Stop making Business Process Management (BPM) more complicated than it actually is

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Craig Reid
Craig Reid
03/07/2013

There are often discussion on "What do you think business process management is?" on the Linkedin groups in which I participate.

Firstly, do we actually care about the semantics of what it actually is? Why do we always need to come to some sort of consensus on what BPM is? Is it really that complicated?

I'm concerned by the number of process professionals trying to turn BPM into some sort of pseudo science. I'm concerned by BPM textbooks, I'm concerned with academic studies with ludicrously long names and diagrams the size of an office block - but most of all I'm continually concerned that we are making our own lives as process people more complex than they need to be.

Are we making BPM more complex than it needs to be?

In my eyes, process is the purest, simplest component of human behaviour.

Process in an organisation can become complex but it can always be stripped back to a few simple things:

• Meeting a need effectively

• Keeping the customer happy (relationship)

• Doing things efficiently and productively (costs)

Doing the simple things right is the cornerstone of BPM and is the cornerstone of business.

To me, BPM is the active management and continual enhancement of all processes within an organisation.

What do you think? Does it really need to be any more complicated than that?

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First published on www.theprocessninja.com. Reprinted with permission.


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