I've been offline for about a month due to a change of location. After 15 years among the calming redwoods of Santa Cruz, I've pulled up stakes and moved home and office to the devil's own playground of Southern California. I used to be able to hear the whir of the hummingbirds. Now it's the roar of the traffic and the incessant mowing and blowing, which appears to be a 24x7 activity down here.
One of the best features of the BPMN Method and Style training is the post-class certification. For most students, this is when the training starts to really take hold. There are two steps to becoming certified. Step 1 is an online multiple choice exam, similar to other certifications. But the bigger value is Step 2, in which students must create a BPMN model following the Method and Style principles and model structure taught in the training.
In the world of BPM, the hottest topic today is case management. Some call it dynamic case management or adaptive case management, and some say it’s not part of BPM at all. One thing is for sure: Conventional BPM Suites cannot do it very well. The objectives of case management are identical to those of conventional BPM: managing work more effectively and efficiently, providing end-to-end performance visibility, and increasing business agility.
We still have openings for our live-online BPMN Method and Style training next week. It runs Monday-Wednesday from 11am-4pm ET each day. Click here to register. Also, because of conflict with Gartner BPM Summit in Baltimore, I had to move the April class to May 7-9. Again, click here to register for that. Post-class certification is built into the price of both classes. Learn how to use BPMN correctly and consistently across your organization.
There's still space available in my BPMessentials live-onine BPMN Method and Style class, March 5-7 from 11am -4pm (US ET)/8am-1pm (US PT)/5pm-10pm (Europe CET) each day. No previous modeling experience is required, and you will come out of the training able to construct BPMN models that are not only correct but clear, consistent, and complete. The class includes hands-on exercises in class using Process Modeler for Visio, an add-in to Visio from itp-commerce, as well as post-class certification.
The good news is my book BPMN Method and Style 2nd edition, with BPMN Implementer's Guide, is now showing In Stock on Amazon.com (not yet on Amazon.co.uk, unfortunately, which says 5-8 weeks). It was available for about 2 days at the end of October, and then I found about half dozen typos I saw on close reading. I thought I would just fix right away, so that a bunch of 'imperfect' books would not go out.
IBM is the big dog in the BPMS landscape. BPM 7.5 combines the old WebSphere Lombardi Edition and WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition (aka Process Server) in a single offering. More than two separate products in a single box, there is real integration under the covers, in the form of a shared Process Center repository. Find out all about it in my latest Industry Trend Report, available here. You'll need to be registered on BPMS Watch to access it.
Clay (Coat o'Paint) Richardson and I have agreed to disagree about whether IBM Business Process Manager's having two process engines is a bad thing (sez he) or a don't-care (sez I). In the analyst session at Impact today, it wasn't really clear if the two-engine approach is the long-term answer or just all they can do for now. I don't think it matters all that much, but Clay got me thinking about where they "
Yesterday I got a look at SAP's BPM v7.3, now in "ramp-up" (extended beta). I hadn't heard much lately about SAP in the BPM area, so I was really surprised to see how far they have come. The new offering, called the "Process Orchestration Solution", combines NetWeaver BPM, focused on human tasks, and NetWeaver Process Integration, which provides SOA, ESB, adapters, and Enterprise Service Repository (ESR). Unlike, say, Oracle, who (today) sells BPM as general-purpose middleware, SAP makes BPM an application extender.
I recently received by email a set of questions regarding my BPMN training. Since I get similar requests on a regular basis, I see it might be good if I just posted the answers. 1. Which class or classes do I need to take to achieve your certification? I provide BPMN training through a variety of channels. Right now, the only one that offers certification is BPMessentials, which is a joint venture of Bruce Silver Associates and itp commerce, maker of the Process Modeler for Visio BPMN tool.