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BPM and SOA - forever parallel activities? October 8th 2007

BPM is still evolving as a discipline. A significant issue with the acceptance of BPM is the high profile it receives from vendors who to date have taken an understandably technology-perspective on managing business processes. This is a dichotomous route as it falls within, and embeds, the existing chasm between 'IT' and 'the business'. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), however, may provide a common 'platform' from which IT and the business can truly partner to deliver business and customer value.

It seems to me that:
  • SOA is IT's attempt at bringing together different applications to orchestrate automated activities (processes) across a business. On the other hand,
  • BPM is the businesses attempt at bringing together different functions to orchestrate both manual and automated activities (processes) across the business.
Given this, both BPM and SOA should be seen as complementary business strategies with business processes as the common language between the business and IT. Without a common language of the key business processes, BPM and SOA are destined to be parallel activities in the parallel worlds of business and IT.

Interestingly, SOA is now going through a similar hype cycle of that recently enjoyed by the BPMS's and for once the business does seem to be leading the way as some of the emerging perspectives and issues of SOA and technology-enabled BPM have already been encountered on the BPM journey.

To re-inforce this point I refer you to SOA Adoption Crawling at a Snail's Pace from CIO magazine (May 2007). You could virtually replace every instance of 'SOA' with 'BPM' in the article and it would still read true. For example:

"Despite considerable hype, only a minority of enterprises have adopted service-oriented architectures [or BPM] and most that are...do so only within specific departments or projects, rather than throughout the company..."

"...it [SOA / BPM] should be deployed enterprise-wide and have governance to define roles, responsibilities and processes..."

"You can't just have pockets of [SOA / BPM],...it's an all-in or nothing activity."

"SOA [BPM] must contend with the traditional siloed structure of IT and business.."

These common issues should bring BPM and SOA together in an effort to develop business strategies (solutions) common to both.

So, if 'SOA is to the business what BPM is to IT', then there is some real hope of bridging the business-IT divide in organizations where business and customer processes are seen as the common language of doing business - by the whole business.
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