This post opens the series about building the Business Process Architecture.
Listen to the interview with BPM thought leader Roger Burlton to learn the best practices of building the process architecture.
If you want to learn more about the process architecture sign up for the free BPM EE Online Summit where I will be presenting about this topic.
Interview
Quotes
“The true business processes are end to end. They start with the outside world and go back to the outside world.” Click to tweet
“Our customers really wouldn’t care less about our org chart.” Click to tweet
“The one thing that holds everything together in business architecture is the business process architecture.” Click to tweet
“Hope is not a strategy” Click to tweet
Resources mentioned in this episode
BP Trends – monthly updates http://www.bptrends.com/join/
Business Architecture Essentials: The Business Architecture Landscape http://www.bptrends.com/business-architecture-essentials-the-business-architecture-landscape/
Business Process Change http://www.amazon.com/Business-Process-Change-Third-Press/
Business Process Manifesto http://www.bptrends.com/resources/bp-manifesto/
Business Process Management: Profiting From Process http://www.amazon.com/Business-Process-Management-Profiting
Process Renewal Group http://www.processrenewal.com/
About Roger Burlton
Roger is the president of Process Renewal Consulting Group Inc. He is also co-founder of BPTrends Associates; the services firm of the world-leading BPTrends.com knowledge portal. He started the pioneering Process Renewal Group (PRG) in 1993 and was at the forefront of process-centric ways of running businesses.
He is regarded globally as a thought leader and dynamic practitioner who brings reason, clarity, and practicality to complex business architecture and business change.
Roger’s insights can be found in his acclaimed book: Business Process Management: Profiting from Process, the Business Process Manifesto, the Handbook on Business Process Management and numerous other publications including his articles featured on BPTrends.com.
Roger chairs several of the largest and most influential BPM conferences in the world and is a sought after speaker dealing with the tough issues of business change in a thought provoking and entertaining manner.
It’s interesting that Burlton said, “The true business processes are end to end. They start with the outside world and go back to the outside world.” I’m not sure when this interview took place, but this definition is what today most would call a core process, a specific type of business process.
Note that Burlton defined a business process differently in the Business Process Manifesto which he authored sometime around 2003. The manifesto has gone through several revisions since then including the definition of a business process. Burlton’s most recent definition can be found here
https://www.brcommunity.com/articles.php?id=b672
where a business process includes stakeholders, not just outside customers. This results in the definition being much broader to encompass all processes in an organization, not just core processes.
My take is that defining a business process generically to be any process in a business, and use terms like core process and support process to refer to specific end-to-end business processes, is more intuitive and less confusing to newcomers to BPM. This is also more in line with Porter’s view when he introduced Primary and Support Activities in his book titled Competitive Advantage back in 1985 which some believed started the process revolution.
Thus, we see that there is no universal consensus on what a business process is, and its definition continues to change as the BPM field continues to evolve. It seems that standards, consultants, and other sources define the term in ways that best suits their needs. Confusion reigns when the term is used and not defined or poorly defined.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your insightful comment!
Zbigniew