How to Build Better Applications with Business Process Management

The BPM approach explained

BPM delivery is focused on forming a partnership with the business and meeting their needs as quickly and efficiently as possible. Rather than building requirements to kick off the process, the first step is to discover and boost the understanding that all business users, owners and downstream participants have of the process.

With this increased knowledge and understanding, stakeholders can develop a list of well-informed improvements to the processes that are related to strategic business goals (which have been established at the executive level).

Analysts then work with the developers to implement processes that address the highest ones on the list. The developers play back releases to the business users every four to six weeks in order to be certain that the process is meeting their expectations. And as soon as a release meets the minimum requirements, the business can start utilizing the application while more functionality is built into the process.

Working as a team

Rather than pointing back to contracts or signoffs on requirements documents, the business users and IT department are working as a team to build the most valuable application possible. Changes are expected and welcomed. Down the line, after the process has been in production for a while, research can be done using the data that has been collected, as well as simulation and optimization tools, to develop further enhancements to the process.

With a partnership that is formed using this approach, the IT department is able to deliver value to the business immediately and constantly. The process discovery and improvement exercises at the start of the effort give the business users ownership and empowerment in the implementation process. Each new release delivers more value to the business than the one before it.

On the other hand, without such partnership, the business users view the requirements building process as valuable time out of their day, change requests are met with frustration from IT, and everyone has their fingers crossed that the final application will deliver value.

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