• Sign In

What's that one burning question that, if answered, would ultimately make your day? Just ask Gartner. This February, 20 Gartner analysts will be directly available to you to answer those burning questions. Check out the many ways you can get answers at our Summit events, including private One-on-One meetings with Gartner analysts, Analyst moderated user round tables (AUR), Biz-Tech Team Ups and many informative Gartner led sessions. Get a head start, submit your questions online now and we will post answers and make recommendations on what sessions you should attend at the Summit to help you achieve your BPM goals.
Submit your questions to justask@gartner.com

How do I obtain and maintain executive support and sponsorship of my BPM efforts?

Answer: The key to attracting and maintaining executive support is producing results.  The outcome of a BPM project needs to be visible and measurable.  The results need to be important to the business.  This is particularly important if your BPM effort is starting bottom-up. 

As you complete projects, it is also desirable to leverage the senior business managers that have worked with you and can now see the real value of BPM.  You can use them as advocates, to share with their peers in their own words, the value of your project work.  You will also need to make a concerted effort to “market” the groups’ successes through a communication campaign. 

For those lucky enough to already have top-down support at the onset of their BPM effort, the emphasis is on establishing strong executive sponsorship on each project.  The executive sponsor is an important and active role throughout the duration of the project effort.  It is often desirable to “coach” your sponsor and help them understand what the expected duties and their time requirement will be over the course of the project. See “Toolkit Tactical Guidelines: The Steps to Becoming an Effective BPM Executive Sponsor”.

This note defines the key actions that executive sponsors must take to ensure the success of the BPM project.  These include:

• Be an active participant in the project.
• Effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.
• Map the business strategy to the specific BPM initiative for which you are responsible.
• Keep the project on track by removing roadblocks and ensuring proper staffing.
• Be responsible for results.

By understanding the role you need your executive sponsor to play and working closely with them during the BPM project you are in an excellent position to deliver results that will get the attention of your organization.  This is the recipe for the adoption and growth of your BPM effort.  

Is there a proven evaluation methodology that I can use in selecting a BPM vendor?

Answer: Gartner has several recommendations here. First, our newest Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites, 2007 has just been published as on 12/14/07. This document ranks the major BPMS vendors on their ability to execute and their vision. The BPMS MQ is a starting point for selecting a BPM vendor. Another useful piece of research – a toolkit entitled: Toolkit Sample Template: A Framework for Matching BPMS Functionality to Process Management Needs, one that we offer to our Gartner for IT Leaders product seat holders, is a framework for comparing BPMS vendors on their 10 major components. Collectively, these form a strong basis for selecting a BPM vendor. Add to that a conversation or one-on-one with a Gartner BPM analyst and you have a compelling methodology.

Why is BPM very different from BPA and workflow?

Answer: First, BPM is not a technology.  BPM is a specific management approach to business process improvement (BPI) that may be enabled by technology.  The key tenets of the BPM approach are:

• Making the business process visible (and thus explicit) to business and IT constituents through business process modeling
• Empowering business users and business analysts to manipulate a business process model to directly affect modifications in downstream implementations
• Enabling rapid iteration of processes and underlying systems for continuous process improvement

BPM technology spawned out of the intersection of the workflow and application integration markets. Historically, workflow was focused on the proper routing of digital documents such as scanned images. Workflow circa 1999 was not strong in the elements of integration; a situation that was remedied by the emerging BPM category.  BPM had to have strong system connectivity capabilities and strong support for human interaction. The traditional workflow versus BPM distinctions are less apparent today, and one may argue that many former workflow vendors are now BPM vendors (whether standalone or part of a merged entity). However, the use cases of workflow remains pretty much rooted in document management and collaboration. 

BPA, Business Process Analysis, generally differs from BPM in a simple manner. BPM must model and execute a business process.  BPA tools likewise model processes (doing a fantastic job of manipulating the model through advanced analysis, simulation, model transformation, etc). However, BPA tools are not known for their ability to ‘execute’ the business process model. A BPA tool is happy to hand-off the process model to a BPM tool so that it can be executed (run) in the BPM environment.

A BPMS, Business Process Management Suite, allows the best of all worlds. A BPMS must be able to support a workflow use case (e.g., content management), it must be able to do strong system connectivity, and it must be able to bring strong process analysis and modeling capabilities. So the answer is simple: Skip the semantics and acquire a BPMS.

What are some competitive advantages that somebody who goes to this BPM Summit will have over somebody who does not?

Answer: Check out the "What You Will Learn" section on our event website for a variety of things you should expect to take away with you. Here are a few...

• You will know the vendor landscape better
• You will know how to organize and staff for BPM
• You will know what works and what doesn't (standards, best practices) from real-world experience

We have started a BPM initiative and are having trouble aligning departments to understand the value behind some of the proposed changes. Our management team is all in favor, but there exist a ton of reluctance from many entrenched in their ways to accept the new processes being introduced. Moving ahead has proven very difficult what sessions would you suggest would help me most?

Answer: For starters you're not alone. Not obtaining buy-in at all levels is one of the biggest reasons BPM projects fail. We suggest reviewing our Track B: Organizational Readiness for BPM Success. This track will offer "how-to" advice from practitioners who have lived it already and also teach you the best-practice steps for getting started. It's designed to appeal to both non-technical and technical audiences, and will provide an overview of the critical roles, responsibilities and skills needed to implement BPM and execute projects effectively. It's all about the roles, responsibilities, culture, skills, training, etc. You should also consider the workshop being presented by Sara Roberts, titled: Organizational Change Management "How to" Workshop – Building Your Change Management Plan.