Why so few women in BPM?

I wrote recently about some of my favourite BPM bloggers. One of the comments I mentioned within there was the fact that only 2 females made the list.

It got me thinking: "Why is BPM a male dominated domain?"

In reality it shouldn't actually be so. There is nothing specifically masculine about BPM as a concept. In fact I've worked on projects with lots of females who were particularly well suited to the role and were able to grasp the concepts much easier than some of the males in the group (as with a lot of things....).

Throughout my years of blogging and following BPM I have only really come across two well known female BPM bloggers and they are Sandy Kemsley and Connie Moore. Both of them have deep industry experience. Sandy is an independant and Connie is currently with Foresster Group. Add to that list Elise Olding who is a well respected Gartner analyst who has only recently moved into the blogging sphere, and you can see that the field is very small indeed.

Why is this?

Is it because there are - in fact - a huge number of talented female BPM practitioners who choose to work below the radar and not publicise themselves?

Or is it that BPM does not attract a large female following and is predominantly a male discipline?

It can't be the blogging itself because there are literally thousands and thousands of really good female bloggers out there. It can't be the BPM because - as I mentioned earlier - there are many females involved in the practice of BPM itself.

So what is it - any thoughts...?

Do you know of good, female BPM bloggers I should be following? Let me know in the comments.




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10 BPM Blogs you should be following

One of the things I like about my role as a BPM blogger is the fact that I get to link up with (and to) so many excellent BPM bloggers in the field. Some of these are specific industry bloggers, some are general Architecture/BPM bloggers, and some are vendor specific.

What I wanted to do today was to give you a list of the folks I read on a regular basis to make sure you are linking in to the best

  • Bruce Silver: Bruce is the daddy of BPMN, has been in the business for years and knows BPMN like the back of his hand (he should do - he helped write it)
  • Jim Sinur: He's been with Global360 and Gartner and he is the industry analyst for the BPM sector. His writing is often formal and rigid, but that doesn't take away from the value of his contents.
  • Theo Priestley: He's the Process Maverick, always ready to try and upset the applecart when it comes to BPM. When he talks it pays to listen to what he's saying
  • Adam Deane: Witty, sometimes caustic, but always on the money.  Posts quite regularly. Always worth a read, especially his weekly roundup of the best BPM quotes.
  • Sandy Kemsley: One of only two women on the list (which is a discussion point in itself). She attends and presents a lot at BPM conferences around the world and always has some useful insight into the latest movements in the BPM market. Her blog is 'Column 2'
  • The Process Ninja: He's Australian based and blogs about real-life applications of process. I look forward to his posts.
  • Connie Moore: The Forrester analyst for BPM and the other woman on the list. Finger on the pulse, covers the industry and the general BPM environment.
  • Bouncing Thoughts - Jaisundar from Stanford on BPM, CRM and CPM.
  • Thomas Olbrich. A German who blogs in English and German and who wrote my favourite BPM blog entry ever.
  • Ashish Bhagwat - Posts on BPM at The Eclectic Zone

Now remember this is just my list. You probably have your own. That's fine. But if you add these guys to your RSS reader you're guaranteed to be kept in the loop

Enjoy!








Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.

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Top posts for the month of July - Process Cafe

Usually at the beginning of the month I send you through a list of the most popular posts from the blog over the last thirty days. I'm still going to do that. But what I found is that there appear to be regular posts that come up every month. I think the reason is that by highlighting what the popular posts are for a given month more people will check them out during the month and hence they will remain popular over the following 30-or-so days.

What I therefore wanted to do was to give you a list of some of the more popular posts from a response or feedback point of view. This will broaden the possibly base of information you can look at and, maybe, highlight a couple of posts you might want to read.

So here goes. The top five posts for July 2010

1. My thoughts on Gartner's BPM Magic Quadrant

2. Silo Thinking and why it is bad


3. Your Criteria for choosing a BPM tool

4. Review - Lombardi Blueprint modeling tool


5. The Tao of on-line processes (Or how Amazon are doing it right)

You might also want to check out the following posts from last year:

Process inconsistencies hit the customer .. again
Why we aren't Storming The Bastille of processes
Health checks for processes: Treat them like you would your own body
It's a TRAP: Documenting processes rather than managing them


I'm also going to be tweeting some blog posts links from the last couple of years over the coming weeks. If you wish to follow me on twitter you can do so at @gaz4695

Thanks to everyone who visited the site last month. I hope you keep coming back and finding interesting articles to read and comment on.




Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford  
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What tools should be in a BA's toolbox for BPM?

There is a great little discussion going on in the BPM Nexus forum at the moment.

The topic is 'What tools should be in a BA's toolbox for BPM?'

