IT Business’ and start learning the very basics of sketching. By applying the practice-oriented tips and tricks in this course, you’ll gain the confidence to present your ideas visually.”
Taught by: Martina Schuh, Johanna Wittig, Jörg Göppert, Ingo Rues, Tatjana Borovikov, Anja Fehlau
Starts: September 11, 2018

5) Courses provided by automation tools providers.

This list is mostly based on my post about RPA tools, but I also added few BPM tool providers with e-learning courses. Usually they are using their own pages or e-learning platforms which don’t have mobile applications, so you will need to use browser to learn. Those courses are normally videos available on-demand.

5a) Appian (https://academy.appian.com)

Over 30 courses available for free with information about BPM.

5b) Automation Anywhere (https://www.automationanywhereuniversity.com/)

Automation Anywhere provides a nice library of 10+ online courses. Some of them are free (over 8 hours of content), others are very reasonably priced.
There is also free introductory course on Udemy by Automation Anywhere.
https://www.udemy.com/beginners-guide-to-rpa-automation-anywhere/

5c) Bizagi (http://elearning.bizagi.com)

Bizagi offers 10+ courses about their tools.

5d) Bonitasoft (https://www.bonitasoft.com/videos)

There are dozens of video tutorials, webinars and other materials.

5e) Camunda (https://camunda.com/learn/videos/)

Camunda offers library of 6 video tutorials. And they have something unique – a hawk

5f) Pegasystems (https://academy.pega.com)

Pega Academy contains 100+ courses in several languages. There are 8 courses (and few exams) related to RPA. Overall free courses have over 5 days of content.

5g) UiPath (https://www.uipath.com/rpa-academy)

UiPath offers 9 courses for various groups of users in several languages. Overall there are 100+ hours of content – all for free.

5h) WorkFusion (https://automationacademy.com/)

There are 6 courses available – some provided by WorkFusion and others by partners. Overall there are 80+ hours of content. All the courses are free.

6) Do you want something more?

As you can see there are lots of free resources about process automation, but this time not so many about the business aspects of BPM.

In this case I can recommend you two options:
a) library of webinars by BOC Group where you can watch on demand over 20 webinars by my colleagues
https://us.boc-group.com/webinars/#c67447

b) let me know what you would like to learn about BPM.

I am currently working on an e-book and a course about process modelling and BPMN and in a few weeks time I would like to open my course to a group of beta-testers
So, if you want to influence direction of the course and access it for free sign up and tell me which other topics do you want to learn.

Sign up for updates about the BPMN book and course

In this post you will find an overview of MOOC courses, further posts will cover books and other sources of knowledge. Enjoy!

Good thing about MOOC courses is that if you miss one edition you can join the next one. Below you will find updated info about courses from previous posts on this topic plus something new

Before we begin I have to ask you – what do you want to learn?

1) Do you want in-depth course about the most important aspects of BPM?

In this case I would strongly suggest 3 part course “Fundamentals of BPM” by professors Marcello La Rosa and Marlon Dumas.

Part 1 “Fundamentals of BPM: Process identification and discovery” started on Aug 28th but you still can join.

Part 2 “Fundamentals of BPM: Process analysis and redesign” starts on Oct 2nd.

Part 3 “Fundamentals of BPM: Process automation and monitoring” starts on Nov 6th.

If you miss them or don’t have that much time there is also an introductory course “Business Process Management: an Introduction to Process Thinking” that starts on Nov 27th.

2) Do you want to learn how to improve your processes?

You may enjoy the course “Introduction to Operations Management” by professor Christian Terwiesch. The course started on Sep 4th, but you still can join.

3) Do you want to know how to approach Process Mining?

In this case course “Process Mining: Data science in Action” by professor Wil van der Aalst is a best choice for you. The course started on Sep 4th, but you can still join.

4) Do you want to add a little innovation to your organization with Design Thinking?

I know this is not BPM per se, but I recently finished this course and found it very interesting and useful for anyone interested in creation of (software) products on a basis of customer needs.

“Developing Software Using Design Thinking” by Moritz Gekeler, Jochen Guertler and George Kembel starts on Oct 17th.

Are there any other topics you would like to learn?

Let me know and I will find something for you!

To give you fresh and common sense approach to BPM I invited for an interview Emiel Kelly.

Below you can listen to the interview.
RSS readers – go here for the audio.

About Emiel Kelly

Emiel has been working as a trainer and consultant for vendors of software like BPM tooling, since 1999. He also started his own initiative, Procesje.nl, a valuable source of practical and common sense information about Business Process Management and how to avoid blindly following the trends.