1. Does Technology make Managers lazy?
2. Is SOA the Magic potion that business need to drink?

Both and neither, is what I would say.One interesting quote that the first post provides is this.

I once spoke with a consultant who told me about working with the British military. Years ago, if you were becoming an officer, you were sent on a course about managing your office. Part of the course involved learning how to manage your filing cabinet.

Then computers came along and the course was scrapped. Think about it. A computer has at least 100 “filing cabinets”. You need training in managing content far more if you have a computer. But you don’t get it because of this irrational exuberance about what technology can do.

That is the story with so many businesses. You have new powerful technology, you can do more than before, but the irony is that businesses end up expecting IT to run their businesses for them.Businesses are going digital, and the managers are still in the Iron Age. What an irony!

The 2nd post in the above list, provides this quote.

The consumer must rapidly gain an appreciation for the enterprise’s business policies and its’ procedures for doing business. To gain that understanding in an automated fashion, the enterprise must unlock the electronic door to their building and unleash their automated business policies.

I liked it when Larry Schmidt mentions, unleash their automated business policies. But the question is how?

1. Are new programming languages and technologies the answer? No, because the business managers own the business policies, and there is no way you are going to get them to see your code.
2. Is BPM the answer? Well, only partially. BPM makes visible the business process and the workflow? But, who will take care of your operational business decisions?Code, BPM, SOA, WWF?

SOA along with BPM, provides an enterprise the capability to integrate all their earlier IT investments and align them with their current business goals. They also provide visibility, mind you! And in my opinion, that is one of the most important gains.But the gains are more in the workflow and capability integration scenarios.

I was reading this comment in VD’s blog, which was a talk back on Jeffrey Mills very nice writeup on BPM in an Enterprise.

Processes rarely change? Ours change all of the time. Especially the manual processes as articulated by the author. I believe the writer’s point is that a BPMS manages processes and rules. A rules engine without an application is nothing.

Interesting! Your processes are changing often. I would certainly agree that a BPM is helping you immensely. But again, saying that a BPMS also manages business policies and helps you operationalize and make visible your business decisions, I would have to say that such a BPM product does not exist.

There are application and, there are applications. In some cases, the application workflows are small such that you can capture it using a workflow framework like WWF, or even in code. For large and integrated business processes, you need an industrial strength BPMS.

Well, when you need to automate your business decisions, and you want to hand over control to your business users, and provide the business visibility into how decisions are taken, you need to manage your policies. When your policies are complex, wide spread, large in number, volatile, then you need to manage the policies. And you cannot live without business rules then!

Business Rules technology complements Business Process Management. If someone tells you that because you have a BPM, you don’t need Business Rules Management, well, don’t believe them!

To conclude, to manage your business efficiently in a Digital world,

1. You need to manage your processes
2. You need to manage your business policies