uEngine.org

White paper

ProcessCodi: A Social BPM or more.

JaeHoon Lee, Ph. D.

Principal research engineer, uEngineSolutions

20 March 2011

BPM Crisis – Will the traditional BPM still beneficial to modern organizations?

Ever since Hammer (1992) insisted the importance of business processes１, BPM has become one of the famous

methods for enterprise management and improvement. BPM allowed companies to standardize their business

processes, automate tasks by IT systems, and monitor the critical business activities in real time. It is obvious

that the key to success to BPM is its systematic approach to define, execute, control, and evaluate business

processes. This approach is especially powerful when to adapt to the traditional companies which have

hierarchical organizations, standardized job description, and division of labor. On the other hands, modern

enterprises become more agile, knowledge-based, and flexible structured. So a question arises; is the traditional

BPM still beneficial to recent organizations?

<Figure 1> Smart workers’ workflow in a knowledge based company

The new type of organization; knowledge-based companies are different or in opposition to the traditional one in

１ M. Hammer, and J. A. Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Harper

Business Books, New York, 1993.

various aspects. First of all, traditional BPM is based on “plan and control” strategy, which makes involved

workers passive and stressful by continuous monitoring, feedback, and reminding. On the contrary, knowledge-

based companies control their workers as less as possible so that they can concentrate on their tasks perfectly. In

addition, traditional BPM makes a certain boundaries of authorities and responsibilities. Whereas knowledge-

based companies are sometimes very unclear of organizational boundaries and even they are indistinctive

between a company and its outside area.

Figure 1 depicts a simple example of the problem stated. In a knowledge-based company, smart workers –

mostly the key resources of an organization – do not only act within the boundary of a company. They learn

much from the outside, communicate with experts, and make decisions in anytime / anywhere based on mobile

devices. Figure 1 clearly shows that there exist two separated areas of business concerns; 1) a company which

has hierarchical organizations, standardized and regulated business processes, and centralized systems, and 2)

the outside the company, where non-business activities, experts, social networks, and atypical resources exist.

Interestingly, knowledge-based workflow needs to cross the two areas. However, the boundary in the middle

appears that it will disturb both the business processes and knowledge flow of smart workers. The boundary can

appear in either engineering perspective or business perspective.

What is social BPM and what is different?

Social BPM is a new trend of BPM and already has been introduced by the leading BPM vendors. According to

Clay in Forrester, social BPM refers to processes developed and improved through the use of social technologies

and techniques２. We are already familiar with social tools of Web 2.0 such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and

others. More practically, IBM emphasizes two features of social BPM; community dynamics and

collaborations３.

Is social BPM merely an integration of BPM and social networks? It may be a simple issue in engineering

perspective but a complicated matter in management perspective. BPM is based on the idea that a business

process is an object to be clearly defined, measured, controlled, and standardized. However, the concept of

social networks is somewhat opposed to the traditional one. Social networks are characterized by unstructured

knowledge flow, informal activities, and independency on organizational regulations. Thus, social BPM has to

possess both the S/W functionalities of integrating social networks into a business systems and the cultural

environment which motivates collaboration and voluntary participation.

ProcessCodi: Social BPM or more.

uEngine.org – one of the famous open-source BPM vendors is planning to launch a new social BPM;

ProcessCodi. It inherits our strengths; open source based flexible architecture and customization, and active

community with world-wide developer participants. uEngine users and developers already have accustomed to

the collaborative and open business environment. In addition to that, ProcessCodi reinforced the concept of Web

2.0 and mobile interfaces.

Figure 2 shows that ProcessCodi enables to interact with the two main social resources. Through ProcessCodi,

business process performers in the company can use the Web 2.0 tools in an integrated environment. On top of

that, they can also communicate with the relevant people with the tasks such as domain experts, expert groups,

and potential clients to get supports, collaborate, and understand the atmosphere around the company.

２ Clay Richardson, Is Social BPM A Methodology, A Technology, Or Just A Lot Of Hype?, Forrester blogs,

http://blogs.forrester.com/clay_richardson

３ Wilfred C. Jamison, BPM Voices: Get social with IBM and BPM, IBM developer works, 2010.

Ultimately ProcessCodi enables to orchestrate the heterogeneous cultures; the controlled business processes and

the knowledge-based innovative business processes.

<Figure 2> ProcessCodi as a gateway to social tools and people in networks

<Figure 3> ProcessCodi a) and ProcessTouch b)

ProcessCodi has new features of user interface in both Web and mobile environment. Customized UXs

according to user’s preference are provided. Figure 3 a) shows the main portal which consists of four main area

of 1) business category, 2) social network, 3) relevant process instances, and 4) contents based on the user-

friendly UX. During a user’s activity, these elements will show up to support him/her whenever necessary

automatically and dynamically.

<Figure 4> ProcessCodi; AS-IS vs. TO-BE.

Moreover, ProcessCodi provides a mobile based BPM tool; ProcessTouch (Figure 3. b). It plays a role of is

offline process trigger and makes up the weak points of BPM which is rarely applicable to offline business

activities. ProcessTouch enables process participants to start and connect to the processes without restriction of

time and physical locations.

What will the new social BPM bring to organizations? There are many superficial aspects of social BPM as

listed in Figure 4 such as self-motivations, collective intelligence, extension of BPM to the off-line business

activities, or new compensation system based on social activity. However, the ultimate goal of ProcessCodi will

be to design and implementation of smart-working cultures into an organization. It maximizes the performance

of workers, raises job satisfaction, and gain the competency of a knowledge-based company.

About the author

JaeHoon Lee, Ph.D.

Dr. JH Lee has spent almost five years in the area of BPM in both theory and application. He has the

records of academic research papers for BPM in various industries such as medical, quality

engineering, and applied statistics. Recently, Dr. Lee has been working with uEngine.org, which is

one of the world famous open-source BPM projects.