I was interviewed by Kelly (Rachele) Sganderla, Innovation Consultant at iProcess. The interview was in Portuguese, but in this post, I summarize my answers in English. The original and complete interview in Portuguese is at Linkedin.
1 – What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations this year? First I would like to inform you that my experience in the Business Process Management (BPM) area is mainly academic (for details: www.inf.ufrgs.br/˜lucineia). My understanding is that BPM practitioners, that is, process analysts, should, at this moment, have even more ability to perform the process identification and discovery, using different techniques, that is, complementary to the already traditional interview with users. For example, perform the analysis of documents of the organization and the domain of application of the process. This is an evidence-based process discovery technique (Dumas, 2018), which I have published several scientific articles on (Silva, 2018; Silva, 2019). In addition, process analysts must invest time in learning and using process modeling guidelines in their modeling initiatives (Ávila, 2019; Ávila, 2021). Visualization in process models is also a topic of great relevance (Dani, 2019). For example, how modeling tools show or advise users about modeling problems. Finally, cooperation between the academy and industry is essential. Scientific research is motivated by problems that come from the real world. This means that real data is of great value for achieving good scientific results. On the other hand, BPM practitioners can benefit from scientific results, since such results assist in solving problems, related to the BPM life cycle (eg: Identification, Discovery, Process Analysis, Process Redesign, etc.). The area of Robotic Business Process Automation (Robotic Process Automation – RPA) (Syed, 2020), as well as Process Mining also requires attention from practitioners. In these areas, I am conducting research, for example, on how process mining is applied in RPA.
2 – What are the best sources to acquire this knowledge? (books, articles, training) An excellent way to continuously improve is to course a master’s and a doctorate in the area of BPM, participate in workshops and scientific conferences in the area. At the Informatics Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), I teach a discipline for undergraduate and graduate courses on Business Process Modeling and Management. In addition, I am co-chair of the Second Workshop on Academy Meets Industry in Information System Engineering (AMISE’21) – which will be held in conjunction with the Internatioonal Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’21).
I also suggest reading the following references:
- (Dumas, 2018) Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, Hajo A. Reijers: Fundamentals of Business Process Management, Second Edition. Springer 2018, ISBN 978-3-662-56508-7, pp. 1-527.
- (Mendling, 2020) Jan Mendling, Brian T. Pentland, Jan Recker: Building a complementary agenda for business process management and digital innovation. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 29(3): 208-219 (2020).
- (Syed, 2020) Rehan Syed, Suriadi Suriadi, Michael Adams, Wasana Bandara, Sander J. J. Leemans, Chun Ouyang, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede, Inge van de Weerd, Moe Thandar Wynn, Hajo A. Reijers: Robotic Process Automation: Contemporary themes and challenges. Comput. Ind. 115: 103162 (2020).
- (Silva, 2018) Thanner Soares Silva, Lucinéia Heloisa Thom, Aline Weber, José Palazzo Moreira de Oliveira, Marcelo Fantinato: Empirical Analysis of Sentence Templates and Ambiguity Issues for Business Process Descriptions. OTM Conferences (1) 2018: 279-297.
- (Silva, 2019) Thanner Soares Silva, Diego Toralles Avila, Jean Ampos Flesch, Sarajane Marques Peres, Jan Mendling, Lucinéia Heloisa Thom: A Service-Oriented Architecture for Generating Sound Process Descriptions. EDOC 2019: 1-10.
- (Ávila, 2019) Diego Torales Avila, Raphael Piegas Cigana, Marcelo Fantinato, Hajo A. Reijers, Jan Mendling, Lucinéia Heloisa Thom: An Experiment to Analyze the Use of Process Modeling Guidelines to Create High-Quality Process Models. DEXA (2) 2019: 129-139.
- (Ávila, 2021) Diego Toralles Avila, Rubens Ideron dos Santos, Jan Mendling, Lucinéia Heloisa Thom: A systematic literature review of process modeling guidelines and their empirical support. Bus. Process. Manag. J. 27(1): 1-23 (2021).
- (Dani, 2019) Vinicius Stein Dani, Carla Maria Dal Sasso Freitas, Lucinéia Heloisa Thom: Ten years of visualization of business process models: A systematic literature review. Comput. Stand. Interfaces 66 (2019).
3 – What skills are no longer relevant or will we practically not use anymore? From my academic perspective, I consider cooperation between industry and academy to be very important. This means that scientific support, and mainly, based on evidence for decision making, is ivery necessary in organizations. I also consider of great relevance that organizations encourage their members to participate in scientific events, in which news, limitations in each area are discussed. Finally, that organizations encourage their members to look for continuous improvement and knowledge.
4. What is the role of the BPM professional in the new normal and in hyperautomation? The BPM professional requires greater ability to discover an organization’s processes remotely. The use of techniques based on document analysis, complemented by workshops and remote interviews is even more necessary. In addition, I think it is essential that the process professional gets closer to the academy, looking for scientific literature to carry out their activities. I consider it positive that organizations involve the academy in their initiatives (eg, online events with academic lectures, podcasts with the participation of researchers, presentation of initiatives at universities, etc.). Process mining will also be critical in organizations.