EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Transcription

1 by Andy Salunga with Sharyn C. Leaver and Andrew Magarie EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In recent years, as enterprise architecture and process professionals have begun to work together more closely, overlaps have been emerging between service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM) solutions, and process improvement methodologies. Despite the benefit of this convergence, process professionals have long been skeptical of enterprise technology solutions and have long been viewed as Luddites who eschew using enterprise platforms for disconnected tools such as statistical analysis and process mapping software. While expertise in methodologies and tools such as statistical analysis and process mapping software continue to be critical for process improvement experts, process professionals must embrace a holistic understanding of SOA and BPM technologies or risk being marginalized in their organizations transformation efforts. UNDERTOOLED PROCESS PROFESSIONALS DELIVER LIMITED PUNCH Since the early days of total quality management (TQM), process professionals have relied on manual tools such as time studies, value stream maps, and data collection sheets as well as various statistical techniques to identify process problems and increase process speed and quality. In recent years, process professionals have begun using software tools such as Visio and Minitab to redesign processes. These tools are a big step forward from the manual days, but they still fall short when it comes to: Linking processes to their respective digital architectures. While process professionals address the people and process issues, they often fail to adequately address the technology ramifications of their process-improvement efforts. Granted, process gurus are not enterprise architects or even business process modelers, but this lack of architectural savvy can lead to a gap between the processes and the enabling architecture. Translating design into execution. Lean, Six Sigma, and other process professionals certainly play a key roll in analyzing and refining processes post rollout. However, they often lack the technical perspective to quickly institute the newly developed process and align various enabling technologies that would support new steps. Providing an efficient, reliable repository for process artifacts. Lean, Six Sigma, and other methodologies have well-known process documentation requirements. However, efforts to maintain project deliverables and other documents are often manually intensive at best and fragmented at worst. Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc., 400 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA USA Tel: Fax:

2 2 Supporting real-time continuous optimization. A key tenet of most process improvement methodologies is continual process improvement. Just as a lack of services thinking will slow down the implementation of end-to-end process changes, this gap creates delays at the operational level. As recent efforts to integrate business intelligence tools into business process management solutions (BPMS) and project-based solutions (PBS) indicate, change needs to occur and is occurring at this most critical level, and latency kills. SOA LAYS THE GROUNDWORK FOR IT TO BT The emergence of SOA and BPMS have created the business technology (BT) platform for business and IT to work together to meet the challenges of the highly competitive marketplace. 1 Process professionals don t necessarily need to understand all of the technical details related to SOA and BPM technology. Here s what they do need to know: SOA is a critical element of IT strategies. SOA has continued to evolve from its conceptual definition and initial piloting among organizations toward prevalent piloting. Forrester recently concluded a survey of enterprise decision-makers adoption plans. A comparison against 2006 plans indicates that companies are increasingly implementing SOA and that there is a decrease in the number of firms that don t plan to adopt SOA (see Figure 1). Figure 1 SOA Has Reached A Tipping Point Which of the following best describes your firm s approach to, or status on, service-oriented architecture? Not pursuing and no immediate plans to do so We use an enterprise-level strategy for and commitment to SOA We use selectively, without a clear strategy Will pursue within 12 months 25% 21% 24% 18% 16% 21% 33% 37% * Don t know 2% 3% Base: 296 North American and European enterprise decision-makers *Base: 436 North American and European enterprise decision-makers Source: Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007, and *Business Technographics 2006 North American And European Enterprise Software Survey Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

3 3 Processes and services are closely linked. SOA and related BPM tools provide a common framework for process gurus to model and analyze processes and more efficiently retrieve data for analysis. This link reinforces key principles of service orientation, namely, designing services within a business process context and aligning services with individual process steps (see Figure 2). Moreover, this link provides a more coherent story at the enterprise level between the enterprise architecture and the process architecture. SOA and process methodologies are about service standards. Service standards and metrics have moved process execution away from being a highly variable art to being a data-derived, repeatable science. Similarly, SOA has enabled IT professionals to move away from using proprietary technologies and toward taking a more standards-based approach to application and service development. As such, SOA functions as a crucial software architecture for building applications that implement end-to-end business processes or services to deliver well-defined levels of service. SOA flexibility complements process optimization. Process transformation methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints drive process discipline toward standardization, but optimized processes high capabilities make localization possible as well. SOA enables firms to customize within the inputs and outputs of a process while the process steps and the corresponding specification limits remain the same. In particular, the combination of flexible BPM execution engines with business intelligence (BI) tools allows for real-time process optimization. Figure 2 Business Processes And Services Are On Parallel Paths Update address. Reserve inventory. Schedule production. Process Schedule shipment. Create customer order. Create supplier order. Process steps correlate to services. Enterprise service bus Services Update address. Reserve inventory. Create customer order. Schedule production. Create supplier order. Schedule shipment Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

4 4 SOA (and BPM) solutions are becoming more integrated with process methods. Many SOAenabled BPM solutions already combine enterprise architecture, process modeling, and business activity monitoring (BAM) tools. More recently, vendors are integrating process improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma into their solutions. For example, IDS Scheer recently released its ARIS Six Sigma solution as part of its Business Performance Edition and announced its partnership with Minitab. 2 This convergence of architecture, process management technologies, and process methodologies facilitates and even requires the participation of both IT and the business. Enterprise architects are becoming process-focused. Enterprise architects, who have long faced criticism for focusing too narrowly on technical and data architectures, are now focusing on business processes from a methodological, technological, and strategic perspective. In a recent survey, adopting BPM was the fourth-highest-rated issue of the top 13 critical issues facing EAs, with 30% of respondents rating it an issue of critical importance (see Figure 3).

