BPM / SOA Community Insights

BEI Optimization for Innovation Conference – Open Call for Participation

Our parent organization, the Business Ecology Initiative (BEI), is hosting an exciting new Optimization for Innovation Conference program.  The inaugural conference, December 6 – 8, 2010, in Santa Clara, CA USA, is “Optimization for Innovation: Reset; Joint Business & Technology Actions for the New Normal”:

As the world economy emerges from a painful recession, organizations are confronted with the challenge of retaining bottom-line diligence, while pursuing market sustaining and gaining innovation, in an environment riddled with uncertainty, increased regulation, consumer reluctance and tighter credit. This is the “new normal.” To execute in the “new normal,” organizations are seeking new ideas and techniques to optimize business operations and foster business innovation.

At the inaugural Optimization for Innovation conference, executives, senior-level practitioners, experts and thought leaders will share real-world experiences and pragmatic 90-day action items to harvest savings and trapped value from existing processes, resources and capabilities.

There is an open call for participation that members and friends of the BPM/SOA Community should consider.  We are seeking proposals for the following program and tutorial topics:

Program Topics

• Optimization for Innovation Success Stories
• Business-Technology Reset: Optimization for Innovation
• Governance Models for the New Normal
• Business Analytics as Optimization Foundation
• New Normal Linchpins: Business-Tech Savvy Professionals
• Business-IT Alignment is a Dead-End
• Business Optimization Techniques

Tutorials Topics

• Instituting a Business Performance Measurement Framework
• Cyber Risk Analysis: Assessment, Policy, & Economics
• Business Process Modeling and Business Instrumentation
• Lean / Six Sigma in the New Normal

Presentations and tutorials proposed should be geared toward an audience comprising direct reports and senior staff of the COO, CFO and CIO. All presentations and tutorials must include a 90-day action plan for attendees to pursue post-conference.

The submission deadline is Friday, August 13, 2010. Please note, submissions that are direct pitches for product or services will not be considered. Submissions should be prepared in English, containing the following information:

• Presenter name, title and affiliation
• Presenter Bio
• Session Title
• 2 - 3 paragraph description of proposed session
• 3 - 5 bullets on what attendees will learn
• Target audience characteristics: role, skill and industry
• 90-day action plan items

Submit abstracts as described above to Program Chair Brenda M. Michelson via e-mail.

Event Processing Symposium: Capital Markets Edition – October 6, 2010 in NY, NY

The Event Processing Community of Practice, our sister CoP, is holding a Capital Markets focused Event Processing Symposium in New York, on October 6, 2010. 

In the opening keynote, Roy Schulte of Gartner will provide an overview of the commercial use of CEP (complex event processing), focusing on capital markets.  Schulte’s session will cover these key issues:

1. Buy versus build – When to use commercial CEP software and when to write your own
2. Market landscape – Who are the major CEP vendors and what role does each play in capital markets
3. Product selection – What to look for in an event processing platform

Opher Etzion, Event Processing Scientific Leader at IBM Research Lab in Haifa and chair of the Event Processing Technical Society, is our closing keynote.  Etzion will be sharing insights from his research and his soon-to-be released Event Processing in Action book.

For more information, please visit the Symposium site.

BPM / SOA Case Study Contest: Deadline Extended to July 30, 2010

The news: By popular demand, we’ve extended the deadline on the Business Agility and Process Optimization enabled by Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Case Study Competition.  Entries are due July 30, 2010.  Start your submission here. 

The refresher: the contest is open to organizations of all sizes, including government agencies, which have successfully delivered business or mission value using a BPM, SOA or combined BPM-SOA approach.

Similar to the SOA Consortium’s contests in 2008 -  2009, the goal of the BPM/SOA Case Study Competition is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing BPM, SOA or combined BPM-SOA adoption. To qualify for the competition, the project must be complete with demonstrated business results.

Entries will be judged on the complexity of the business problem addressed, the ROI/Business Value achieved (Agility/Innovation/Flexibility/Optimization/Resilience/Service Delivery), the level and sophistication of the cross-organizational collaboration (Business/Technical) and the usage of BPM/SOA approaches and supporting technology. In addition to one overall winner, organizations will be recognized by industry/government.

