Very nice post. I agree with most of what you wrote. Nevertheless, I believe that the answer is not in picking Business vs IT, or IT vs Business, but in making both work together better. Top-Down does not work much better than Bottom-Up in this respect. Middle-Out is the way to go!

I find this brief history of BPM fascinating, as I am convinced there is a lot of confusion about it still. I see a large number of business executives (at least in my industry) being unaware of the science and utility of the concept. The analysts I work with tend to use PowerPoint or Visio to analyze and improve business processes, then try to implement changes through the same old functional silo organization and command-and-control approach.

While some of the leaders in the industry may have made quick inroads in applying BPM technology and reaped good benefits, most of the companies I have been exposed to are slow to truly understand the business process concept and its importance within the value chain.

In that regard I think we still need a lot of education, so that executives understand that ownership, management and improvement of processes lie with the business, and not with IT. To borrow one of your comparisons, BPM (where M stands for Management) is the executive’s job, and providing the tools is the job of IT.

This is my view and I may be in a minority, but I have seen many projects being implemented with lead from IT with many millions of dollars spent, and very little ROI to speak of. I am thinking about Y2K projects, ERP implementations, etc. Just as recently as last year, I witnessed a multi-million SAP upgrade with the ROI based solely on IT labor savings.

Once business people take ownership of the value-producing processes, a true ROI basis can be defined for any technology application. Improving revenue growth, profitability, asset efficiency and customer satisfaction is the language of the C-suite, and speaking about BPM in those terms will result in (hopefully) faster adoption rate.

A savvy CIO can do the job, and do it well, but without involvement and leadership from the business, it will most likely be done for the wrong reasons, and will bear little fruit where it’s most needed.

Just my opinion, but I’ll stick with it.

-Ryan