John Hirsch wrote: > Kieth: Are you saying that we've come full circle?? > The massive PROCESS ORIENTED systems we USED to build >on the mainframes are now 'back in style'? That my >PROCESS ORIENTED skills are now worth something >(again)? My business ANALYSIS skills are now golden >again? > >If NOT then what are you talking about? > > Well, I wouldn't like to comment on your or anyone else's skills, John! Although I'm sure I speak for many people who have been in IT a while when I say that one gets a feeling of deja vu from time to time ...
However, there are always changes each time round, and even if they are subtle ones, they are usually important. In this case, the main difference is probably that the widespread adoption of the Internet for business during the 1990s led to a rapid growth in technologies for "distributed" computing - hence the whole loose coupling debate in forums such as this one, as we seek better ways to build systems that are disconnected in various ways. WRT processes, one thinks of them these days not only as implemented using a range of hardware/software platforms, but also as spanning organizational boundaries. My thesis is that the IT industry is getting somewhere with certain kinds of process - those that I call "mechanistic": order-to-cash, supply chain, and so on. Even some superficially flexible and adaptive processes such as insurance claim management can be put under process control, at least in some cases. But this is just the tip of the iceberg - we are only just starting to realize that most "processes" holding our world together are of a different kind. I call this kind "human-driven". Quoting from an earlier post to this group: > How about Product Lifecycle Management? IT Outsourcing? Complex > Sales? Marketing? Company growth/merger? Health care? Human > resources? > > And this is to say nothing of processes that are not specifically > business-oriented but are nevertheless at the root of our society: > political/social negotiation, disaster prevention/management, crime > solving, epidemic control, government policy implementation, running > an election campaign, military action, and so on. Perhaps if we dealt > with such processes more efficiently with the aid of IT the world > would be a better place to live in. To deal with such processes you do need business analysis skills, certainly, but there are deep technical issues that must also be resolved: persistence, flexibility, evolution, security, and so on. BPM in its current incarnation (mechanistic) has been led by vendors repurposing and extending existing workflow/EAI tools, which resulted in fast market growth but an explosion of complexity. It has been products before either methods or standards, and the results of this will be haunting us in the years to come - I will not be surprised if there is a dramatic backlash against BPM in the next year or two, as early adopters find that now they not only have a sprawling and diverse base of legacy business systems, but also a sprawling and diverse base of legacy business processes. Unfortunately, a similar trend is developing with human-driven processes - many BPM vendors are claiming support for human-to-human interaction, while actually offering the same old workflow, groupware and knowledge management tools as ever, just bundled into a single package. Is there still time to get it right with human-driven processes? I personally hope so, and am trying to drive support for a set of ideas, practices and techniques that could provide the theoretical underpinning we need. We've got a chance to get it right, this time round! -- All the best Keith http://keith.harrison-broninski.info ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get Bzzzy! (real tools to help you find a job). Welcome to the Sweet Life. http://us.click.yahoo.com/A77XvD/vlQLAA/TtwFAA/NhFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
