The goal of this post series is to give you some ideas of how process models (especially BPMN Business Process Diagrams) can be used.

1) Communicate with others

Probably this is the most common use of the graphical process diagrams. We model processes to show how does the process look like currently (AS-IS modeling). Pretty often, the most valuable result of the process modeling is not a diagram itself, but a shared understanding between key stakeholders involved in this process. Model can serve as a lingua franca (common language) between people from various organizational units, showing them what needs to be done, by whom and when. This transparency helps avoid lots of misunderstandings.

For this purpose, it is important to make sure end-users can read and understand the process diagram, so usually it is better to create an easy-to-read diagram compliant with the notation rules, than use super fancy and complicated elements that readers may not know or confuse readers with non-standard use of the notation elements.

Most BPMN tools can be used for this scenario: diagramming tools (draw.io, Lucidchart, Visio, …), Enterprise Business Process Analysis tools (ADONIS, ARIS, iGrafx, …), Model Based Software Engineering tools (Enterprise Architect, Visual Paradigm, …). Key aspect is to make sure models are easy to access and consume.

2) Teach others

Process diagrams can not only serve as an overview of the process steps, but also show process participants more detailed instructions about what do they need to do. The first step to make your BPMN diagrams useful both for current employees who run the process and need to refresh their memory from time to time or new employees who need to learn how to run the process is to add descriptions to the tasks. Pretty commonly, those useful hints can be shown to the readers of the diagrams without a need to click on a diagram element. But it is not all! While pure BPMN does not have that many business-oriented attributes, it can be extended by tool vendors with additional elements such as RACI information, links to the applications and documents used in a process step, risks, and much more. If you extend your diagram in such a way, it can also be a basis for generating PDF procedures, SOPs, and similar documents.

Since pure BPMN may not be sufficient here, you may want to use EBPA tools for this purpose. MBSE tools can be a bit too technical here and diagramming tools usually just create pretty pictures without many business attributes you may need.

3) Show the connections and dependencies between the processes

BPMN is a great way to show detailed processes. But it is not the best option to show a full process architecture. Of course, you can show that a diagram calls some other process using the sub-process element, but you do not have a nice way to show processes that precede or follow your process. Unless you combine your BPMN diagrams with models showing process architecture! This way you can combine the best elements of the two worlds: BPMN as a standard for documenting detailed processes and business-oriented approach for documenting the business process architecture which is available in your tool. Spoiler alert—while there is no single standard for this, pretty likely you will see chevron icons for processes

For this element you obviously need a tool with something mode than only BPMN. All EBPA tools I am aware of, support this possibility and allow you to analyze your process architecture in a powerful way. Most MBSE tools can be used there too, but results may not be as visually compelling. Diagramming tools may not be the best choice for this one.

To be continued…

Below you can see answers to the questions regarding BPM skills in 2020 from following experts:
BJ Biernatowski
Paul Holmes-Higgin
Harald Kühn
John Mancini
John Morris & Peter Schooff
Michal Rosik
Tomislav Rozman
Mathias Weske

BJ Biernatowski

BJ Biernatowski is an advanced BPM Practitioner with 20 years of IT experience, 15 of which spent implementing Business Process Management solutions. He has practical experience with K2, Appian, Pega, and Tibco AMX BPM including large-scale business transformations.

BJ’s areas of interest include COEs, Knowledge Work automation and Citizen Development adoption of Low Code Digital Process Automation (DPA) platforms. UW Foster School of Business alumni and a Woodinville, WA resident.

WWW: http://www.healthcarebpm.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @bjbiernatowski

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

The answer on the surface seems pretty straightforward if you look at this subject through the lens of driving execution towards measurable results (the proverbial get *it done approach). The choice of the Digital Process Automation (DPA) vendor will ultimately determine your company’s success with process driven transformation. Your behaviors and attitudes should align with your organization’s strategic vision so get to know it first.

In 2020, I’d separate what you need to know and practice into 4 buckets:

1. COEs
Customer journey mapping, process discovery, automation architecture blueprints and mentoring, roadmaps and project artifacts reuse, best practices and change management methodologies. You will need these skills to articulate and plan your path forward. If you are a customer of your company’s COE, learn how to work with this team.

