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BPM: Three Waves of Process Management
A new book, ‘Business Process Management, the Third Wave’ by Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, identifies three phases of business processes.
Business processes began to take shape in the 1920’s when theories around work processes first started. Back then, automation was scarce and most processes were implicit in the people’s work schedule. That was the first wave.
In the 90’s a second wave of thinking came when the business process re-engineering movement began to reshape business practices with technology and automation. During that time processes were re-engineered manually, one process at a time, and then the re-engineered processes typically solidified into that was fairly rigid and overseen by software applications.
The book now identifies a new third wave of thinking about business processes that is on us, one that brings much greater flexibility to the creation and change of the process definition. This new wave frees the process from the confines of technology.
The book emphasizes that business processes are central to what business is all about. And all significant business management theories and techniques rely on or have components that involve business processes. These techniques include business re-engineering, process innovation, total quality management, Six Sigma, activity-based costing, value-chain analysis, cycle-time reduction, supply chain management, excellence, customer-driven strategy and management by objectives.
All of these management techniques have been cited over the years as forces for bringing about tremendous change and value to numerous organizations. By digging down deeper to identify business processes as a more fundamental theme that runs in a common way across all these techniques, perhaps a new and clearer way of thinking about and running businesses will evolve.