Case Study Competition winners will be announced at the BPM/SOA CoP meeting in Cambridge MA on September 21, 2010 and will be featured on the BPM/SOA CoP website and in October publications by BPTrends, SearchSOA and SearchCIO.

Visit the contest homepage to learn about the guidelines, start the application, and meet the judges.  Submissions will be accepted through July 30, 2010.

EA2010: The Business of Successful Enterprise Architecture Practices

[Update @ 7:33 PM ET on June 14, 2010: Changed call time from 12:00 PM to 1:00PM]

We’re back!  Since early 2007, the EA2010 Working Group – a group of “street-smart” enterprise architecture practitioners – has been actively discussing the domains, services, practices and skills required for a thriving, business relevant enterprise architecture practice in the 2010s. 

The major domains we identified are: technology architecture; business architecture; projects alignment; delivery; operations and measurement; and governance and enterprise architecture management.

A critical finding of the group discussion is the emphasis of technology concerns at the expense of business understanding, and ultimately, true business enablement, in most enterprise architecture practices today. Successful enterprise architecture practices in the 2010s must give equal emphasis to technology and business concerns.

In pursuit of this re-balancing, in 2009 the EA2010 team pursued a line of discussion and research on the purpose, practices and realities of expanding, or in some cases starting, business architecture practices.  This work stream culminated in the publication of an EA2010 Business Architecture whitepaper. 

Starting in June 2010, EA2010 will pursue a new line of discussion and research focusing on the business aspects of successful enterprise architecture practices.  Items for discussion include:

•    Establishing and sustaining credibility with business and IT constituents
•    Business Outcome rather than Business Model alignment
•    Injecting financial measurement and decision-making acumen into EA
•    Catalyzing a business architecture practice

All members of the BPM/SOA Community of Practice are welcome to participate in the EA2010 Working Group.  Our re-start call is Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM 1:00 PM ET.  For more information, see the EA2010 working group page, or contact Becky Higgins or me.

Going to IBM Innovate? Smarter Business Planning and Analysis: Business Architecture as a Foundation

If you are going to IBM Innovate, the Rational Software Conference, plan to attend our session on Wednesday afternoon.  I’m co-presenting with IBM’s Robert Shields on Business Architecture as a Foundation to Business Planning, Analysis and Change. 

My part of the presentation, is based on themes and outcomes from the SOA Consortium’s EA2010 group.  As always, expect a fair amount of business talk and definite traceability to business motivations. 

The details:

Session: EAM-2259: Smarter Business Planning and Analysis: Business Architecture as a Foundation
Date/Time: Wed, 9/Jun, 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Room: Dolphin - Oceanic 7
Co-presenter(s): Robert Shields, IBM, Senior Market Manager, Enterprise Architecture, Brenda M. Michelson, Elemental Links

Hope to see you next week! 

New BEI Podcast: Faisal Hoque on the Power of Business-IT Convergence

Faisal Hoque, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BTM Corporation, spoke on The Power of Convergence: Why Bringing Business and Technology Together Matters, at the March 2010 Business Ecology Initiative Symposium in Jacksonville FL.   

Hoque set the stage with the startling fact that only 74 of the original 500 firms remain in the S&P index just 40 years later.  The frenetic pace of business has reduced the enterprise life expectancy.  The response has been a call for agility.  Referencing research of the BTM Institute, Hoque stated that agility is achieved through repeatable management processes.

The components of agility are flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, standards for enterprise architecture, including business architecture, a portfolio investment approach that is structured to balance between stability and agility, and a governance model that facilitates horizontal and collaborative decision making processes.

Of the flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, Hoque focused on business-technology convergence.  Unlike business-IT alignment, which is essentially communicating silos, business-technology convergence features intertwined business and technology activities, dedicated to driving superior financial performance.

With the agility and business-technology convergence context set, Hoque walked through the BTM management practice framework, including the 17 capabilities required to achieve convergence. 

In addition to discussing the practices, Hoque shared metrics and trends from the hundreds of organizations who have utilized the BTM measurement tools over the past 7 years.  A critical finding is a correlation of management practice maturity and corporate growth and financial returns – stock price, earnings and margins.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of Hoque’s presentation and view the slides.

 

[Cross-posted from our parent blog, the Business Ecology Initiative.]