Instinctively (As a BA and process analyst myself) I replied "As I've said many times before both in forums and my blog 'If all you have is a hammer then every problem is a nail'. By this I mean that trying to solve your problems through the use of tools alone is inappropriate unless you have the right tools."

The discussion itself has actually moved on a little since then with the introduction of a clarifying statement which basically says that 'Most tools that are currently out on the market are too expensive for a consultant to use themselves (i.e. without being part of a large project)'. I'm not sure I agree with that completely, knowing, for example, that there are consultants out there who have complimentary licenses for some BPM tools as a result of work they have performed with vendors.

It is true to say, though, that as a single consultant with your own company it can sometimes be difficult to get any traction with some of the larger vendors (and there are examples in the forum which illustrate that).

It would be interesting to get the thoughts of some of the readers of this blog on two questions:

1) Are there any tools you absolutely must have as a BA for BPM?
2) Do these tools come easily to you or is it a struggle to get any sort of interest with the vendors?

Either reply in the comments section below or - if you are not already a member, go to the BPM Nexus, join up (It's free of charge) and add your comment to the forum

Here's hoping for a good discussion.




Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford  
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Is there a single point of failure in your process?

I'm a big fan of shows like 'Air Crash Investigation' on the National Geographic channel. As the show dissects the reasons behind some of the biggest and most famous plane crashes that have occurred since man started to fly, one thing that always seems to crop up is that an accident is usually never the result of a single thing.

The worst crash in aviation history between two 747's in Tenerife in 1974 was a result of pilot impatience coupled with bad weather and unclear communication between the pilot and co-pilot.

When a small commuter plane crashed on take-off in Charlotte, North Carolina it was a result of inaccurate maintenance coupled with outdated weight computation methods.

The crash of an Avianca plane into Long Island after it ran out of fuel was a result of one of the pilots not having good English coupled with the second pilot not clarifying the emergency nature of the fuel.

With all these accidents any one of the issues in isolation could have been dealt with, but add them all together and you get to a situation where an accident is bound to occur

This got me thinking about processes and single points of failure.

Will a process on the whole fail as a result of a failure at one point in the process? Sometimes the answer is 'Yes' (In my last post about the use of procedures by NASA, missing a single step in a procedure could quite easily jepoardise the whole shuttle flight), but in many situations a single failure will not be catastrophic. An earlier post I wrote referred to bad process design in airline web-sites. In the example quoted, a bug meant that addresses with punctuation in them (such as the period in 'St. Leonards' would be rejected) but this could be bypassed by removing the offending punctuation and the booking could continue. But remove the punctuation, omit an expiry date on a credit card payment and put an incorrect email in the relevant fields and the booking is doomed to failure.

How many of your processes have a single point of failure? Should they have one, or more than one? Or none?



Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


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NASA is process based: Is that good or bad?

Did you know that every single step in the life of a Space Shuttle is run through documented procedures? That's right, from running the countdown clock to how to repack the parachutes that stop the Solid Rocket Boosters from crashing into the Atlantic Ocean fast enough to destroy themselves, everything is procedure based.

This means that everything can be guaranteed to be identical every time something happens.

Of course there is a downside to this. We all know that there have been two massive Space Shuttle disasters neither of which was a result of a procedure issue but both of which resulted in procedure changes. After the Challenger disaster in the 80's the procedure for Solid Rocket Booster assembly was changed to add an extra O-Ring between the sections. After the re-entry disintegration over Texas the lift-off procedure was changed to ensure that ALL footage of the lift-off was reviewed during the mission to identify potential damage to heat shielding from falling debris.

So if one of the most procedure driven organisations in the world is forced to modify their process and procedure as a result of issues and incidents, does this make you think that you should be looking at things like that too?

How many procedures does your company have? When was the last time they were reviewed? How often do you check that they are all followed exactly? Do you allow shortcuts?

Watch the footage of the Challenger exploding over Florida in 1983 and ask yourself if this could have been prevented through a procedural change.



Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

The Tao of On-line Processes Part 2

Hold the presses! We have a winner.

Those of you who follow this blog will probably have read my thoughts on the on-line booking practices of certain airlines and how they are not customer focused, or indeed well designed.

I think we have found the creme de la creme of bad airline web sites.

It's Jet2.com.

Normally I wouldn't have found this myself but I was alerted to the site by my father as he tried to book a flight recently.

Intrinsically there are a number of issues with the site:

  • The booking process is convoluted and frustrating
  • The pricing is inaccurate and unclear
  • The web site is badly designed.

The problems

From a process point of view the booking appears relatively straightforward, with the site giving you a running total of how much the flight is going to cost. But looking deeper into the site there are a couple of interesting items that would frustrate anyone, not to mention a process designer.


