Collaborative Business Process Modeling
I just came across group ABPMP(Association of Business Process Management Professionals) Toronto chapter. It's good to see these groups being formed to take BPM execution forward. I am yet to go through to see the activities to be taken up by these groups.
Another thought that came across the same lines is the recent trend of Mobile apps . All the Product companies in Mobile , Gaming industry are creating the platform and driving on the Collaborative model of people enhancing the applications on the platform. Having same analogy in BPM, I think there are many platforms already existing by multiple vendors , now is the time to throw this for Collaboration to open forums for building the Business Process Models which I call it as Collaborative BPM(Modeling) .
Collaborative BPM will be the key for Knowledge Management and Sharing in Industry Process Knowledge where we will arrive the best practice solutions for thousands of processes existing in each industry. Could anyone have imagined in 90's to create a knowledge base currently available on Wikipedia . These processes in similar fashion need to evolve and have multiple variances available for people to choose the best model practiced and plug it into any of the BPM products.
Following factors need to be considered to make this feasible
Volume of Processes - There are too many processes in any organizations, can we do it all of them.
Prescription : As mentioned this has to evolve in collaborative mode as people are free to update based on their knowledge. Specialist will come forward and expand their knowledge through the platform.
Standards - There are two areas to be addressed
1- Modeling Tool Output
This will be left to contributors to choose the platforms which will be more usable and also on Product companies to support portability of tool output to products.
2- Processes
There are no standards for these processes and have grown over the years based on Org needs and maturity .
The intention of this exercise will not be to create a standard process as its going to be difficult to put standards unless they come as law/policy like US GAPP , Sarbanes - Oxeley , KYC. The intention is to have best process models available for use for future businesses or existing businesses to adopt.
Confidentiality - Important factor . I believe this still stands to be the problem of Web 2.0 in general . The important starting point here is to avoid Organizations and Customers disclosure to avoid this.
Validation and Verification - I think this directly relates to the usability issue. Will these models be usable once they are in place. My belief is YES once they are matured . In India for Travel people still believe in asking the people on road than Google Maps / India Maps as they are not yet matured . It takes time but the usage will increase over time. I can easily imagine how easy will it be to setup a new Business in 2020 as the processes will be matured and available handy to implement.
I believe there is just a need of platform for people to start modeling processes and let it mature the Social / Collaboration way. Soon we will see process models platform on Wikipedia , Google . The operating model will be similar to all open source forums, what is required is the backup by companies like IBM, MS and PEGA. I can imagine buying PEGA in TESCO / WALMART , Download Payroll Processing model from cbpm.com , upload and configure for business.
