What’s BPM? And what is new about it?

These two questions are often raised at our clients, even sometimes my own colleagues wonder about this. (imagine how this is on the board level of companies). I will this by using the explanation (and model) of Johan Nelis, one of the two authors of the highly valued book ‘Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations’ , who visited our company and shared his insights last month. (see also for a good summary BPtrends)

BPM combines two different expertise field, namely Business Process Improvement (BPI) and management of business processes. In short BPI focuses on designing and implementing new business processes. This field has been around for many years and has increased highly in professionalism. Unfortunately the effect of a great process design has it’s limits. For example we all know many examples where new processes were designed, but even if these were implemented (which is often not the case), were not improved during the years to come.

This is where the management of business processes fits in. One of the aspects is of this is creating an organization which continuously improves it’s processes. This is where the term governance is an essential (with roles such as process owners/stewards and process administrators), but also changing the attitudes of people towards process thinking. And of course the management of business processes also focus on measuring and acting on process information.

So BPM combines management of business processes and BPI to increase and embed the impact of the process on the performance of the organisation.

Presentation at Gamers in Society

Here is the presentation I gave today at the Gamers in Society seminar in Tampere, Finland. To summarize it briefly: I state that the intrinsic motivation that virtual worlds supply leads to more room for social aspects (as opposed to the task-oriented nature of "traditional" ICT), which in turn leads to more knowledge transfer. Let me talk a little bit here about the feedback I got.

First of all, my presentation apparently struck a cord with many of the people present because it sparked quite a bit of debate. Many different aspects entered the discussion, all very useful to further my thinking. And even though a lot of elements of my presentation were challenged, it was done in a very positive and constructive way.

One of the biggest problems that the audience had with my perspective was this: while you could argue that intrinsic motivation is an important aspect of virtual worlds (which makes them an enjoyable experience), wouldn't the fun stop as soon as you use virtual worlds in a work context? One commentator stated that "you cannot force people to have fun", which is true of course. In this round of discussion, the divide between the world of managers and the world of gamers came somewhat to the forefront. I was in the latter arena here, which meant some skepticism here and there about things having to do with the corporate world.

There was also some criticism about my (admittedly fairly blunt) statement that the use of "traditional ICT" (embodied in my perspective by the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work) is always extrinsically motivated whereas virtual worlds are always intrinsically motivated. It is of course not that black and white. Examples were given of extrinsically motivated activities in games. Also, the possible difference in motivation was pointed out between what draws you into a virtual world initially and what keeps you there. In the discussion about this point, the exclusivity of virtual worlds as supplying the five elements of intrinsic motivation that I mention was challenged. Examples were given of social networking sites like LinkedIn or MySpace that also can be said to show most of these elements.

So where do I go from here with this project? One adjustment that I think I'll make to my approach of the subject is this: I will not focus so much on virtual worlds as a tool for knowledge transfer, but rather on virtual worlds as a way to create the preconditions for knowledge transfer. And one of the most important preconditions is trust, which (as one commentator pointed out) I have to decompose a bit further. Another aspect I want to consider incorporating is the development of managerial skills inside a virtual world (for example, by leading a raiding guild in World of Warcraft).

The most valuable comments were made by the two invited commentators (T.L. Taylor and Daniel Pargman). They focused on the next steps in my project and on how to go about actually investigating the managerial relevance of virtual worlds. Their contributions supplied me with some solid ideas that will be very useful in the coming weeks and months when I go about designing my research methodology.

Off to Finland

I am off to Finland next week to present a paper at the Gamers in Society seminar, organized by the University of Tampere Hypermedia Laboratory's Game Research Lab. I submitted a paper about the possibilities I see for virtual worlds as a tool for knowledge transfer (more or less along the lines of an earlier post here, but a bit more refined). It will be interesting to get feedback on my ideas from some of the bright minds in the digital games research community, such as T.L. Taylor, Daniel Pargman and Frans Mäyrä. A bit intimidating as well, I must admit.

I will post my presentation and some impressions of the seminar in the course of next week.

Promising developments

I came across another company this weekend that offers virtual world solutions for corporate use: ProtonMedia. And unlike Qwaq (see earlier post), this one seems to have the right approach. They approach the use of virtual worlds from a learning perspective: using virtual worlds to foster networks and communities of practice in organizations. One of their advisors is Jay Cross, who has written a book about what he calls Informal Learning. This concept is related to the approach to knowledge management of people like Larry Prusak and Rob Cross. Our research on virtual worlds is very much inspired by those people and is also trying to uncover the value of this technology in the area of knowledge transfer. It is encouraging to see some products already being positioned in that field.

Space and Place

As I mentioned in an earlier post, virtual worlds such as Second Life are not new. As a matter of fact, around the turn of the century there was a blossoming field of research called CVE or Collaborative Virtual Environments (I even put in my two cents' worth [in Dutch] at the time). With its roots in Virtual Reality, CVE research introduced a new and important aspect to ICT: that of shared virtual spaces populated by avatars. That period also saw virtual worlds on the internet, with ActiveWorlds as the Second Life of that time, albeit with nowhere near the current media exposure. For more on that period, check out Bruce Damer's excellent history lesson over at Terra Nova.

And although most of the products, worlds and research projects from that period didn't last, it is important to take some of the lessons we learned with us. I see a tendency in current virtual world research to not be informed by important CVE discussions of the past. One of the most important discussions of the time focused on the concepts of space and place.