2. AI-DP-RP-A (as in Artificial Intelligence Digital and Robotic Process Automation)
The coalescence of these technologies and vendors’ approach to low code implementation will define the body of knowledge required to participate in projects. In 2020, the AI-DP-RP-A stack is the modern version of iBPMS from a few years ago. Since there is a lot more to learn, courses like Coursera’s Learning How to Learn with Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski will give you a solid footing. The advent of Low Code technologies creates many exciting opportunities that empower individuals like never before in the history of IT. Opportunities to democratize AI, automaton and solution delivery come with significant learning requirements though. If you are aspiring to the role of the Citizen Developer or perhaps even Automation Architect the depth and breadth of knowledge will vary accordingly.

3. Political awareness, influencing and knowing how to be a great team player.
Most successful projects are delivered by small and nimble teams supported by the leadership. Knowing how to play nice, without sacrificing your professional integrity, how to influence without sounding like the know it all and how to identify strong leaders for your programs are all very important skills.

4. The awareness of BPM as a management practice
Most people don’t have the time to go back to school to get their MBA in Business Process Management before their next project. Two vendors deserve accolades for publishing consumable, for dummies books on this subject. IBM ‘s edition of ‘BPM For Dummies’: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/B4R8JWK0 and K2’s ‘Operational Process Transformation for Dummies’: http://www2.k2.com/l/110682/2016-09-01/34w8jy
For extra credit discovery, I’d recommend checking out Fut Strat publications: http://www.futstrat.com/ or Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School BPM Certification program: https://bschool.pepperdine.edu/executive-education-certificate-programs/business-process-management/

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

There are a couple of established online resources i.e. bpmtips.com that could be used as the go-to place to start your exploration. DPA and RPA vendors’ online academies can be useful as well, although such training materials usually focus on the implementation without getting into the whys of DPA. Future Strategies (http://www.futstrat.com) is my personal favorite publisher writing about Digital Transformation and DPA in a way that’s both educational and vendor-neutral. The challenge with these materials though is that they don’t apply directly to practitioner’s work and the style of communication can be pretty formal. To overcome this issue and with the help of my work team I developed and taught the DPA 101 introductory course as a way to bridge the theory with practice.
It only took us 4 iterations to get this course right and the amount of time invested into curriculum development was pretty significant.

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

I’d caution against some DPA vendors hype (or even bashing) against the future of the cloud and the demise of software designed by humans. Both the cloud and Citizen Developer delivered solutions will have a crucial role in Digital Transformation. During the last few years, I’ve seen a lot of very innovative projects delivered by Citizen Developers quickly and with very little investment. This trend is going to disrupt revenue streams of DPA vendors dependent on specialized knowledge. In my view, the bold entry of Microsoft into the DPA and RPA markets in 2019 with its PowerAutomate platform confirms the strategic direction of the Citizen Developer driven process automation for the masses.

Jump to the top

Paul Holmes-Higgin

Dr Paul Holmes-Higgin, Chief product Office and co-founder of Flowable. Previously, as co-founder of Alfresco, one of his achievements was to bring Activiti to the fore of the company’s innovation. He has always been focused on software execution with a strong conceptual underpinning, and on closing the gap between the users and builders of software. A long-time Open Source advocate, he believes it still has an important role to play in making innovation more widely available. His PhD and background in AI gives him a deep understanding of the opportunities and pitfalls of Machine Learning. He sees innovation around the standard models of BPM as the best way to bring together his passions for user-centred software and intelligent automation in today’s highly dynamic business and social environment.

WWW: https://flowable.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @paulrhh

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

While I have a strong theoretical background, my real passion is getting smart software that does a real job into the hands of people, so that’s what I’ll focus on here. We’re all very familiar with BPMN and increasingly DMN, but I think 2020 will be the year of CMMN, the Case Management Model and Notation standard. Like all the standards, it’s not perfect, however, it allows us to express a range of problems in a different and more natural way, some of which are hard in BPMN. The executable blend of CMMN with BPMN and CMMN is now available at speed and scale, and global solutions built on it are out there in production. I think it’s also going to allow us to build low-code, model-driven solutions with some creative innovation around it. The other area I think is important for BPM is clearer management of the source and target of data that flows through processes. With GDPR and compliance now being so important to so many organizations, linking Data Models to case and process models is essential for showing where and how information is used.

The idea of blending and innovating concepts to make something that works applies as much to development methodologies as to the software that’s being built. Ironically, for me it’s not about the process itself, it’s about what the process is achieving: a super-efficient sausage machine churning out poor quality sausages is not what I think we should be about. I see BPM in 2020 as providing the framework that allows businesses to be as agile as the market demands of them. If you’re interested in AI, then Explainable AI (XAI) is where I’d focus.