For example, the first page allows you to choose your destination and dates (in an entry box surrounded by banner style adds and red highlighted 'price deals').

The second page will then allow you to select the specific flights on the dates you selected (plus a day either side). As with most budget airlines of the day the prices are displayed for each leg. Thus, my flight out to Spain cost £19.99 but the return cost £39.99.

The third page is basically a page to enter your name. It has a slew of 'DONT FORGET' messages, none of which assist with the booking process itself (DONT FORGET: All passenger names need to match their passports and must be written in full, not initials - we don't need your middle name). At this point the system has automatically allocated you an 'on-line check-in' option and added £8 to your fare. It has also sneakily selected that you will be checking in a bag and added £35 to the fare to pay for that. Clicking 'Continue' at the bottom takes you to the fourth page.

We are already at four pages so far and 6 clicks (after entering the travel dates, destinations and names) and the flight which was priced at £59.98 (£19.99 + £39.99) has now increased in cost to £129.46. It appears that there was an additional £35.50 in Taxes and Charges which were not included in the 'price' of the fares.


So.. page 4. This is where you get the display asking you to click where in the plane you would like to sit. The seats are colour-coded and each colour equates to a different price per seat. (Standard seats: £3.99, Extra leg-room seats £8.99). If you try to bypass this page by not selecting seats it adds a warning that needs to be clicked through  to tell you that you haven't reserved a seat (That's two more clicks for those keeping count)


At page 5 we find ourselves with a 'confirmation of flight details'. This displays the original flight details I selected back on page 2 along with my name, number of bags and seat number (if applicable). At the right of the screen (as has been appearing on every page) is a running total of the amount currently accumulated for the booking. Careful review of this reveals that the price has now ballooned to £152.19 thanks to the inclusion of a premium meal and travel insurance. Scrolling further down page 5 reveals that these options have been automatically selected for you and you now have to deselect these (two more clicks), and click the 'Continue' button.


(For those keeping count, that's now 10 clicks over and above the entry of pertinent details and we are on page 6)


But wait: It won't let us go through to page 6 because it is flagging up that we don't have travel insurance. Despite the fact that I have specifically chosen to exclude travel insurance it is reminding me that I should have some and requiring another click to continue (11 clicks and 7 pages)

Now comes the page I REALLY like. 'The Checkout page'. Our running total at the right is back down to £129.46 and I can now give the booking my address details. Like many web sites this one has a 'postcode look-up facility'. You enter your postcode (zipcode) into the box and click the button and it will preload your address into the relevant fields. You also select your method of payment and complete the details. At this point another amount is added to your total as 'A booking fee of 3.5% (minimum charge of 4.99GBP/ 7EUR/ 10CHF/ 180CZK/ 30PLN) will be applied to all card payments except for Solo and Visa Electron which are free. For bookings made using PayPal the booking fee is 3.49GBP/ 5.00EUR. Payment made by credit card or PayPal incur an additional fee of 2.25% or 1.5% respectively.' So now  if I book with my American Express card I will find myself with another £8.01 added to the amount bringing it to the grand total of £137.47 (Remember this is for flights that were advertised on page 2 at £19.99 and £39.99).

But wait! Now that I have entered my post code, retrieved my address, filled in my credit card details and pressed enter the system is throwing up an invalid address error. How can it be invalid? I've used the system's own postcode retrieval routine! The details retrieved are, indeed, my home address. So how is this an error? I try again. Same thing. I enter the address manually. Same error. At this point it appeared that I would have to ring the airline to find the answer.

The Customer Service line for this airline costs 50p per minute to call and after wading through the Interactive Voice Response the quickest I could get through to a live person was 2 minutes (So the cost of my air fare has now increased by at least another £1). Recounting the troubles I had encountered to the lady at the other end of the line she was able to come up with an instantaneous response. It appears that there is a bug on the website which will not accept any punctuation in the address. So anyone who lives in St. Mary's Road, or Chapel-en-Le-Frith is in trouble. The system will invalidate all fields in the address which have the punctuation and not allow the address to be recorded. Having checked the website help page this is not detailed anywhere. So basically a pretty fundamental error like that - which is already known to the airline - is not detailed anywhere on the web-site leading to either loss of business for the airline as disgruntled folks decide to book with other airlines or to the customer being gouged for extra costs in having to contact the customer services desk.

Summary
Another long post again, I'm afraid, but in this case I think the summary will be quite quick

Airlines should look at their web-sites from a customer point of view rather than an increased revenue point of view. As a potential customer I will be more likely to spend money (and provide repeat business) to an airline that offers good service rather than one that makes the experience fraught and complicated.

As with most processes, this applies equally to yours too.


Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.



All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford  
See related info below