Dwell a bit upon the term "business process" - it does conjure up images of straight, rigid, very structured sequences of tasks and events does it not?
A bit like a cubicle based assembly line, "planned for" stuff.
Now think "creation, ideas, issues and solutions" and see doodling on blackboards, brainstorming, mind maps, dreamy looks and sometimes running down the corridor or repeatedly calling a chap over lunch.
Does not sound like "business processes", rather "unplanned for" stuff as it is.
How many calls or e-mails did you receive yesterday that evoked an immediate response along the lines of "ah shit, OK, I'll get down to it and get back to you"?
When was the last time you had an idea in the shower, made a note when dry, then did an impromptu pitch next to a water-cooler?
Thing is that in such "unplanned for" processes (or rather their lack of process) stuff tend to get lost.
- Lost in one of many available "cracks" when whoever you punted it to "forgot", or when you got swamped with yet another pressing issue.
- Lost in the fog of perfectly natural forgetfulness - what you did last time completely forgotten, that idea you once tinkered with now a vague memory.
- Lost as in "only you knew how it was solved" or what nuggets of good ideas you had.
Solutions never found, ideas forgotten and worst; Intellectual Capital lost.
Time to do something about all that! Create a process with no dead ends while leaving room for creative and spur-of-the moment tacks to the process.
Thus bridging the "cracks".
But, more importantly, capture the ideas, issues and solution for easy reuse so the Intellectual Capital of the firm, the basic value of the firm no less, becomes a snowball rolling down a hill, growing bigger by the day.
CRMs, PIMs and a dash of BPM in-between have a certain hope to solve some of the "crack" part of it, but the Intellectual Capital part of it... not that good.
This is precisely where I found "the spaghetti" getting stuck when "throwing spaghetti on the wall" - discussing thingamy in practical use with potential users.
This is quite perfect for thingamy, and it's way easy to implement without really replacing anything else. A cool starting point. Neat.
I follow your logic - and understand where you are going - but with most "squishy" things, it's really hard to explain (the teller) and even harder to understand (the listener).
One of the things I keep telling people (at work) is that the really "interesting and cool" technology stuff happens at the fringes - the edges. But it's not always the technology that's the "coolest" thing about piece of software or a company - it could be how they view revenue or go-to-market; it could be how they view their relationship with their customer; or how they ship products.
Keep plugging away - and pushing forward....AM
Posted by: Arnie McKinnis | March 01, 2007 at 23:44