New Podcast: JP Morgenthal disassembles the SOA & BPM relationship

JP Morgenthal, EA, SOA, BPM & Cloud Computing Strategist, gave a provocative talk on Disassembling the SOA & BPM Relationship at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC. 

JP opened with his contention that SOA and BPM are not the hand-in-hand partners that the technology press and vendors would like everyone to believe.  More so, SOA is not a prerequisite for BPM success.  In backing these assertions, JP described BPM as a practice that encompasses modeling, testing, implementing and measuring business processes, with supporting methodology to gather requirements, document processes, define KPIs, capture metrics, analyze results and optimize outcomes.

This view of BPM as a business discipline comes straight from the business practitioners whom JP interacts with on a regular basis.  The confusion on the SOA-BPM relationship comes from IT professionals, who solely focus on the execution engine (BPMS) of any BPM initiative.  As JP pointed out, many successful BPM initiatives have no underlying technology implementation. 

JP’s perspective provided for a lively discussion with meeting attendees.  The prevailing counter case was that SOA also has a business design element, that many businesses are organized as business services, with supporting process implementations.  A supporting point was that business personnel are more likely to think in terms of services than processes. 

To hear all of JP’s points and the attendee counter points, please go here.

This is the sixth fifth of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, and Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML.  Next up, Todd Landry of NEC Sphere on Service-oriented Communications.

Comments

[Vaseem Khan]

Thank you for the podcast. Its nice to see JP provide clear distinction between technologies i.e. BPM and SOA.

I like his point where he mentions "SOA is not a prerequisite for BPM success." I am sure a topic can be created on whether or not SOA and BPM are interrelated.

According to google trends BPM is losing battle to SOA. If anyone can find information on BPM vs SOA please notify me. Do email me (vaseem.khan at aworkflow dot com).