Meet IBM 2010 - Effectiveness and Efficiency

Breakout session: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Jan van der Sypt BPM specialist IBM

Despite the proven benefit and value, BPM projects tend to be very costly and take much too long. The promised ROI evaporates before any result is obtained. Although typically there are many good intentions to collaborate, the failure to transpose business requirements to a technology implementation is driven by the difficult communication between line of business people and the technology people. A BPM project requires the business to be in the driving seat, and any requirements need to be shared without losing any detail with the implementation teams. What is needed is a platform that will simplify the BPM approach to facilitate business people to provide the needed input, that will enhance collaboration between all parties involved, and that will shorten the cycles between new or changing requirements. This is what WebSphere Lombardi edition has to offer: a complete BPM solution that is covering the whole lifecycle, from modelling to optimization and monitoring, with one single product. All the different oles inside an organization will find a way to make their work smarter using this platform.

Product or Business Proces? 

The session is very product focused. I realize that this conference is very customer focused, where a lot of conferences and sessions which I attend from Microsoft are much more partner focused. Well they are people focussed as I mentioned earlier, but that is translated into User eXperience. The presenter tries to adress the business needs, but very poor.

He misses the point in my opinion. The results of a effective & efficient BPM project is NOT depended of the supporting tool. He mentioned the business is crusial, but still presented a tool focused presentation.

The Themes
Themes mentioned are indeed very important to take in consideration and base of a well designed business supporting proces:

• simplicity
• engagement
• repeatability

Well I do not know if simplicity is the right word. Business and Technology should have a common language to discusse requirements, changes to these demands to ensure the result ìs the implementation of the solution both agreed on. That is NOT simple.

Engagement is indeed a crusial element to ensure success and effectiveness of the end results. In perception of the business it becomes their system.

Repeatability should help to become more efficient, but there is more than just an object in a tool. Best practices in how organisations can be helped to analyse the business problem and what sort of solution helped simular organisations before. It is not as suggested repeatability on the level of the tool itself.

Meet IBM 2010 - See IT differently

Remember
It's a strange feeling. It has been a few years since I attended a IBM business / technology conference. Nowadays I attend mostly to sessions about the same subjects seen in the perspective of Microsoft technology. When I came across this event and checked out the program I became interested.

Today there are not a lot of familiar faces, but interesting subjects. Time to look at the same subjects that interest me everyday, but from another perspective and also with another market aproach.

Host of the day Roelof Hemmen.

A vision - smarter planet
Core in the IBM vision is Smarter Systems in a Smarter World. The world is getting instrumented, interconnected and more intelligent. Kees Donker opens the event with his vision on the changing and more demanding world. He just scratched the surface of the trends where technology is used to support change, connect different fields in the communities to become more smart. IBM is using a more technology driven approach. (Microsoft is more People focused, but also uses the work smarter concept in essence).

Kees Donker is asked by Roelof Hemmen a few times when the developments described by IBM will be practically adopted and used by real people. The answer was not given, no timeline, no roadmap. Well I do support the idea that things has to change in this world. I do think lot's of technology can implement the technology to fullfill a lot of needs. Still I wished IBM had the nerve to make a good guess of what is happening when.

Also the examples are just mentioned. A trafic information system, a system at the Schiphol that processes the luguage more effective and efficient. These examples are more than just an experiment, they DO mean something to efficiency. The Smarter System is heavily supported by technology. Technology developed by IBM. The barcode, an idea of B. Silver first adopted by IBM is now evolved in RFID (IBM is one of the driving forces, making the technology affordable). This is typicaly a strong element of this company, pitty they do not magnify these investments and the measurable effect on our everyday experiences.

The vision Instrumented, interconnected and more intelligence are translated in the more practical themes:

• Insight & Action
• Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Managing risk
• Empower people
• Agile organization

These themes are the structure around the subjects of the breakout sessions during the event.

Today I try to capture the simularities and the differences in the perspectives of these to companies in the fields insight, collaboration, contentmanagement etc