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

There are a number of internet resources that can help a developer get started with BPM, especially with Open Source – go to flowable.org and download software to run or source code to extend, with a community to help you get going and keep going! For the business practitioners, I think the great work Bruce Silver has done with his Method & Style books makes them essential reading.

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

Skills learned always bring something, so it’s more a question of what’s been learned in the last year that allows us to be smarter. For me, the importance of blockchain remains highly relevant if you’re looking at supply chain problems but is less important in general. Also, that gratuitous application of AI to everything is not relevant. I think in 2019 we also found that RPA isn’t the answer to every problem either. We’ve been refining our understanding and role of these tools in the solution builder’s tool bag.

Jump to the top

Harald Kühn

Dr. Harald Kühn is a member of the management board of the BOC AG. He is responsible for the product management and the related strategic aspects of BOC’s product portfolio. Dr. Harald Kühn works in the areas of metamodelling, BPM, EA and the usage of cloud technologies in these domains.
He is an author of over 20 publications about various aspects of BPM.

WWW: boc-group.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @BOC_Group

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

1. Capability Mapping
In modern organisations, business process design is highly influenced by digitization. Digital influences are present in each phase of the business process management lifecycle. To make a specific business process design operational, each organisation needs capabilities which match to the digital requirements of the specific business process design. To keep a process-oriented organisation up-to-date, an overview of the needed capabilities and an active management of these capabilities is essential. Capability Mapping, e.g. such as contained in the enterprise architecture language ArchiMate, provides a useful approach. Each BPM practitioner should have a certain degree of knowledge about Capability Mapping.

2. Business Process Optimisation applying Lean Startup Principles
Many business process optimization approaches use lean management methods, business process excellence methods, simulation and statistics. In the context of process optimisation, it is worth to have a deeper look on the principles of the Lean Startup Movement which have been initially created to grow more successful entrepreneurial businesses. The “Build-Measure-Learn” cycle is about how we can learn more quickly what works and discard what doesn’t. And the related principles can be successfully applied in BPM as well. It is worth a look for each BPM practitioner.

3. Know the potential of AI/ML
The pace of including more and more AI-based (= artificial intelligence) and ML-based (= Machine Learning) components into digitalised business processes is tremendous. RPA and Process Mining are two prominent examples. But there are many more AI-based approaches such as pattern recognition, irregularity detection, predictive alerts, user guidance etc. which a BPM practitioner should be aware of.

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

Capability Modelling (as part of Archimate): https://www.opengroup.org/archimate-forum
Capability Management (as part of EAM): https://uk.boc-group.com/consulting/enterprise-architecture-management/
Eric Ries – The Lean Startup: http://theleanstartup.com/
5 Main Approaches to AI Learning: https://www.dummies.com/software/other-software/5-main-approaches-ai-learning/
OMiLAB – Open Models Initiative: https://www.omilab.org/

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

I repeat what I stated already last year: any knowledge and experiences gathered in the past will influence decisions for the future. Therefore, even if specific skills, techniques or technologies are not really relevant any more, they are important to evaluate and apply new upcoming approaches.

Jump to the top

John Mancini

John Mancini is the Past President of AIIM and President of Content Results, LLC.

Recent keynote topics include:
The Stairway to Digital Transformation
Information Modernization — The Elephant(s) in the Room
Getting Ahead of the Automation Curve
What on Earth do Users Really Want? — Keys to Success in Disruptive Times
Intelligent Automation — Solving the Problem of the Back-Office

WWW: http://www.contentresults.net
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @jmancini77

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

We are in an interesting period of terminology confusion when it comes process management. RPA, low code, no code, case management, intelligent automation and a host of other terms sometimes make “BPM” feel a bit dated. In this cacophony, and with the very real necessity of modernizing, there is a tendency to say there a shift away from BPM and toward…..something. And that “business process management” is…well it’s turning into something else.

My take is that all of the technologies I mentioned are not so much replacements for BPM as they are complements to it. Organizations at scale still need “industrial-strength” BPM. Smart organizations are augmenting BPM capabilities with agile tools to fill in the grey manual spaces of business process and connect the gaps between them.

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

I’m biased. I worked at AIIM for two decades. I still think the AIIM deep-dive courses represent a great foundation layer for process management professionals. And for line of business executives who need to understand the connections between technologies — from a business perspective — there is no better overview of what it means to be an information professional in an age of digital disruption than the AIIM Certified Information Professional program. I’m also a big fan of both the AIIM and ARMA annual conferences — a great place to find fellow travelers in process improvement and information governance. And if you have the budget and a connection to a particular vendor, the vendor-specific conferences I’ve spoken at in the past year have all been terrific and engaging.

