In business process management, there is no defined starting point. The solutions are transposable, adaptive, and can be set into motion regardless of the other solution’s state. In project’s scoping minimalist form, business process management is set into motion by a timeline approach. The timeline will start with a simple set of process models and evolve into degrees of automated, real-time auditing, and dynamic execution.

• Available human capital

• Processes’ complexity

• Workflows

• Integration / disruption complexity

Many times, as with basic project management fundamentals, the inability to properly quantify resources / human capital available will lead to many BPM project failures. Yes, there will always be shortages, but do not get involved with a project which is setup for failure from the start. Beware, engineers and developers are eternal optimists.

Expect to have multiple discovery sessions with various stakeholders. Beware of going too deep. Stop discovery when you are discovering for the sake of discovering. If one has discovered the entire organization and its’ processes, then one has gone too far. Walking out of these meetings, one will have an idea on current processes’ activeness.

From the discovered processes and activity, one will be able to start modeling workflows. This is where one’s subject matter expertise will greatly speed up this phase. The more time one spends in this phase, the better. Beware of spending too many cycles in this phase. One will find 9 times out of 10, one’s specs / workflows will change after prototyping with the customer. If one decides to utilize use cases, spend less time here.  One will make up for lacking details when one begins to prototype with the customer. Attempt to be creative to enable innovative processes which align with customers’ needs to remain adaptive, agile, and competitive.

The recipe for figuring out integration / disruptive complexity: One bit of disruptive change.Two bits of human nature resistant to change. A pinch of integration / disruption complexities. Mix the ingridents together and bake in some time. Then you will end up something which doesn’t look like what you imagined. Unfortunately, time has proven no one knows the final state of the process model. The better BPM experts will get close.