Building a BPM Toolbox

11/08/2011

Building a BPM Toolbox

The BPM knowledge area is broad and sometimes confusing. As I have described in the post http://www.allaboutrequirements.com/2011/06/what-is-bpm-bpms-ea-bpa-a-short-definition-introduction.htmlBPM is many things and you will have a hard time finding a methodology that cover all aspects under the BPM umbrella.

Often teams new to BPM are confused by the lack of a well-known cover-it-all-methodology and will ask for a methodology to be adopted. Methods do exist out there. Just to mention a few:

Business Process

Six Sigma
Lean
Kaizen
ITIL
Rummler-Brache
ToGaf
Rational Unified Process

System Development

Scrum
RAD
FDD (Feature Driven Development)
XP
Rational Unified Process

Project Management

Prince2
PMI PMBOK

Change Management

ADKAR
Kotter

However, in your organisation is new to BPM, it will probably benefit much more from introducing techniques and customised guides on how to approach BPM tasks/projects (see: http://www.allaboutrequirements.com/2011/07/using-bpm-maturity-model-for-inspiration-when-implementing-bpm.html). In other words you should be inspired by the best from the methods (preferably from the methods you already know) and build your own BPM toolbox. According to a Gartner survey approx. 33% choose to develop their own toolbox.

Your toolbox should consist of techniques describing what to develop, methods describing how to approach the techniques, frameworks used for creating the technique deliverables, and finally tools to use when producing the technique deliverables.

For example as the picture below shows you could have chosen the technique AS-IS Analysis for your toolbox. And you could have chosen to use the BPMN notation when creating your AS-IS Analysis. In addition you could have created a document describing the method for creating the AS-IS Analysis (How to start, what to do first, who to interview, how to document etc.).