Monday, December 01, 2008

The history of workflow and BPM

Congratulations to everyone in the States that survived 'death by turkey-sandwich' over Thanksgiving, and hopefully managed to spare just a moment to remember the meaning of the long weekend. Unlike Independence Day (where I just get jokes about how the Americans threw the English out, and my jokily sarcastic replies fall flat), I can buy into Thanksgiving.

Serious stuff over, its back to work now. My Monday was spent turning over a new leaf and making sure I get my head out of the tasks I'm doing long enough to look around and see what else is going on out there. I find that anything involving really using software (I've been building some demos with the sales engineers using Global 360's case management software) can quickly pull me down into the weeds of 'doing it right' rather than 'getting it done'. Anyone that has worked around Sales knows that the deadlines rarely let you really do anything 100%, so this can be a challenge for me.

In looking around, I came across this nice morning coffee post by a guy I hadn't read before, Arshad Nazim. In it he writes about the brief history of BPM, and in doing so I think answers the question that many long-time software people have when they first see BPM: 'what's the difference between BPM and workflow?'. Not mine to answer, but I think that Arshad does a good job of doing so. [Note: it seems the credit should go elsewhere, since Arshad forgot to credit Sandy Kemsley who wrote the whole series series A Short History of BPM, which was a pleasure to re-read in its original format on her Column 2 blog. I've moved the link to Arshad's post to here, so that readers can review the additions Arshad made subsequently].

I'm looking forward to starting to write more regularly again, so keep an eye out for my next 'original' post.


A post from the Improving New Account Opening blog