Agile-, Adhoc-, Dynamic-, Social-, Or Adaptive Bpm

I am pleased to inform you that we have justprocesses. Surely, two process owners need to
published ‘Mastering the Unpredictable' withdiscuss their handovers. If the process tools are
the substantial support of Keith Swenson, and it isweb-enabled they are automatically 'social'. Social
not too soon. The subject of adaptive processescommunication is not enough, because the
is heating up as you might have read. In the bookbusiness needs a central repository to manage
I discussed the differences between BPM types.and deploy all the process and business metadata.
Forrester groups products into Integration-,Adaptive Process — sidelines Business Process
Document-, or Human Centric, which is not veryDesign and Management as a strategic initiative.
helpful to figure out what you actually need.Process design must rather map the business
Vendors position their solutions as such: agile,strategy into a business architecture with
dynamic (aka flexible), and ad-hoc (often alsocapability maps, use cases and process teams. It
called human). I started to use the termis however quite impossible to sensibly derive
"adaptive" for process requirements a few yearsdetailed business processes from a strategy
ago. It has been used before but as a substitutewithout bottom-up participation. Social BPM could
for agile. A recent arrival is Social BPM. What doeshelp but the result would still be rigid. The process
it all mean?owning team alone must create and maintain the
Agile Process — arrived with more powerful(secondary) service processes, while the
design tools and BPMS functionality that gave amanagement defines the goals in a capability map
business analyst a faster way to designthat links the service processes and the support
flowcharts. The agile BPM concept requires  theprocesses together. That has to be
complete analysis, modeling, implementation,communicated in an easy-to-use business
simulation, monitoring, and optimization lifecycle.architecture for the process teams directly in a
Therefore it is laden with bureaucracy, overheadmetadata repository. The infrastructure  provides
and long implementation lead times. Processes arethe necessary transparency for management to
mostly laid out in intricate detail, encoded withdefine goals and outcomes and to monitor their
business rule engines, linked to complex SOAachievement, while business users still retain their
backend orchestration, more complex data andad-hoc freedom. These processes can be
user interface mappings, and in most cases seesenhanced to stricter definition and more
content as an afterthought — except forcomplexity any time.
document-centric capture solutions.So what does adaptive mean? It refers to
Dynamic Process — has been around for ainternal changes caused by outside conditions that
few years now in various incarnations.  It is abecome permanent and make the entity more
variant of agile process and enables the businessfitting to those new conditions. Those changes are
user to make changes to the process executionperformed by means of the entity itself and not
on the fly, by for example selecting a differentby some external force. So if you need
sub-process, but requiring predefined exit points.consultants to design or change your processes it
User changes do not change the defined processmay be agile but not adaptive. With Adaptive
template, and a change is seen as either anProcess, endusers do not just collaborate in
exception or an unforeseen variant. That hits theflowchart design, but they actually create the
limitations of  most BPM systems, because usersreal-world process on the fly. Not just a simple
do not have access to the metadata definitions ofad-hoc activity, but with substantial complexity
process and business variables and thereforeusing metadata models from the repository and
these dynamic user changes fall through thebusiness rules in natural language for well defined
monitoring grid.goals. Being adaptive is not about predicting how a
However, most users who taste Dynamic BPMprocess WILL work or to agree on all possible
blood report that they love the flexibility as a newmutations. Adaptive means that real-time
kind of freedom. Such processes can proliferateknowledge from the last process execution can
and if the system isn't really capable of handling it,influence the execution of the next.
a lack of transparency can be the consequence.Misconceptions — Adaptive process is
That is not the problem of the dynamic processempowerment, but that does not mean
but the limitation of the BPM system. I questiondecision-making authority for anyone about
the need for process standardization as a reactioneverything. Authorized users can however add
to the limitations of orthodox BPM systems. Ifbusiness rules to a process during runtime.
dynamic processes are the cause of distress inCentrally managed business rules can make an
your BPM bureaucracy or system they mostadaptive process as flexible or rigid as needed
probably ought to be executed as adaptivewithout ever touching a flowchart. Process
processes and not be forced back into rigidity.adherence in BPM too often forces users to do
Ad-Hoc Process — those are typically simplethe wrong thing right. A process adherence
processes with a couple of steps relating to culture is thus not a valuable business trait. It
content state. The most commonly used ad-hocrequires complex process exception handling to be
process environment today is Microsoftanalyzed, implemented and executed. Give up the
SharePoint. There are however substantialrigid process and gone are the exceptions. There
problems to be considered. User-createdis no need to evaluate to see if processes are
SharePoint processes and content are adynamic, because that is the norm anyway. Rigid
Wild-Bunch mix of Word/Excel/Access piecesprocesses are the odd and rare ones.
interspersed with macros. That makes themStrict role/policy security must control who is
neither easily manageable nor reasonably upwardallowed to make what changes to a process.
compatible to the next releases of MS-Office andEverything that actors want for a customer is a
SharePoint. But too many business managers aregood thing for the business. Actors do not always
looking for quick-fixes rather than sustainability.know the consequences of that and that's where
When I talked to IT managers in terms oftransparency comes into play. Adaptive Process is
process management with SharePoint the generalnot just a more flexible kind of BPM, where users
response was negative, despite users beingcan make more choices during execution! That is
reasonably happy with the ease-of-use.Dynamic or Ad-Hoc BPM. Adaptive Process is
I propose that these ad-hoc processes also oughtabout DOING AWAY with the flowcharting
to be managed through adaptive processes, whichprocess and allow business users to interact with
provides them with the business metadataall above process artifacts in real-time and create
definitions, the standardized backend interfaces,those processes WITH ANY CONTROL,
business rules, and easy-to-use content and userSEQUENCE AND STRUCTURE NEEDED
interface creation and adaptation.interactively — without needing further
Social BPM — For me, process management isimplementation work. I don't see much of a
about people communication, therefore I alwaysdanger. The difference is that it happens in
saw the link to ECM and CRM and most obviouslyreal-time, by the real people, and for or with the
to social networking, despite the realization that itreal customers. Therefore there is no need for
can't be enforced. Social networkers aresimulation, as you just adapt over time the
collaborative t-shirts with backpacks who loveprocess controls to the minimum amount
what they do because it is their own free choice.necessary.
BPM proponents believe in upfront design andFor many organizations this power is new and
people control. And in that gap — so somestrange, but users love the freedom when they
believe — may lie salvation through Social BPM,get it. The management loves the transparency
but in which lifecycle phase could social be ofand immediate control over processes. Changes
benefit? Design, modeling, implementation,can happen more or less immediately. The ones
simulation, optimization, deployment, execution,that are the most cautious about using adaptive
monitoring, or tuning? No clear definition …processes are BPM analysts, IT architects, and IT
Open collaborative effort on the creation ofproduction managers. This might change once
process flowcharts covers at most 20% of thethey see it is a fantastic chance to put a well
complete process functionality to be designed.defined process and business architecture in place.
Once the flowchart is encoded with the otherSo the risk of Adaptive Process is not in the
BPM elements it stops to be social, agile and willimplementation or in business users resisting
never be adaptive. That is not the same asprocess adherence. The question is whether
empowerment, which provides authorization andmanagement or IT are willing to hand that much
access to resources. A business hierarchy is mostpower to the business users, because Adaptive
effective when the process teams can eachProcess enables them to also create protected
focus on their own things. There is little need forprocesses in agile, ad-hoc, dynamic and social BPM
an open social collaborative community to DESIGNstyle.