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

In my experience, there is usually about an 18 month gap between the latest shiny objects promoted by vendor marketing machines and actual adoption at serious scale by real organizations. So pay attention to the latest announcements and get ready for the next generation of technology, but cut yourselves some slack. Organizations at scale take a bit longer to move on new technologies than you might think, but once they do, watch out. Unless there is a commanding pre-chasm business advantage to be gained, be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge.

Jump to the top

John Morris & Peter Schooff

John Morris is a business development and sales specialist with almost 30 years’ experience at vendors including IDC, DEC, Oracle, Intalio and Bosch, where he covered business services, financial services, manufacturing, field service, supply chain, and CRM & B2B marketing. John’s business development forte is selling new technology products where there are few or no existing references. He currently serves in a business development leadership role with several technology start-ups.

Peter can be reached at pschooff(at)datadecisioning.com and on Twitter at @PSchooff

WWW: http://www.datadecisioning.com
Twitter: @JohnHMorris
Twitter: @PSchooff

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

BPM Sales Skills: Many senior execs see BPM as “just another technology”. It is not. BPM is the technology of the work of business. There is no other technology where, by definition, the concepts of the work of business are first-class citizens of that technology. This is doubly true because business process is about repetition and viable business is all about repetition.

With BPM technology, an organization can achieve its automation goals faster, with less complexity and more agility than with any other technology. Along with supporting technologies such as decision technology and AI, there’s a big opportunity to make BPM technology the strategic focus in the executive suite. Sell that opportunity!

BPM Ops Focus: DevOps! DataOps! Even now AIOps! How about BPMOps! All software development is about “manufacturing artefacts or tools for business automation”. This idea shows up in capability maturity models as the “industrialization phase”. Consider that the evolution of any organization in a dynamic market depends on acquiring new automation tools — and then mastering the use of these new tools. It’s about programmatic tool creation. Think “process”, think a program of regularly delivered process automation tools. Think BPMOps.

AI & Decisioning Leverage: X-ray any business process, whether automated or not, and you’ll find that competitive advantage happens at decision points (i.e. BPM gateways). Often opportunities are missed when gateways are coded casually. A business process where decision logic is realized via BPM process can be very complicated — unnecessarily so in fact. By abstracting out decision rules for deployment in a decision engine, many business processes can be enormously simplified (avoiding dreaded “spaghetti processes”). And this is where AI comes in too.

The real meaning of AI today is machine learning, which is just pattern recognition. This is an ideal technology to deploy at business process decision points. AI is not “generically good for you”, but it is good for you in BPM gateways. The combination of BPM plus decision rules engine, optionally including AI, is a recipe for maximum process throughput and decisions-at-scale.

Business Analysis: Your biggest return on skills is your ability to identify viable business automation opportunities. Within your technology envelope, that means exploring potential new use cases for your particular business, and helping build a business case. That’s the work of business analysis. Technology is a given; and there’s little edge. Business analysis is where differentiation is realized.

New Spotlight On Executives: A strange thing is happening in the executive suite. Executives want operations visibility through dashboards! It’s a revolution. Operations used to be relegated to “the plant” or “shipping”, or operations research (OR) and industrial engineering! It was a black box. But the advent of big data and AI and many more integrative technologies means that the black box is no longer opaque. Competitive wins require that executives take responsibility for “what’s in the black box of production”. Because you can’t make strategy without understanding what you have — all the way down.

What does this mean for BPM? That executives will increasingly be taking responsibility for the inventory of key processes for which they are responsible. That’s what your competition will be doing. It’s a thrilling time!

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

BPM Start-up Business case: Reading Steve Blank about startups is a great resource! He emphasizes talking to your customers all the time! And running experiments. “Have BPM Ops, will travel.”

Domain Knowledge: Business transformation is about “the new”. That’s high risk though—unless you are building on what you already have. Most new initiatives in fact are building or extending existing business models. And that’s good news for BPM practitioners with deep domain knowledge. There are no “generic BPM process wins” – BPM wins are almost always very business-domain specific. So, one’s store of knowledge from experience is very relevant. Why not learn more about the business of your business?

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

BPM Software Skills: Let’s consider “no longer relevant” as “in-place, let’s leave it alone”, while we pursue strategic change.

