Social Networking, BPM and SOA
In human history, there are many examples of inventions or discoveries from people on different locations and with different backgrounds. In any period, ideas are discovered at the same time. Even big ideas. This is true for the past, present, and in different cultures. As Gladwell writes:
«They found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France…»
I’m talking about this subject because few days after I started this community, I got an announcement from Software AG about AlignSpace.com, a new community for SOA and BPM, leveraging the new social networking paradigms. Miko Matsumura has been eloquent in describing why social networking makes sense in the context of SOA projects. In deed, just like BPM projects, SOA focused projects are of collaborative nature, and then need “social” support from key stakeholders.
Knowing about simultaneous inventions history, you can easily imagine how this announcement from Software AG made me feel comfortable with pursuing the idea of bringing together a community of BPM experts to share ideas, interact on projects and gain more traction in the market, all within a social networking portal like BPM-Exchange.com.
On my side, I’m currently inviting business process experts and prospective BPM consumers to join this network, which is driven by similar objectives to AlignSpace. For now, I would say there are slight differences in terms of ways and means between AlignSpace and BPM Exchange:
- BPM Exchange is for people with minimal skills requiremed to participate in a real world BPM project. Typically, we are addressing business analysts, process analysts or experts, process owners, IT specialists. Ideally, experts here will have the OMG OCEB certifications at a suitable level (fundamental, intermediate or advanced). This is may seem like a harsh condition, but in real life, only few people participate full time on a BPM project, needless to admit that skilled people dramatically increase project success chances.
- As a consequence of the target people, we have chosen to rely on BPMN for process discovery and modeling. As prominant BPM consultant Bruce Silver notes, « BPMN is the clear defacto standard for business process modeling, especially when the ultimate goal is a process implementation solution. BPM Suites from Oracle, SAP, Tibco, Intalio, Lombardi and Savvion are BPMN-based, and more are moving to the standard ». BPM Exchange is really for people who have decided to use BPM suites to conduct a first pilot project or an “enterprise-grade” implementation.
- BPM Exchange encourages Open Source stacks. The social networking platform (based on BuddyPress), the eLearning system (based on eFrontLearning) and the collaborative BPM workspace (based on bxModeller), because I love Open Source
So, I’m really excited about the timing of this initiative, and I will do anything to make it work. Let’s see what happens next.
matthewgreen said:
While AlignSpace (http://www.alignspace.com) and BPM Exchange seemingly have the same top level goal, I think that the fundamentals are vastly different. AlignSpace focuses on 3 key elements: collaboration on a process project before modeling begins, ability to import/export various model types, and active marketplace to share/sell expertise, value added applications, or models artifacts. One of the fundamental beliefs at AlignSpace is that everyone who should be involved in a process project should be able to be involved in a meaningful way. For example, if Joe the plumber is actively involved in a process project as a user then he should be able to articulate what he does as he interacts with a process. This means that the user interface has to be very easy to understand and use and should not require any training. Your use of a BPMN model paradigm for process discovery will be difficult for Joe to understand and use. Don’t you think that this will hinder his interaction with the system?
April 1st, 2009 at 8:29 am
Mike Lees said:
I share the concerns about BPMN stated above. You state that your goals are to allow people with minimal skills to participate in real world projects. In my experience these people know their specific tasks very well but do not think in terms of the process. Valuable though it is, BPMN is not a tool for real world people involved in day-to-day tasks. They need a simple tool that will allow them to document their knowledge - challenges and ideas for improvement that can then be developed by people who do understand BPMN. It seems this is the fundamental difference between what the AlignSpace and BPMExchange.com are trying to achieve.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hicham said:
Hi Matt, nice to see you around!
AlignSpace and BPM Exchange ( http://bpm-exchange.com ) are using similar principles (social networking for BPM) to achieve similar goals but they may be taking different paths. I don’t know about AlignSpace planned modus operandi, but I can say that BPM Exchange will be fully deployed in multiple iterations (just like successful BPM implementations). BPM Exchange does not exclude “Joe the plumber” as you say from getting INVOLVED. In fact, we want BPM Exchange to be here first and foremost for expert BPM (OCEB certified if possible) who will be COMMITTED to the success of BPM initiatives (In case you know about SCRUM terminology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(management) - let’s say BPM Exchange will act as a hub between “Pigs” and “Chicken” :), but prior to involving Chicken, we need to take care of Pigs…)
Now, as a starting point, we decided to use BPMN because it is the defacto standard and every active project participant (”Committed pig”) will need to know the notation as the ultimate goal is a process implementation solution (BPMS). We have also programs to prepare for OMG OCEB certification, because we want the experts in our social network to have the minimum required to succeed in BPM projects. I believe this makes sense, right?
Now, for “Joe the plumber”, there will be space to participate in the project, and of course, we will not ask them to know BPMN, but we will empower them with specific tools (a Wiki-like maybe?) to take part in the process discovery, documentation, optimization, validations….etc.
Question: Will I be able to use BPMN in AlignSpace?
April 1st, 2009 at 1:37 pm
To BPMN or not to Be | BPM Exchange Social Network said:
[...] started as a discussion has now turned to a complete post, reanimating in fact an old debate about using BPMN as a standard [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:43 am
BPM Exchange: The Happy Path | BPM Exchange Social Network said:
[...] and what every member or subscriber should expect to get. Then, I realized that my post about Social Networking, BPM and SOA was not clear enough or simply was not read at all, which is a weak hypothesis, given the comments [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 7:40 pm