James is at the the Delphi Business & Process Innovation Summit.  The conference themes sound more interesting than usual.  This from the “Continuously Bridging the Gap Between Business and IT” session. 

This set of guidelines stands us all well when we are into a requirements session.  Invariably someone has developed a business need … it can be ourselves … stop, take a step back and consider these elements. 

Learning’s from the project:

• Try and abstract a more general problem/solution before building a specific one for a specific problem
• Focus on business operations not on the flow of a specific object flowing through a process. This means modeling transitions between activities and interactions between participants
• Find the “push/pull” point between top-down BPM drivers and bottom-up technology drivers
• Various kinds of processes – flow(sequential), connected (one connects to the next), disconnected (gaps), jumbled (all mixed up) – and need to understand the kind of process to model and manage them correctly. You can manage at a higher level for coherent processes (and must do so at a lower level for more jumbled ones)
• Need to consider content / data as well as process flow
• Phased approach with quick hits
• Question official procedures as may not be what really happens * Align process and IT architectures

Source: James Taylor’s Decision Management – ebizQ

Other links from the conference below:

• Live from Delphi – The Road to Agra
• Live from Delphi – Using Process Improvement Tools to Drive Organizational Culture Change
• Live from Delphi – Continuously Bridging the Gap Between Business and IT
• Live from Delphi – When Your Business Knowledge Goes East
• Live from Delphi – Smartsourcing
• Live from Delphi – Innovation at the intersection of media and technology
• Live from Delphi – Driving Business Agility with Decision Services
• Live from Delphi – User Centered Design for Process Redesign
• Live from Delphi – Achieving Enterprise Agility