5 5 Figure 3 BPM Is Now A Critical Issue For Enterprise Architects Please indicate the importance of the following issues for you or your organization in (Respondents who answered five on a one-to-five scale, indicating that the issue is of critical importance. ) Improving delivery rate and quality of solutions or just improving agility Making and supporting technology decisions Shifting focus from tactical, project-level architecture toward strategic architecture development Adopting BPM Designing effective architecture road maps Determining the role of EA and architects in improving overall IT governance Improving architecture governance, including SOA governance Incorporating or expanding business architecture as part of your EA program Demonstrating the value of architects, architecture, and EA Pursuing infrastructure improvements such as server, storage, or network virtualization Advancing the role of collaboration tools Establishing or increasing EA involvement with business innovation Advancing SOA adoption 37% 37% 31% 30% 29% 29% 27% 27% 27% 26% 26% 25% 25% Base: 146 IT architects Source: October 2007 US And UK Enterprise Architecture And Business Process Management Online Survey Source: Forrester Research, Inc. TO REMAIN INVALUABLE, PROCESS PROFESSIONALS NEED NEW SKILLS The latest SOA and BPM technologies have come a long way toward empowering EAs and other IT professionals to more actively participate in process-improvement efforts. However, process professionals remain critical to creating well-defined SOA requirements that enable their organizations core processes. To remain effective partners in their firms process transformation efforts, process professionals must raise their technological savvy. Specifically, process experts should hone the following skills: Process modeling. While Visio allows process practitioners to electronically depict current- and future-state processes, BPMS simulation capabilities integrate practitioners statistical process analysis tools such as hypothesis testing and design of experiments.

6 6 Data architecture and data modeling. Process gurus clearly understand the importance of collecting initial data sets to understand a process current reality. However, when working with their IT and business counterparts, process experts build crucial credibility if they have working knowledge of where data typically resides in their organizations and their hierarchies. Usability and interface design. We are not advocating that process experts become GUI gurus. However, having a clear understanding of the benefits and challenges of creating forms and routines that are functional from a user s perspective is important for process professionals working to achieve their ultimate goal: building the perfect process. EA metrics. Methodologists typically have deep expertise in developing high-level and detailed operational metrics that align with strategic goals. In fact, this is an area where they can use their strengths to work with the EA group. A recent Forrester survey of European EAs revealed that while EAs had specific goals, they lacked measures or clearly defined metrics related to their goals (see Figure 4). Methodologists should take time to understand traditional EA metrics so they can help their EA counterparts translate these IT-centric metrics to business-focused performance measures. Figure 4 EA Groups Lack Clearly Defined, Measurable Goals Thinking about the objectives of EA within your organization, are the EA goals... Clear in terms of desired results 4% 12% 40% 44% Yes Somewhat No Don t know Regularly reviewed and approved 6% 31% 35% 29% Defined in terms of measurable results 6% 19% 33% 42% Base: 52 European enterprise architects (percentages may not total 100 because of rounding) Source: January 2007 European Enterprise Architecture Online Survey Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

7 7 R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S EMBRACE AND LEVERAGE SOA FOR HOLISTIC PROCESS EXCELLENCE The walls are crumbling between technologists who argue that process professionals are buried in their statistical analysis methods and process professionals who look at SOA and BPM as solutions that merely automate inefficient processes. To continue to work past this tension and focus on business transformation through process optimization, Forrester recommends that process professionals: Pursue education in SOA and SOA-related technologies. Seek out EAs and fellow process experts to gain SOA knowledge as well as awareness of your organization s SOA maturity. Specifically, seek to understand the relationship between services, physical process, and digital processes. 3 Also, consider the potential role of a BPM platform to reinforce process and architecture rigor and agility. The need for businesses to function across several geographies and regulatory and business environments is creating increasingly complex relationships. Keeping processes running smoothly will require intensive collaborative efforts between process experts and enterprise architects. Work with enterprise architects to communicate the value of process methodologies. The heat around BPM and complementary methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints is causing IT shops around the world to explore and adopt these methods and their associated problem-solving tools and techniques. Ironically, these same shops often seek outside help before reaching out to their own process experts, even (in fact, often) when their organizations already have established process centers of excellence. Spend time introducing yourselves to IT professionals: You ll not only expand your network and gain valuable buy-in, but you may also save your firm from needlessly spending money on outside consultants for training and/or implementation. Leverage SOA to embed process methodologies along with processes. The global economy demands agile processes, which in turn require an equally fleet architecture to achieve process speed and quality. Use SOA to more efficiently deploy your organization s process improvement efforts and more deeply embed them into your end-to-end processes.

8 8 ENDNOTES 1 In today s competitive environment, firms technology is essential execute their business strategy. Forrester believes that business and IT must recognize this paradigm shift that business is technology and technology is business, both focused on creating business value. See the August 18, 2006, My View: IT To BT report. 2 IDS Scheer officially revealed its ARIS Six Sigma solution as part of its Business Performance Edition along with its technology partnership with Minitab, the leading statistical software for Six Sigma practitioners at ProcessWorld Americas, on February 15, IDS Scheer s offering integrates Minitab 15 into the ARIS platform that supports all phases of the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) process improvement framework. 3 SOA provides a clear opportunity to implement dynamic applications on the SOA layer to support firms rapidly changing business environments. However, no single approach to implementing business processes will meet all enterprise process requirements. Therefore, enterprises charting a course for processes and SOA need a coherent strategy that minimizes complexity and diversity while also embracing the new opportunities for flexibility that solutions such as BPM suites and SOA platforms present. See the May 3, 2006, SOA Energizes Business Processes report. Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent technology and market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. For more than 24 years, Forrester has been making leaders successful every day through its proprietary research, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more information, visit , Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each figure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please resourcecenter@forrester.com