Gartner's 'BPA For The Masses'? Not Helpful

It's a tribute to Gartner's influence that it should matter when it goes off track.  But what are friends for? It needs saying that Gartner's recent note on BPA For The Masses seems to have taken a wrong turn.

The report's premise is that:

"Business process analysis for the masses is successfully engaging business users more fully in business process modeling, thus enabling a shared view with IT to deliver even greater business performance improvement".

I don't want to infringe Gartner's copyright by quoting from the report - suffice it to say that it's bullish that BPA For The Masses is the future.

There are some good points - recognition, for instance, that BPM is far more than just process automation - but, overall, Gartner's logic here is confused.

As an aside, it seems to be written for BPMS vendors rather than clients. Its perspective is that everything leads to a BPMS. It describes the aim of Lombardi Blueprint [now IBM BPM Blueprint] and ARISalign as 'ultimately, to build demand for more-sophisticated BPM technology tools'. Which is probably true. But Gartner defines a much wider category of "business-end-user-oriented" BPA products, whose ultimate purpose is also.. to link to a BPMS.

Gartner's categories by the way are weird. IBM BPM Blueprint and ARISalign are in a "web-based, collaborative, low-cost" category.  But many of the BPA products in Gartner's "business-end-user-oriented" category are also web-based, collaborative and arguably low cost. So that's about as useful as categorising the contents of the fruit bowl as 'things that are green"' and 'things that taste good'.

More fundamentally though: why on earth would any organisation want the masses involved in Business Process Analysis?

Here's a Gartner Analyst, one of the authors of Gartner's BPA Magic Quadrant 2010 report, on BPA: 

"The BPA tool market sits between the enterprise architecture (EA) tool market and the business process management suite (BPMS) tool market; not surprisingly, many BPA tools are sold into these markets for modelers with these focus areas. For example, different BPA tool selection teams want:

• A tool with an architectural focus, including support for models related to organizational, stakeholder and strategy issues.
• A solution that supports the integration of BP models with process assembly, workflow orchestration and optimization technologies.
• A tool that supports the integration of business processes and IT modeling tools to facilitate application development and package purchases."

Within this context, how can BPA possibly be an activity for the masses? This kind of analysis is understood and undertaken by a small group of IT specialists.

Each kitchen has only a small cadre of pastry chefs. Diners, waiters, the maitre d' - they may all be involved in continuously improving the mille feuille aux amandes - but it's the pastry chefs alone who sift the flour and need the rolling pin.

Gartner is probably picking up on the growing realisation of the value of end-user engagement with process. That is real and important. It is the key to operational excellence and sustainable transformation. It's a primary driver for many Nimbus clients.  But that's more to do with the Leap from BPM To Continuous Excellence.  It's a far cry from 'BPA For The Masses', an idea which seems to be hugely confusing and a dead end.   

Comments

[Neil Ward-Dutton]

I'm not a Gartner client so I can't read the report - from your analysis of it and from my knowledge of how IT analyst firms can work (or not), I'd say the most likely issue here is a quality issue - either lack of left-hand-right-hand coordination or a bit of an editing snafu.

Of course because Gartner is so widely quoted it's incumbent on the company to make sure the quality of its reports is high and consistent - maybe it needs a better process ;-)