Jump to the top

Michal Rosik

Product Visionary & CPO, Minit

As Product Visionary for Minit, Michal defines the Research & Development direction for this process mining solution, develops close ties to the academic community in this area and evangelizes process mining benefits to enterprises worldwide. Michal previously lead Microsoft Consulting department in Siemens and was involved in several large enterprise projects as a consultant and project manager. In his free time, he is a passionate trail runner.

WWW: http://www.minit.io
WWW: LI company profile
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rosik
Twitter: @minit_io

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

For the past 2 years, I’ve been challenging most of the tech abbreviations in the game. I think this is the year of soft skills. So, here is my Process Intelligence Top 3 for 2020:

Courage
Process stakeholders need to be brave enough to implement the changes from process analysis initiatives. There is no ROI in this area unless the loop is closed. Doing complex analytical work, presenting to management, and drawing large figure slides in PowerPoint is just not enough.

RPA has been the fast performer, with automation’s first approach, enterprises have been receiving near-immediate value. But most of them are stuck now. Analysis first approach comes to help, but be prepared, because RPA might not be the correct answer to the traffic jam.

Confidence
To gain courage you need at least a basic level of confidence. And to gain confidence, you need a data-based approach. Only data can cover your back and build a solid foundation to rely on.

Whether it is simulating the changes in a sandbox environment before they are implemented in real life, or whether it is setting up a continuous monitoring pipeline to give you the most current process insights, this transparency level is the only way to overcome your inner challenges.

Interdisciplinarity
Process Mining and Process Intelligence have been a self-standing area of interest. I believe it’s time to open the gate to the world outside. And I mean the world outside of the galaxy, outside of the universe. It has become obvious that many problems and challenges that we are facing, are similar to problems and challenges in completely different scientific areas – biology, chemistry, even social science. We can look at the processes as living organisms, materials, or machines. They are interacting, communicating, solving conflicts. Just like we do.

And vice versa, there are areas where the word “process” does not exist, maybe it is called reaction, mutation, procedure or experiment, but still, I believe we are speaking the same language.

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

Discussions with experienced professionals still remain at the “top of the list”. There is a lot of resources all over the internet on any of the topics – the more hype, the more resources you’ll find. But only experience gives you the right filter on those sources.

In second place, with just a small gap, goes to academic research. Even though it might look complex and sometimes impractical, academic research is becoming the most relevant source of well-compiled and argumentative views on a specific topic. Combined with design-oriented approach, which gives it a little creative touch, academic research stands behind most of the things we, at Minit, do.

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

From both the technological and business point of view I am happy to say that AI and ML have come back to earth and touched the ground again. Process stakeholders have begun to utilize a very practical view on power and usage of those technologies.

Interestingly enough, topics that might be, at first sight, easier to grasp are still hanging in the air. I am talking about DTO in general – it is still so difficult for many organizations and their representatives to take a clear journey from vision and mission, through strategy, down to the processes and their KPIs and in the opposite direction. Back the digital organization with data, so that they can, at any time, see how changing the individual parameters on different levels influences the other parts of the overall picture.

Jump to the top

Tomislav Rozman

Dr. Tomislav Rozman is a founder of consultancy company BICERO Ltd. He is also designing online courses related to BPM, CRM, IT and teaching and mentoring Masters’ students at DOBA Faculty of applied business and social studies Maribor, Slovenia.

In his free time, he is a runner, guitar & ukulele player and psychology counsellor.

WWW: http://www.bicero.com
WWW: LI profile
WWW: Company LI profile
WWW: Company FB page
WWW: ResearchGate profile
Twitter: @tomirozman

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

I can talk about my experiences with so-called ‘long-tail’ of BPM adoption because I have direct contact with it.

Who are ‘long-tail’ BPM adopters? I work with late adopters such as process approach sceptics, public administration organizations, traditional companies which are far away from IT (e. g. construction), small businesses with out-of-place management practices. This world is very far from AI, RPA and other hype.

Collaborating with mentioned customers, we still deal with the BPM foundations such as:

(imaginary conversations)

Attitudes: Adopt process thinking first. Yes, I know you have silos type of organization which is impossible to change, but that doesn’t prevent you to cooperate. Design your processes with great customer experience in mind. Don’t adapt Cx to your existing processes.

Behaviours: Adopt teamwork. For process participants: Imagine you’re a relay runner. You get the baton, you pass it forward. For process managers: observe ‘the baton path’, optimize it and watch out it doesn’t fall on the ground. Teach your team how to be grounded, emphatic and technologically literate.

