BRP - what is it really?

BRP is about walking the woods finding the right trees for logging, ERP is the river where you leave the log, then let the river do it's job while waiting at the paper mill at the mouth of the river.

BRP is about making sensible use of the Barely Repeatable - a true BRP system covers the woods with freshly fallen snow leaving tracks when you're out there, so when you've found a nice route you may retread it later and even show it to others so they can enjoy the good path.

In business lingo that translates to accountability, knowledge enhancement and process bettering.

Use a snowplough and you'll have a motorway, the ERP version of BRP. Apply ERP to BRP and you'll end up razing the whole forest - a popular method some while ago until somebody found it to be rather counterproductive as no natural new growth happened. The forest version of continuos innovation and creativity had been lost.

BRP today lives in a snow-free world, it's more like orienteering where you have posts hidden in the woods and you're given a map and compass.

In business the posts are the applications where you do your tasks, the compass is the vision and strategy on those corporate posters and the map comes in the form of Monday morning meetings.
In all fairness, some applications leave a sprinkle of snow close to the posts though.

The accountability is limited, the race organisers have to rely on you stamping your sheet in the right sequence. The learning is limited to you sitting down after the race pondering why you spent so long time finding post #3. But alas, my experience is that it takes many repeats of the same error before I get it.
And if you're any good, you can smile at your competitors as they have no way of learning from your amazing ability to weave through the woods in no time.

Add a layer of fresh snow to the ground and all would be different.

In technical terms BRP vs. ERP solutions could be described as:

• ERP is resource-centric, tangible objects (parts, products, logs), transactional (add parts, build product, float the logs) and have linear processes (parts does not object, same product every time, always same flow down to the paper mill).
• BRP is human centric, includes virtual objects (problems, medical conditions, unknown places in the woods), transformational (cure that disease, shorten that run) and have conditional processes (ah, the x-ray results, think we'll do a blood test now - now I'm here, follow that road to the next post would save time I think).
• ERP is a proper subset of BRP so BRP can do ERP, ERP cannot do BRP - that's the logic of proper supersets and subsets.

So the time is ripe to go human centric while offering a layer of fresh snow on the ground.

Comments

[David F. Flanders]

So what do you think of Google new OS (Android) and its activity based workflow? Hi -by the way- met you at CETIS conf briefly. I like your ideas, but looking for some pragmatic examples amidst the theory (real world or mathematical).

[sig]

Hi David,

not sure how Android will deliver workflow beyond the obvious (and not bad that as such) - "connecting" applications (tasks are still application centered, so flow it'll be) as is the common approach to frameworks in the BRP space. See most of MS' efforts as same.

And that in my view delivers no "fresh snow for paths to be created" - i.e. no capture of the flows themselves thus little or no accountability, learning (reuse of solutions and process) nor the opportunity to better the process (you need to know what the process is before you can better it).

Ah, pragmatic - well, only one I can show you is Thingamy (of course :-) - and still only in demo form! But pragmatic it is, delivering BRP framework that captures the ongoing for reports and bettering of flows. Still having the flexibility... enough "infomercials" now! So for pragmatism live you'll have to ping or mail me and fire up your Skype ;)