In my recent article on BPM Systems, I drove a stake in the ground regarding how these systems are far easier to use in supporting the changes that come from the powerful (yet simple) techniques that are the “bread and butter” tools of the Certified Process Professional – and how current use of these systems misses the mark almost completely.

In this article I hope to shed a bit more light on that subject by delving into a bit of the details… but before I do, please be advised…

THIS ARTICLE IS RATED X for X-tremely challenging to current technology thinking and practices.

(If you love what you are currently doing with tech stuff I strongly suggest you stop reading this right now because you will not like what I have to say.)

I’ve recently taken a look at the “progress” of the BPM technology community at large and I will start by saying that the standards activities underway are diametrically opposed to any creation of business value. I’ve withheld support for any of the BPM standards in the past but in seeing where these activities have gone now the new stake in the ground is far harsher…

In my informed and educated judgment end-users of “BPM technology” are strongly warned to avoid any use of these standards. The damage created by adopting these standards is likely to limit the ability of the organization to meet current market demands and without a doubt will play a critical role in limiting the ability of organizations to meet future demands.

But jeez Terry, why would you say that when so many people are singing like canaries of the wonder and enrichment these standards are (or will) bring to businesses across the globe?

Remember Zara?

One of the businesses we talk about a lot is a company called Zara. Zara is a Spanish fashion retailer… the largest fashion retailer in the world. They came virtually out of now where to become the undisputed Market Leader against a number of long established, heavyweight market champions. A Cinderella story? Hardly. Zara drives their market through a radical process approach that is incredibly simple. Ten day turn-around from trend-spotting to store.

There is only one way a business can do this, and that is to focus on the business goal and eliminate all other activities and agendas that are endemic in the “normal” way businesses determine what investments (money/resources) they will make.

In respect to IT, Zara invents a scant one-fourth of revenues against industry norms in IT – only 0.5%. They use technology investments only where they support business goals which, is characterized by DOS-based POS terminals, home-grown ERP functions and high-tech adoption of real-time communication technology.

This profile tells a very powerful story. In an industry where on all fronts other than communications Zara woefully lags the industry in high-technology adoption and “classical” enterprise architecture thinking and enterprise application deployment the business is succeeding head and shoulders over their competitors.

So which do you want to be? Technology elegant, on the curve, in the groove, hot on the trends and slick with your techno-stack or the undisputed business leader in your market?

If you aren’t starting to get the point then you need a MAJOR LEAGUE WAKE UP CALL!

How About Virgin?

Sir Richard Branson – the leadership phenomenon of the Virgin companies – knows business success is about business – not IT.

While many of Virgin’s companies use far more “current” technologies than Zara, technology investments must directly align with business goals. A great example of Virgin leveraging its business focus is Virgin Mobile USA.

It should be obvious that to be a major player in the cellular service market requires huge investments in the technology needed to deliver cellular service to your customers – and most analyses would quickly identify cellular service capability as the key variant in market potential.

Not Virgin. Using technology to link a “pay as you go” service model into Sprint’s cellular service backbone, Virgin Mobile USA as become on of the biggest cellular service companies in the US without every owning, operating or investing in the infrastructure needed to actually deliver the cellular service itself.

What is the message? Business first, technology only where it directly aligns with doing business, and only when it makes doing business simpler, easier and more successful.

Current BPM Technology Practices

Now when I look at current BPM technology practices what I see are a serious of extremely low-level activities that don’t even hit the map of things the business does. More and more the trend is moving to capture basic “objects” from a programming perspective and “business processes” that are nothing more that code functions (verify account, generate purchase order, etc, etc).

OH MY GOD.

If you are following this path you are completely wasting your time, your company’s money and your career. This myopic idea that we understand “our world,” that it is sufficiently static that we can create engineering models for it, that those models can be broken down into an essential low-level set of “building blocks” that can be used to assemble whatever “business processes” are needed to support the business, that we known enough about coming change that this “model” won’t fall short of future needs, and that this is in any way aligned with the activities of PEOPLE is completely ridiculous.

Yet this is where most of corporate IT is spending its time, its energy and its company’s money. The money is far better used at the casino, because at least there you have an outside chance of “cashing in” if the odds always favor the “house.” But some chance is better than no chance…

Technology is Not Bad – But Our Approach Is…

Now it’s not that technology is “bad,” it is our approach to leveraging technology that is all screwed up. We have to stop doing the “dumb stuff” (no matter how technologically elegant it may be) and get our heads into a different place.

We need to reorient our minds into the current reality of the business world and we need to immediately start aggressively challenging our assumptions. Why are we doing this? How does it DIRECTLY support our business goals? How does it make the peoples’ lives in our organization simpler, easier and more successful? How does it make our customers’ lives simpler, easier and more successful?

It’s time to wake up and get with the program! We are in the middle of a business transformation where the giants will slain left and right, heroes will arise overnight and work will become far more engaging, rewarding and personally satisfying.

Mucking around in a fantasy of technology architecture that makes the Harry Potter movies look like real-life documentaries is only going to take you to a place where you are left out, hung out to dry, out of work, out of purpose and completely out of touch with reality.

The change is huge, it is fundamentally transformational and it is coming irregardless of what you do or choose to believe. While this fact may not be apparent to you now, there is a tipping point that we will hit and when we do it will be plain as the nose on your face.

Of course, if that is when you get your wake-up call, then you will be left out of a world that has moved on while you stood still.

And this a very unpleasant place to be in.