Skills: I have found out BPM (in its full incarnation) can be an overkill for SMEs. Even a simple list to describe the steps/inputs, outputs/documents/rules of your process and a spreadsheet to track your processes can be enough for SMEs.

Techniques: BPMN + DMN are a standard. I still miss a proper standard for process architecture design. The overview (process architecture) which shows which processes are managed and which are not is one of the most important things for companies which are starting with BPM approach.

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

I will not repeat my predecessors – there are numerous resources to learn techniques related to BPM.

I’d like to stress out 4 types of learning resources which are worth looking at after you learn the basics of BPM:
1. ‘Process content’ resources, best practices, such as APQC and similar.

2. Standards, which can be a great source for your own process design ideas.

3. Unrelated skills. Learn something from the totally unrelated field (e.g. sustainability) and observe how your attitude towards BPM and your teaching (if you’re a trainer) will change.

4. Mentors. Self-study is fine, but if you want to speed up your BPM-related learning, find a good mentor to teach you ‘tips and tricks’ which are not mentioned in any book.

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

All skills acquired during your career somehow contribute to your current behaviour and performance. The broader the better. Techniques are more transient than skills, e.g. let’s abandoned EPC already. If you’re an evangelist, please spare your customers with the hype until your technology is solving real problems.

Jump to the top

Mathias Weske

Professor Dr. Mathias Weske is chair of the business process technology research group at Hasso Plattner Institute of IT Systems Engineering at the University of Potsdam, Germany. The research group aims at addressing real-world BPM problems with formal approaches and engineering useful prototypes. His research focuses on the engineering of process oriented information systems, decision management, and event handling. In addition to running the BPM Academic Initiative bpmai.org with colleagues from academia and Signavio, the BPT research group has a track record in engineered prototypes with a significant impact on research, including projects like Oryx and jBPT. Dr. Weske is author of the first textbook on business process management and he held the first massive open online course on the topic in 2013. He on the Editorial Board of Springer’s Distributed and Parallel Databases journal and a founding member of the steering committee of the BPM conference series.

WWW: University website
Twitter: @mathias_weske

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

With increasing maturity of our discipline, new application domains being attracted by what BPM has to offer. We see BPM projects in, for instance, logistics, in the food industry, and in health care. By the way, HPI has established a Center for Digital Health to use patient data for better diagnosis and treatment. In all these domains, data and processes meet. And the role of process models shifts. Rather than being blueprints for automation, process models are an instrument to communicate execution data. Reasons include such different things as delay forecasting in logistics, transparency in sustainable food production, and conformance analysis in treatment processes. It is exciting to see the BPM machinery being constantly developed in response to these challenges.

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

The more diverse and challenging novel application scenarios become, the more important a solid foundation in process management is. With the focus on data, database skills become increasingly relevant, too. Any good online course and text book will provide the basis. To catch up with the latest developments, practitioners should consider visiting the top conferences, like BPM 2020 in Seville in September.

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

Don’t think about skills that are not relevant.

Jump to the top

Stay tuned for part 3!

So, first of all – what is a token? As opposed to other elements of BPMN like Tasks, Events or Gateways, tokens do not have visualizations.

Specification defines Token as: “a theoretical concept that is used as an aid to define the behavior of a Process that is being performed”.

Token is born when a Start Event is triggered (e.g. by receiving a Message, when some condition becomes true or for a plain Start Event simply when some employee starts the process).

Token then follows the Sequence Flow (it cannot use Message Flows or other arrrows) and flows through a process (passing through elements such as Gateways or Tasks/Sub-processes) right till the End Event where it is consumed.

Important thing about token is that it helps figure out what can happen in a process.

Let’s take a look at the following process (example from my course on Udemy “BPMN for business analysts“). As you can see it is a simple sequence.

It means that you can start doing B only after A is complete and so on. If you are MS Project user this should remind you of Finish to Start link between tasks. Using example from Microsoft –  you cannot Pour concrete until Dig foundation is done

But what happens in a context of a single Task (or Sub-Process)?

If you are not ready for technical explanation of a BPMN Activity lifecycle (from specification chapter 13.3.2) here is my quick and dirty introduction to what can happen to a Task (or Sub-Process). Elements marked with bold are important from a point of view of a Token handling.

In the beginning all Activities in a process are Inactive.

