Leveraging social bpm for enterprise transformation

© 2011 Kemsley Design Ltd. www.kemsleydesign.com

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Leveraging Social BPM

For Enterprise Transformation

Introduction

Social BPM is gaining recognition as a driver of knowledge worker

productivity. But what is social BPM, and how does it compare

with the more general classes of social business applications? How

can social BPM be used as part of an overall enterprise

transformation initiative?

This white paper explores the drivers behind social BPM, and

provides insights into its four main manifestations: collaborative

process discovery, runtime collaboration, process event streams,

and BPM communities. It also discusses the network effects that

fuel the expansion of social BPM, acting as a catalyst for

transformation of an enterprise’s processes, performance and work

culture, and finishes with a number of best practices for adopting

social BPM within your organization.

Why Social Business? Why Social BPM?

To understand social business software, consider two key

characteristics of consumer social software, or Web 2.0, as defined1

in 2005:

Uses the web as a platform, with a browser-based rich user

interface that provides equivalent functionality to a desktop

application. In addition to requiring no local installation,

thereby lowering costs and providing greater desktop plat-

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form support, this allows for a constantly-refreshing

software upgrade cycle. To further reduce the cost of

ownership, software-as-a-service providers host applications

and make them available via a monthly subscription, rather

than requiring the purchase and installation of software

locally: Nicholas Carr describes this emerging “utility” model

of computing2, comparing it to the shift from private

electricity production to centralized power plants that sell

electricity on a usage-metered basis.

Harnesses collective intelligence by allowing user-directed

and user-created content and collaboration. Although only a

small percentage of users will contribute, their contributions

are available to all users.

By 2006, Andrew McAfee had defined the enterprise equivalent3,

Enterprise 2.0, as “platforms that companies can buy or build in

order to make visible the practices and outputs of their knowledge

workers.” As with their consumer equivalents, social business

applications allow for emergent structure and processes rather

than imposing pre-determined taxonomies and procedures.

However, social business applications usually have a business-

related purpose rather than a purely social function. These break

down into two main categories:

Applications focused on social interactions that strengthen

weak ties within a large and/or geographically diverse

organization. For example, an internal social network that

allows employees to create profile pages can be used for

locating others with specific skills and interests for research

and project collaboration, although that collaboration does

not necessarily happen within the social application itself.

Applications focused on goal-oriented social production. For

example, a wiki used to document internal operational



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procedures can be updated directly by any worker with

information on specific areas of the procedures.

The past few years have seen a huge increase in the social

business software market, but many organizations still struggle to

identify the benefits, particularly with applications that are focused

on relationships rather than production. The applications that

support social production can also be problematic unless they are

integrated into the main business processes that workers are

tasked with completing: otherwise, they’re just one more thing that

someone needs to do during their busy work day without adding

significant value to their work.

One solution for this is to integrate the social business

functionality directly in the line of business applications that

workers use every day, and business process management systems

(BPMS) are proving to be an ideal platform for that integration.

BPMS, used for modeling, automating and monitoring business

processes, are now being extended to create a class of functionality

called “Social BPM”.

Social Aspects of BPM

The motivation for social BPM contains many facets4:

User expectations based on commercial social software.

Today’s workers expect to be able to configure their own

environment to suit their working style, to collaborate with

others at any point in a business process where they see fit,

and to combine information from multiple internal and

external sources in order to accomplish their tasks.

Benefits of distributing co-creation across the value chain.

Involving workers at all levels in process discovery and



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definition results in process models that more accurately

capture the actual processes.

Greater agility in BPMS implementations. Instead of using a

BPMS as a graphical development tool in a classic waterfall

software development lifecycle, supporting agile methods for

process discovery and implementation allows processes to

change quickly to meet business needs.

Over the past five years, social BPM has moved from a distant goal

to an emerging set of features in BPM tools. The idea of “social”

manifests in four primary ways in BPM systems:

Collaborative process discovery. Many people from a variety

of perspectives – including end users, business analysts and

IT – are involved in modeling processes.

Runtime collaboration. During execution, processes are

modified dynamically to include unplanned participants in

order to complete the work more effectively.

Process event streams. Publishing event streams for both

process models and runtime process instances enables

visibility and participation across a broader range of

participants and devices.

Internal and external BPM communities for sharing best

practices

As Gartner Research states: “Social BPM resides at the intersection

of process and collaborative activity. It is supported by BPM and

social software that makes process design more visible and holistic.

