“Workflow” is Back
I think the term "Workflow" is back.
Not that it ever went away. It is just that it has been such a pejorative word. The most common reason given for the difference between "Workflow" and "BPM" was: Workflow is that old stuff we don't do anymore, BPM is much newer, much better.
Some people felt that workflow was support for work without any back-end integration. I honestly don't know of any workflow vendor that did not offer integration to backoffice system, nor how you would accomplish keeping workflow separate from the backoffice. I always point to the 1995 "Workflow Reference Architecture" which always had an "Interface 3" which is a standard way to integrate to a system or service. But there is a general impression that there were some workflow products that could not be integrated.
Regarless of the reason, from 2001 thru 2005, all the workflow vendors and workflow practitioners changed to using the term "BPM" due to this marketing fluff.
Some thought BPM was a more inclusive term: it mean not only the automation of business tasks, but also the modeling of it, the review of how well things are running, and the overall *management* of those business processes. To manage a process, you have to be able to see it, manipulate it, keep multiple versions of it, and be able to measure its effectiveness. This point of view makes sense: you are "managing" the workflow processes in a much more tangible way. Unfortunately, due to the influence of two very strong vendors, IBM and Microsoft, and in their over-promotion of BPEL, as well as some other notable gadflys of the BPM wave, the term BPM came to mean really something closer to Enterprise Application Integration with a process approach. We also call this "Web Service Orchestration". It took three years from 2002 thru 2005 for the market at large to realize that BPEL really was just about coordinating messages from server to server. This realization has caused the meaning of BPM to collapse from an all encompasing term, to one that means little more than "EAI".
There recently has been a big realization that "Human BPM" is very important. IBM and SAP release their BPEL4People white paper. BEA buys Fuego, a notable human workflow vendor. Oracle prepares new human capabilities above (and possibly separate) from their BPEL engine. And Microsoft talks about their Workflow Foundation, which is also separate from their BizTalk EAI.
The term "Human BPM" is a bit cumbersome. I was recently asked to give a presentation at DCI's BPM Conference on the subject of "Techniques for Using Workflow to Bridge the Gap Between Business and IT". They have not had any workflow talks for the past three years, but this year it seemed appropriate to get back in touch and see what has been going on there. In discussios with many of the experts there, they felt that the term "Workflow" now means the human oriented side of BPM, while BPM cover both the human as well as the EAI style BPM. Gartner is now using the term "BPM Suite" to mean technology that covers both human and system BPM among other criteria.
That works for me. I must give Microsoft credit for being brave enough to use the term "Workflow" and to use it for capability that is consistent with the original meaning. I propose now that BPM be the overarching term, with Workflow representing the human capabilities, and "Service Orchestration" being the system capabilities. We will see if this comes to pass.
Great post — it’s time that we “took back” the word workflow. I don’t completely agree that BPM now means EAI, but I do think that BPM is being used to describe anything that’s remotely related to process, making it relatively meaningless. I’ve been blogging “A Short History of BPM”, and your post ties in nicely with today’s “Tower of Babel” post.
links for 2006-05-10
Keith Swenson on the use and misuse of the terms BPM and workflow. Ties in nicely with my “Tower of Babel” post today.
[...] Ah, ‘workflow’ is back. [...]
[...] It’s good to see Workflow Management Coalition’s Keith Swenson blogging now. Keith, whose actual livelihood is as chief architect of Fujitsu’s BPMS, has done heroic service over the years in advancing BPM standards consistent with the WfMC reference model, such as XPDL, ASAP, and others. His recent post “Workflow is Back” reflects the irritation of many who are continually forced to watch BPM startups tout their “invention” of functionality that has existed in workflow products for over a decade, followed by lavish praise from industry analysts too young to know better. He also notes that all major workflow offerings have long provided application integration in addition to human tasks — how could they solve real problems if they didn’t? His major beef, though, is over vendors’ wholesale abandonment of the term workflow in favor of BPM, when there is in fact little or no distinction between them — implicitly validating the contention that “workflow failed” as a software technology. Being an engineer, naturally he blames it on “marketing fluff.” [...]
Well said. Of course it is only a matter of time before it is renamed something even more catchy or stupid like a human computer complimentary technology process-O-rama suite of Service Oriented Power, when some over zealous marketing guru tries to out do some other over zealous marketing guru.
[...] In an interesting article http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2006/05/06/workflow-is-back/ K Swenson write about the changing of the word workflow into BPM over time and how the term workflow has gone out of favour. In fact if you look at Google trends the searches for the words workflow has gone down a few percent over the last few years. (Although the news items containing workflow seem to have doubled). Is this the end for workflow as a technology? As a name? Well neither.Workflow as a TechnologyI read via Gartner that workflow is still expected to increase in the 5-10% range over the next few years. Although referred to workflow systems as Business Process Management Suites by Gartner. Also an increasing number of companies have recognized that they need to invest in workflow systems. Workflow as a Name People are starting to use many other terms in place of workflow: such as Business Process Management, Enterprise Application Integration, Service Oriented Architecture. That is the way of people that work with computers. We love a good acronym. The marketing people also love a good acronym. It can make their products sound better. Instead of a workflow systems why not have a Business Process Management Application Integration Service Oriented Uber-Mega Platform. Well there is one group that is less swayed by all the fancy talk. The people who buy workflow systems. Most after initial investigation realize that all these other systems are workflow but just using another name and from my experience they just want it to be called workflow. [...]
David Chappell wrote a nice response
On Defining Workflow in his blog. He suggests that Microsoft is using ‘Workflow’ as the overarching term, and ‘BPM’ as part of that. In some ways I would prefer these definitions, but in the end I will go with any definition as long as we all agree.
[...] Keith Swenson a écrit une note ces jours-ci sur la désaffection liée au terme ‘workflow’ pendant cette période en raison des prouesses marketing des uns et des autres, un avis que je soutiens entièrement — à partir de l’année 2001, vous ne pouviez plus utiliser le mot ‘workflow’ dans une conversation avec des équipes IT sans que l’un d’eux vous considère comme faisant partie de “la vieille école”. Pour Keith, le fait est que BPM est maintenant devenu synonyme d’EAI ; je ne suis pas certaine d’adhérer à cette vision, mais je pense que le terme BPM est un des acronymes le plus souvent employé à mauvais escient et assurément un des plus mal compris aujourd’hui. [...]
[...] Swenson has a post this week about how the term “workflow” fell out of favour during this period due to “marketing fluff”, a point with which I completely agree [...]
[...] Swenson a écrit une note ces jours-ci sur la désaffection liée au terme ‘workflow’ pendant cette période en raison des prouesses marketing des uns et des autres, un avis que je [...]