When a Token arrives Activity becomes Ready. In our example B could be Ready after A was done and Token moved to the right, but C, D and so on would be Inactive. It does not mean that some work begins right away. In real life this can be case when you prepared a report and passed to your colleague for additional check, but your colleague is busy. Task is on his (or her) list of things to do, but nothing happens yet.

Actual work begins when our Task/Sub-process changes state to Active. Technically speaking it can happen only when we have all the needed data. In some cases Activities take very long to complete (e.g. Sub-Process “Negotiations” could last for weeks) and sometimes they are quick (e.g. Task “Send reminder” could finish in a second if our process is automated).

If everything went fine, our Activity is done and we do not need to wait for anything it is Completed (if there would be some non-interrupting boundary events to handle we would be in intermediate state Completing). Outgoing Sequence Flow of this Activity gets a token, data is output.

If something went not as we expected Activity can move to state Withdrawn (if you used super-rare way of modelling when Receive Tasks are used after Event-based gateway only one path can be selected – all others will be withdrawn), Failed or Terminated (if the Activity was interrupted by some error or interrupting event; those states also have interim states Failing and Terminating). If the Activity was done but had to be undone we will have state Compensated (yes you guessed – preceded by Compensating). Theoretically compensation could go wrong and finish Failed or Terminated.

Now the last state – when last token reaches the End Event and life of a process instance ends our Activities will become Closed, since nothing more can happen to them.

This is how token behaves in a simple sequential process. However things get more interesting when we start splitting and merging process paths (with Gateways or without). Stay tuned for part 2!

Most of the books below are Kindle eBooks, which is my preferred format of reading, but usually you can buy them in various formats.

For the books published by Future Strategies you can use the code BPMEE provided by our friends from BPM Eastern Europe to get a lower price (which is useful if you are buying few copies of print version).

My 2016 reading list

BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition
Robert Shapiro, Stephen A. White PhD, Conrad Bock, Nathaniel Palmer, Michael zur Muehlen PhD, Prof. Marco Brambilla, Denis Gagné et al

What I like in this book is broad overview of various aspects of BPMN from many experts. Plus it has a chapter about making BPMN fit for business with ADONIS

BPMN Method and Style, Second Edition, with BPMN Implementer’s Guide
Bruce Silver

First edition of this book convinced me that BPMN is not too complicated for business users and helped me understand many of the BPMN silent assumptions. Highly recommended.

Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals
Paul Harmon

Useful overview of BPM-related tools and methods. I always have it next to my desk at work.

Business Process Management: Profiting From Process
Roger Burlton

I bought it after my colleague from work told me about Roger Burlton and his methodology. Very useful.

Digital Transformation: A Brief Guide For Game Changers
Jim Sinur, Peter Fingar

Bought it after interview with Jim Sinur to learn more about Digital Transformation. It’s a very useful book with lots of practical strategies and case studies.

How to Start a Business Analyst Career
Laura Brandenburg

Very useful book for people who want to start a career as a Business Analyst or (like in my case) wish to understand better how Business Analysts work. Helped me a lot with content preparation for my course BPMN for Business Analysts on Udemy.

Prozessmanagement für Experten: Impulse für aktuelle und wiederkehrende Themen
Franz Bayer, Harald Kühn

Great book written by my colleagues from work. My #1 motivation for learning German – still cannot order a meal, but know how to name most of the BPMN elements and what are Kernprozesse already

Questioning BPM?
Paul Harmon, Roger Tregear plus over 30 BPM experts

As the name suggests this is a book with questions (and answers). 33 experts answer most burning questions about BPM today. Many important perspectives and lots of useful ideas. Left five star review on Amazon.

Reimagining Management
Roger Tregear

I got this book for review before it was published and loved it. It gives you actionable tips for various stages of BPM implementation in organization.

My 2017 reading list

After running BPM Value Summit and preparing several roundup posts (on BPMN, DMN, BPM skills and selling BPM in organizations) with contributions from over 60 experts one of my resolutions for 2017 is to keep learning from the best (and share with you what I learn).

Below you can find a list of books which I plan to read.
If you can recommend one of them (or some other books) please leave a comment.

