ITIL and BPM

[ITILGUY]

I have tossed the idea in other forums and would like to test it here as well. Iam lobbying for embracing BPM techniques and tools in ITIL implementations. I see this makes lots of sense in cutting down duplicate efforts and non-standardized, non-compatible real-life experiences in this field.

I would like to see what other members have to say in this regard, specially those who have an exposure to both fields and also those associated with BPM vendors to see the possibilities out there.

[rjp]

I am using BPML (well mostly BPMN in visio) to design service support processes - Incidnet Management mostly.

I think with the growth of web-services and XML, BPML is one of the more useful BPM 'standards'.

It's primarily a process sketching tool at the moment - something I use to help me conceptualise a process as I am working on it. I do not work at a site where BPM is a requirement.

One issue I see with using formal modelling languages (not just BPML, but things like UML as well) is that they embody the kind of techniques development units tend to use, not production ICT - and ITIL is aimed primarily at production.

My CIO made the comment 'When you're up to your arse in alligators, you don't need advice on how to drain the swamp.' I.e., agility and responsiveness to the current task, goal, situation is at a premium. So the high level of planning and attention to detail formal methodologies entail, is often not what production managers are looking for.

Another 'issue' is the nature of the ITSM systems/solutions on the market. These make it possible to configure / populate / and deploy boiler plate processes with a minimum of planning and specification. (Not always a good thing). And so effectively provide a low cost alternative to formal business systems and process analysis and design.

As an interesting aside - FrontRange's new ITSM solution uses a BPMN/BPML IDE for development and customisation of workflow, the data dictionary, user interface and integration interfaces. Which to my mind is an extremely attractive feature - compared to the development environments of other ITSM apps at the enterprise level.

I am thinking about getting 'System Architect' which looks, so far, to be a very good application for process design. Thing is if I am producing specifications using a method nobody else is familiar with - whose going to read them?

Anyway, feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss this at length.

[JoePearson]

Hi, itilguy and rjp.

I've also been looking at BPM techniques, although I have not got into formal notation yet. I agree that they have development not a production approach - in fact I'd go further and say they seem to have a development not a business approach, despite the name. Specifically I mean that they (the BPM techniques I've looked at) seem to be geared towards producing software, and to assume the 'business process' is largely already known.

In ITSM situations we tend to be less keen on developing software (we, or our business sponsors, would rather use some of the many existing tools) and more concerned with the people aspects of the process - and we don't assume the existing process is generally worth automating.

My feeling is that the same ideas of top-down decomposition can help, but instead of immediately going to activities, like 'what do you do? Who does it? Who do you send the results to?', we need to look at the output of a process block - 'what has to get done? How will we know when it's done well enough? How will we measure it?' - And then decompose the process via intermediate outputs and required inputs.

Do you mind sharing where you have been discussing this? I've yet to find much active useful discussion on the subject.

Joe