It supports more effective process execution through the use of

social software tools that augment human actions to better mirror

the way work is performed, while also providing visibility to this

work”.5



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Collaborative Process Discovery: a Catalyst to

Enterprise Transformation

Collaborative process discovery in particular can have far-reaching

impacts on business performance, since it allows a wide variety of

participants to be involved in documenting, improving and

implementing business processes across the enterprise. Since

process discovery is focused on collaborative content creation, the

benefits are most closely aligned with more generic social software

tools, such as enterprise wikis and blogs. Deloitte, in a recent

report on social software for business performance, discusses how

social software can significantly enhance business performance in

the short-term, and can be transformational in the long term. They

highlight several capabilities of social software that can contribute

to enterprise-wide adoption and transformation:6

Preservation of institutional memory, allowing for discovery

and reuse in other areas. This serves a similar purpose to

traditional knowledge management, but is focused on the

collaborative creation of knowledge rather than the capture

and publication of existing knowledge.

Facilitation of cross-silo collaboration, allowing knowledge

and information exchange to transcend enterprise

hierarchies or boundaries.

Harnessing distributed knowledge, to bring together skills

from different areas to drive innovation.

Identifying emerging opportunities for innovation through

insight into exception-handling trends, and serendipitous

encounters with information and resources that may be

applied within an ever-changing business environment.

These capabilities are key in collaborative process discovery: a

centralized process model repository preserves institutional



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memory, and widely-available tools facilitate collaboration across

business units and even with other organizations. As the

community forms around the collaborative process discovery tools,

new uses will be discovered for process discovery and management,

and workers from different areas will more easily lend their

expertise to projects that bear some similarity to their own. This

creates a network effect – where something becomes more valuable

as more people use it – causing an exponential increase in

potential performance improvement.

There can be barriers to collaborative process discovery, as seen in

social software studies of content creation in wiki environments. In

some cases, information hoarding is perceived as a source of power,

decreasing the motivation to openly share knowledge. Less skilled

workers may be reluctant to participate because they don’t want to

appear unknowledgeable, particularly if their work is visible to a

wider audience, including their management. There can also be a

perception that local processes are so unique that there is little to

be learned from collaborating with other departments. These are

primarily cultural barriers, and can usually be surmounted with a

combination of management directives and specific targeted

process discovery projects to show the value of collaboration.

The tools themselves can also help break down barriers to

collaboration across an enterprise by providing process model

visualizations suitable to the worker’s role and skill level: workers

unfamiliar with more comprehensive process modeling notations

such as BPMN may view a simplified perspective of the model, and

add their feedback using typed comments rather than having to

use less-familiar graphical tools. Providing this in a web-based

environment using existing enterprise authentication makes the

tools available to all without cumbersome installation and signup



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procedures, allowing everyone to have a voice in identifying and

improving processes.

Finally, adoption of the collaborative process discovery tools and

methods can be further promoted by encouraging direct access to

models in a repository for all levels of users, even if they are not

involved in process discovery. For example, sending a link to a

process model in the repository for review rather than a document

containing a static picture or description of the model, requires

management and other senior reviewers – often reluctant adopters

of new technology – to use the tools and gain appreciation for the

benefits of collaboration. In conjunction with this, limiting access

to other non-collaborative process repositories, such as static Visio

files on shared network drives, once their contents have been

migrated to the collaborative platform will help to reinforce

adoption. This will help the shared process repository to become

the primary source when anyone is looking for process model

information.

Collaborative Process Execution: Reinforcing

Enterprise Transformation Through

Widespread Process Involvement

Collaborative process discovery is a key starting point for achieving

enterprise process transformation, but still only involves a

relatively small portion of the entire workforce. Runtime process

collaboration can propagate this transformation through

widespread involvement of a much higher number of people.

Runtime collaboration and dynamic modeling are often considered

to be the same capabilities in a BPM system; although they are

highly related, they are not identical7: runtime collaboration is the

activity of adding participants to a process instance during runtime



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who were not part of the original process design, while dynamic

modeling is the activity of modifying the model for a process

instance, usually to add one or more new tasks to the process.

Although dynamic modeling will almost always include adding new

participants, the inverse is not necessarily true: new participants

may be added to existing process tasks without changing the

topology of the original model. Runtime collaboration, in its

simplest form, allows a user to add collaborators to his assigned

task with others, without changing the process flow: he expands

the visibility of that task to others, and collects their responses and

decisions as part of the task history. This is critical for processes

that are regulated or audited for compliance, where it’s important

to know who was involved in decision-making on each process

instance.

There can be resistance to runtime collaboration, particularly from

management that has a firm top-down control mindset. However,

attempting overly-strict management control of runtime process

collaboration leads to a loss of control: the collaboration will just

move to unmonitored, unmanaged methods such as e-mail or

telephone, and there will be no audit history in the BPMS of those

activities. Providing runtime collaboration capabilities allows

knowledge workers – who often understand better than the process

designers who should be involved to complete a process – to

improve the quality of the work completed, based on their skills

and experience.