BPM

BPM Boots on the Ground: How to Implement Strategic Business Process Management: Lessons Learned from one of the World’s Largest Organizations
Jim Boots

Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures
Mathias Weske

Business Process Management: The Next Wave
Jim Sinur, James Odell, Peter Fingar

Fundamentals of Business Process Management
Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, Hajo Reijers

Passports to Success in BPM; Real-World, Theory and Applications
Nathaniel Palmer, Frank Kowalkowski, Peter Schooff, Mark von Rosing, Henrik von Scheel, Lloyd Dugan

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/passports-to-success-in-bpm

Why / Por qué BPM?: Business Process Management
Pedro Robledo

Social BPM: Work, Planning and Collaboration Under the Impact of Social Technology
Keith Swenson, Nathaniel Palmer, Sandy Kemsley, Keith Harrison-Broninski, Max Pucher

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/social-bpm-print-edition

The Art of Business Process Management: BPM Strategy and Real-World Execution
Nathaniel Palmer, Linus Chow, Dr Mathias Kirchmer, Robert Shapiro

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/the-art-of-business-process-management-print-edition

BPMN, CMMN, DMN

DMN Method and Style: The Practitioner’s Guide to Decision Modeling with Business Rules
Bruce Silver

Real-Life BPMN (3rd edition): With introductions to CMMN and DMN
Jakob Freund, Bernd Rücker

Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN
James Taylor, Jan Purchase

The MicroGuide to Process and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN: Building More Effective Processes by Integrating Process Modeling with Decision Modeling
James Taylor, Tom Debevoise

Decision Management

Business Rule Concepts
Ronald G. Ross

Decision Management Systems: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics
James Taylor

Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes
Alan N. Fish

The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology
Barbara von Halle, Larry Goldberg

DMN in Action with OpenRules: A Practical Guide for Development of Business Rules and Decision Management Applications using Decision Model and Notation (DMN) and OpenRules
Jacob Feldman

Techniques relevant for BPM practitioners

Be a Great Problem Solver – Now!
Adrian Reed

Best Practices for Knowledge Workers: Innovation in Adaptive Case Management
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Jim Sinur et al

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/best-practices-to-support-knowledge-workers-print

Common Approach – Uncommon Results: How Adoption Delivers the Results You Deserve
Ian Gotts, Richard Parker

IMPORTANT: please note comment from Ian below: he has number of copies and is happy to donate them. Thanks Ian!

Design Thinking Methodology Book
Emrah Yayici

Empowering Knowledge Workers
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Steinar Carlsen

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/empowering-knowledge-workers-print-edition

Operational Leadership
Andrew Spanyi

Outside-In. the Secret of the 21st Century Leading Companies
Steve Towers

Process Mining: Data Science in Action
Wil M.P. van der Aalst

Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
Alec Sharp, Patrick McDermott

Business Analysis

Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success
Steven Blais

Business Analysis For Dummies
Kupe Kupersmith, Paul Mulvey, Kate McGoey

Software Requirements
Karl Wiegers, Joy Beatty

Visual Models for Software Requirements
Anthony Chen, Joy Beatty

Addendum

Thanks for your great comments suggesting more valuable books!

Marco Fargnoli recommends two books by Andrew Spanyi:

Business Process Management (BPM) is a Team Sport: Play it to Win!
Andrew Spanyi

More for Less: The Power of Process Management
Andrew Spanyi

Scott Francis posted about this list of BPM books and suggested two more:

Business Process Management: The Third Wave
Howard Smith, Peter Fingar

BPM Everywhere
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Peter Fingar, Reddy Surendra et al.

Does it sound interesting? Read on…

I have spent last few weeks working on a website for the new version of ADONIS – process modeling tool available in a cloud that my company offers. Reading all the texts made me think about the changes in process modeling in the recent years.

Process models are no longer something that only experts can prepare, read and use. They can serve as a common language for an organization and help get the work done. But only if you manage to make people care about the models and the results they provide. Otherwise – if the models are not used by people – they will be useless “shelfware”.

And it is the same with BPM in general. It can provide great results for the company, but only if it is applied and executives support the BPM initiatives.

But this is only my perspective, so I thought it could be interesting for you to hear about modeling processes and running BPM initiatives from someone who did it for a large corporation for many years.

In this interview you can listen to the experiences of Jim Boots who worked at Chevron Corporation for 30 years and was the primary force behind building Chevron’s BPM foundation from 2005-2010. Jim shares lots of great tips, so prepare something to take notes…

RSS readers – go here for the audio.

About Jim Boots

Jim Boots worked at Chevron Corporation for 30 years in a wide array of functions including sales, total quality management, business development, supply chain management, business management, e-commerce management, health safety & environment management, enterprise architecture, and Business Process Management (BPM) program development.
He was the primary force behind building Chevron’s BPM foundation from 2005-2010.