The obvious difference between using a virtual world such as Second Life and a normal website is the 3D aspect. A virtual world tries to create a sense of physical space. This space allows us to see ourselves (our avatars) in relation to others (their avatars), which means we can stand close or far away from somebody, face them when they speak or use rudimentary body language. This shared space also allows us to work together on or talk about objects that we can all see. This aspect of using " shared artifacts" was an important drive in CVE research. It is also presented as an important selling point for current virtual world tools such as Qwaq (see previous post and a discussion I had on Raph's website).

The lesson I draw from the CVE period is that too big a focus on space can make us forget the creation of a place. A place is a space invested with meaning. The easiest example is the home (as a place) compared to the house (as a space). How interesting is it for a company to have a space in Second Life when nobody visits it. Wouldn't it be more useful to create a Web 2.0 style website that actually draws visitors and creates a place to promote your brand?

The biggest impact a virtual world can have is when place and space are combined. A sense of community (a place that I like to go back to) combined with a shared space that makes it possible to " bump into" people and strike up opportunistic conversations [1]. That is were the true power of virtual worlds lies.

[1] Remy Evard, Elizabeth F. Churchill and Sara Bly, "Waterfall Glen: Social Virtual Reality at Work" , in: Elizabeth F. Churchill, David N. Snowdon and Alan J. Munro (Eds), Collaborative Virtual Environments: Digital Places and Spaces for Interaction, Springer-Verlag, London, 2001.

BPM and knowledge workers

In our practice and research one of the areas we focus on, is Business Process Management (BPM) in knowledge intensive organization. We think that there are different approaches for BPM needed for tackling the complex issues of increasing the productivity of knowledge workers, than the ‘normal’ BPM approach.

One of the challenges for improving the work of knowledge workers, is that the high level of flexibility and freedom needed in their work. In some cases every customer request is handled and approached differently every time, but in most cases the case is different, but the basic steps are the same. So one way of using BPM in knowledge intensive environments is defining processes on a high level. Within each part the process the knowledge worker is free to approach the case as he/she wants. We used this approach successfully at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. Here we defined policy making in process of 4 steps. This helped the organization to standardize the work of policy making throughout the organization and manage the process more efficiently. But we think that there is more to be gained, because in this example inefficient and ineffective ways of approaching the work within one of the basic steps is not handled.

A second approach we use is defining the interaction between the primary process between different departments and other processes. In some cases these interactions are widely spread within and outside the organization. In this we don’t only look within the primary process, but also to the links with supporting processes. Currently we are using this approach at the Dutch Province of South Holland, were we define the most important links to the many internal and external actors. This creates an overview of the most important actors of which knowledge worker is depended. In this case we can help the knowledge worker, with creating an overview but also making agreements with the other actors. For example on the quality delivered and time period. Also here we think there is more to be gained, because sometimes the actors to be involved differ on the case. Especially as the complexity of the cases increases, different expertises (often from different departments) are needed. So here the social networks of a knowledge workers becomes a very important influencing factor.

In this log I will discuss the topic of increasing the productivity of the knowledge worker from a BPM perspective, and share our experiences and progress in research on this field.

A Framework that works

The last month I've been so busy with my consulting work, that I didn’t have time to do my posts. Off course, there isn’t such a thing as “no time”, just “not taking the time”. Having realized that, here’s a short update.

I’ve made my first yards in the development of the framework. These yards include making a selection of the main pillars on which, we at YNNO believe, a digitization project must rest, such as: Taxonomies, Metadata structures, Authorization schemas, Document Lifecycle, Registration and Inheritance, Search and Retrieval, Archival and Durability, Processes and Workflow, Conversion and Migration, Interfaces, Social Network Analysis (SNA), User interfaces.

Furthermore, I’m also trying to incorporate aspects of Enterprise 2.0 into the framework, with pillars the likes of: Ease of Use and the Rich User Experience, Perpetual Beta, Innovation in Assembly, Freeform versus Control, Emergent, Social and Collaborative.

And last but not least, the first “main beliefs” of the pillar “taxonomies” are already made explicit from tacit knowledge and experience . Mine, to be exact.

If you’re an ECM consultant and have just read the summary of pillars, you’re probably thinking: “so what, that’s nothing special?” Correct. The framework in it self is nothing special. I’ve become conscious of the fact that making the framework work what’s special.

I realized this during a meeting I had with a colleague of mine in which we discussed a project approach he was writing. We discussed the contents, approach, scope and ambitions and I realized that I was already using the framework as a common vocabulary to talk from and to distill my assumptions from. The result was not “well, you could do this and that, probably”, but instead it was “you should this and not do that, because past experience has shown that it works like that", and so forth. And that’s the result only after walking a couple of yards! I’m being optimistic, as always, but the potential of filling the “hollow framework” with working knowledge (made explicit) was suddenly crystal clear to me.

At present I’m busy organizing and preparing an interactive session with my colleagues operating in the field of digitization projects at knowledge intensive organizations. In this session we’ll present our main beliefs and use them the lighten up a discussion and to, ultimately, fill the hollow framework and make it work.

I’m being too optimistic when I say that one session will be enough. Maybe enough for the next couple of yards. That’s not a problem. The other thing I realized during the discussion with my colleague was that the value is not just in the destination, the journey is just as important.

In the next post I'll give some examples of "main beliefs".