In addition to allowing for audited inclusion of unplanned

participants in a process instance, runtime collaboration provides

additional benefits: first, the process execution variations can be

captured as feedback to process improvement, so that if a specific

role or participant is always added during runtime, that could be

added to the underlying process model, reducing the runtime effort



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for this task in the future. Secondly, involving people who would

not normally use the BPMS exposes them to the benefits of BPM

without mandating their involvement in the process: just as with

casual process discovery involvement, those who are occasionally

(and collaboratively) involved with processes in a BPMS during

runtime will begin to understand the benefits that could accrue to

their own business areas from BPM.

Process Event Streams: Increasing Visibilty

Through Social Streaming

Social event streaming, popularized by Twitter and Facebook as a

method for following many people’s activities as a series of short

message updates, is being adopted in business applications as a

way of not just following people, but of following business events

and activities that may be of interest. In the world of social BPM,

this usually takes two forms:

Event streams for process discovery or modeling projects.

Someone may choose to “watch” a particular process model

or project, and receive updates for changes made to the

project. Alternatively, following a keyword would result in

updates for projects, models and other materials that use

that keyword within the process repository. This will often

be used by a modeling participant who wants to track other

people’s input, and make updates or comments on the

process model when required.

Event streams for executing processes. Someone may

“watch” a particular class of process instances, and receive

updates whenever one of those is created or when specific

milestones are reached. This will often be used to monitor

specific process types, although can also be used to notify a

participant when their input is required.



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Typically, a process event within a stream will include a direct link

to the underlying initiator of the event – the the process model or

project within the modeling environment in the first situation, or

the process instance within the runtime environment in the second

– allowing for the recipient to easily click through in order to

participate.

The short message nature of the event stream – often derided in

the consumer platforms – is actually a critical feature, since it

simplifies the information into an easily-digestible update, and

allows the stream to be formatted into a mobile device application,

or even sent via SMS messages. This pushes the boundary of

process monitoring via event streams to include anyone within an

organization, on the monitoring platform of their choice.

Collaboration in BPM Communities: Creating

the Basis for Future Growth in Enterprise

Transformation

Institutionalizing the practice of process collaboration for growing

business transformation is where BPM communities come into play,

both internal centers of excellence (CoE) and external BPM

communities. These communities help to spread process

collaboration through a number of capabilities:

Easy availability and training on collaborative process

discovery tools. This not only assists projects with process

discovery, but can serve as an easy-to-use BPM education

tool for a widespread enterprise audience with minimal

effort.

Process model repositories of existing enterprise processes.

This facilitates process model sharing, and helps identify

similar functions in different business areas that are



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candidates for consolidation, further transforming enterprise

functionality.

BPM reference and training materials. This typically a

combination of internal best practices and external reference

materials, and may span both an internal CoE and one or

more external BPM communities.

A directory of internal process experts available for

assistance with projects. This should include BPM tool

experts, process improvement experts, and business

practitioners who have experienced a process improvement

project first-hand.

A BPM community supporting collaborative process discovery and

runtime helps to further propagate these activities across the

enterprise, transforming them into mainstream practices.

Scaling A BPM Initiative With Social

Collaboration

Social BPM can help to scale a BPM initiative from a single project

to broad enterprise transformation. Although many factors are

involved, there are a variety of techniques and best practices that

you can adopt to help it along:

Remove technological barriers by selecting web-based tools

that don’t require downloads or browser upgrades, and that

use existing authentication so that no signups are required.

Err on the side of openness, making all processes, event

streams, information and tools available to everyone on

every platform by default and without explicit permission.

This reduces logistical barriers, increases the network effect

by facilitating process reuse across business units, and



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sends the message that management considers this to be an

essential service.

Use collaborative process discovery tools from the beginning,

and use them to share process designs with all levels of

users. When sharing process models, provide direct links to

the models in the repository for review and commenting,

rather than using static snapshots or exports. This will

familiarize more people with collaborative process discovery

and its benefits.

To reduce barriers presenting in acquiring and installing on-

premise software, consider a software-as-a-service solution

for some or all social BPM functionality. For example, IBM

Blueworks Live provides collaborative process discovery, and

also supports a BPM community.

Migrate existing process models into the collaborative

process repository, and remove access to non-collaborative

repositories. This will reinforce the use of the collaboration

platform for process discovery and documentation.

Discourage use of email for runtime process collaboration.

Since this is often done between front-line workers and

supervisors, enlist the supervisors to assist with

encouraging and training workers on using runtime

collaboration features.

Embed appropriate process event streams on the intranet to

familiarize people with the appearance and use of event

streams.

Replace process notifications and periodic reports with

filtered event streams, where possible.

