Colloborative BPM - A new way for SOA, and Enterprise IT projects.

Last week I had the opportunity to look at the process flow diagram of one of our BPM projects. Looking at the exiting process flow it was no surprise to see a wall to wall snapshot of the long work flow diligently documented by our BPM team. We had the normal conversation of how complex our processes have become and how inefficient the existing operations are. One point that was brought up was how simple tasks have grown into complex entities due to N number of intermediate steps in them.

This made me think about the work flow presented to me. Basically I was wondering whether the complex setup I see before my eyes was developed by a dedicated team for solving a particular problem or grew by itself to solve a business requirement.

I took a piece of the work flow and started inquiring around the organization about why it is being done like that. Amazingly I had answers that were logical and reasonable that supported every twists and turns that made the flow complex. For me it looked like nothing was really amiss in the microscopic level, at the macroscopic scale I found the asynchronous nature of organizational tasks lead to all this complex work flow.

For example task A which when completed leads to task B after some time gets a new business requirement task A.1, since the implementor of task A.1 changed the original task A to be safe he added a check point C to Task A before it goes to task B.So a Simple task of going from A to B now has morphed into A to A.1 to C to B and this happens to a task cycle were there is no interplay with other enterprise components. If we take the enterprise effect into account the A.1 and C may effect processes X and Y and they may add new steps X.1 and Y.1 to solve the issues of A.1 and C

As the organization grows there are events that happen asynchronously all the time and we have a situation with an ugly looking BPM work flow chart and we have all the six sigma's and SOA architects attacking it to create simplicity and efficiency.

Now the question is after this iteration will we have a stable system that will be predictable and provide an efficient work flow for now and the future? The answer in the SOA/BPM space for that is governance. Tighter control, standardizations and process management when implemented and governed properly will provide that stability. However the after effect of tighter governance is decline of innovation, creativity and spontaneity. How does organizations will deal with this side effect of the BPM/SOA initiative. This becomes critical in a global marketplace were innovation is the competitive advantage for organizations.

Looking into my spyglass I see answer in the application of Chaos Theory in organizational development. The challenge of change management is pervasive in the BPM/SOA space for creating an agile organization receptive to change. Chaos management can provide organizations an environment that would thrive on change. Embracing chaos and constantly being on the edge is a nervous state for organizations but the payback is a creative, innovative and agile organization. So my recipe would be embrace chaos and use BPM/SOA to act as the moderator in controlling the chaos.Have loose governance, create a plan to do a BPM work flow analysis in iteration after the first run as often possible to find the instability and use SOA to manage.