BPM implementation best practices – part VI

The 80/20 rule applies in case of BPM programs, too. It takes 80% of any implementation to meet 20% of requirements. However, there is one major difference that the BPM program aims to automate and manage multiple processes across multiple groups and locations of the organization.

In such case, it is essential to focus on how 80% of the effort can be reduced by smart strategies. If you look closely, several process solution parts such as integration, user interfaces and themes, or validation rules consume most of the time in implementation; however, they also recur across several processes in an organization.

A careful attention to design would identify opportunities to create reusable components that would significantly reduce the implementation efforts. These reusable components not only reduce implementation efforts but also maintenance and make overall process solution more agile.

As an example, consider HR Processes (Recruitment, On-boarding, Reviews, Exist). A lot of information around employee is common across these processes and will invariably be used in each interface (whether it is user interface or integration interface). In lot of BPM implementations, we have seen that developers, cut-n-paste such interfaces across various process step forms. That’s a big no. Any change in employee information in above example, will create lot of re-development effort and worst, most of the interfaces across processes will lack consistency as can be developed by different developers. Most of the BPM products support either Integration framework to create re-usable adapters or support concept of user interface fragments, which can be dragged and dropped on overall process step interface. In Product such as Savvion, these are called Managed Adapters and Form Fragments respectively. In our example, it is better to create employee form fragment and re-use it across.