Reward individual’s involvement in internal and external

BPM communities by including the amount and quality of

involvement as a performance appraisal factor.



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All of these activities require rethinking the concept of “control”

within your organization: control no longer means that

management dictates every action that every employee takes, but

rather that appropriate levels of control are given to everyone so

that they can control their environment and make it most effective

for completing their tasks at hand. This paradigm shift strikes at

the core of top-down organizational management and may meet

resistance at all levels, but has the ability to provide the cultural

shift required for enterprise transformation.

Summary

The combination of collaborative capabilities discussed in this

paper enables true enterprise process transformation:

Collaborative process discovery allows a wide variety of

participants to be involved in process design.

Runtime collaboration allow anyone to become involved in a

process, at the request of the knowledge workers who are

tasked with completing the process, in order to facilitate its

completion.

Process event streams allow anyone in an organization to

track and participate in processes, from anywhere; and

Process communities capture and spread knowledge about

process improvement across the enterprise.

The benefits: knowledge workers leverage their tacit knowledge of

other’s skills and experience to involve them at the right point in a

business process, and everyone fine-tunes the flood of information

that comes their way so that they are better able to manage their

important tasks. Furthermore, by bringing these capabilities to a

wide audience within an organization, not only individual process

projects see the benefits, but the network effect comes into play to

increase these benefits exponentially.



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About the Author

Sandy Kemsley is an independent analyst, application architect

and blogger, specializing in business process management and

Enterprise 2.0. During her career of more than 20 years, she has

started and run successful product and service companies,

including a desktop workflow and document management product

company and a 40-person services firm implementing BPM and e-

commerce solutions, and held the position of BPM evangelist for a

major BPM vendor.

Currently, she practices as a BPM industry analyst and architect,

performing engagements for end-user organizations and BPM

vendors. She writes the popular “Column 2” BPM blog at

www.column2.com, is a contributing author on other business and

social media-related blogs, and is a featured speaker on BPM and

its impact on business.

1 O’Reilly, T. What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for

the Next Generation of Software, www.oreillynet.com, 30 September 2005.

2 Carr, N. The Big Switch, 2008.

3 McAfee, A. “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration”, MIT

Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, No. 3, Spring 2006.

4 Kemsley, S. “Enterprise 2.0 Meets Business Process Management”,

Handbook on Business Process Management, Springer, 2010.

5 Olding, E.. Social BPM: Getting to Doing, Gartner Research, 2011.

6 Miller, M., Marks, A., Decoulode, M. Social software for business

performance, Deloitte Development LLC, 2011.



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7 Kemsley, S. “Runtime Collaboration and Dynamic Modeling in BPM:

Allowing the Business to Shape Its Own Processes on the Fly”, Cutter IT

Journal, Volume 23, No. 2, February 2010.

IBM Addendum

IBM brings Social BPM to life through its collaborative process

discovery, documentation and light weight automation offering,

IBM Blueworks Live. With a simple and intuitive yet rich interface

built to support different skill levels and delivered conveniently and

affordably via the cloud, IBM Blueworks Live significantly reduces

the barriers of entry of traditional BPM tools. This makes the case

for adopting BPM practices in any organization extremely

compelling.

Where IBM Blueworks Live excels is in enabling the scaling of the

BPM discipline across the organization once adopted. Built on a

backbone of collaboration features, IBM Blueworks Live allows

team members to subscribe to and be kept informed about

processes or topics they are in, to comment on other people’s work,

to share best practices or participate in real time sharing sessions

where processes are discovered and mapped on a virtual

whiteboard by virtual teams, co-located or not. This creates an

environment in which people from diverse parts of the organization

can contribute their unique perspective to process improvement

initiatives; it is this diversity of opinion that ensures better



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processes emerge. As a secondary effect of engaging in

conversations about process in a virtual water cooler, IBM

Blueworks Live customers benefit from having their collective

knowledge preserved in a shared repository that they can mine for

valuable insights at any point.

There is a lot of value in engaging the entire organization in the

discovery and modeling of processes as well as in ensuring that

process changes are communicated in real time. However, there is

just as much leverage an enterprise can get out of applying the

rules of social networking to process execution. To that extent, IBM

Blueworks Live allows its customers to automate simple workflows

consisting of checklists or approval chains and gives the process

participants the power at any point to comment on the work being

done as part of particular process instances or to reassign work to

the appropriate parties. This ensures the right process is being

executed by the right participants at the right time.

With time, IBM Blueworks Live has become the engine behind a

cultural shift in organizations that have embraced it, where

process improvement has transitioned from point solutions to a

discipline of continuous process improvement – which is the real

promise of social BPM. Sign up for a free trial today at

http://www.blueworkslive.com/
