Following up with Mr. Hedge

As noted in this blog in an earlier post, the term "BPM" shows up in the sales brochures of countless vendors and consultants. Companies selling IT products or management consulting services see that BPM has been building momentum in the private sector for a few years now, and so are defining BPM to mean whatever they think will help them sell something.

BPM is sometimes described as a business discipline or function that uses business practices, techniques and methods to create and improve business processes. Under this general definition, just about any process improvement discipline or activity, including ISO 9000, Total Quality Management, or Six Sigma methods might fit. But at least one expert opines that BPM has to narrow its definition to an IT-related focus if the term "BPM" is to have meaning.

Arthur J. Hedge III spoke to an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers meeting in New Jersey recently. He runs a consulting firm focused on technology and BPM-related IT products and services. His talk was billed as having an open source angle, and he applies a definition of open source that varies from some traditionalists' understanding of that term.

Some remember an open source definition originating in the "Free Culture" movement, philosophically opposed to profit and dedicated to the cause of sharing intellectual property for the betterment of all mankind through technology. Those traditionalists note that what Mr. Hedge and IT vendors label open source has a different meaning; this BPM definition of open source describes products similar to the freeware versions of popular programs whose vendors entice users with a small, stripped-down version of a program that is available for sale as a bigger version with more power and functionality. Damn that was a long sentence! You had better go back and read it again.

Some of the vendors applying the Hedge definitions of BPM and open source include Intalio, JBoss and Active Endpoints.

And one last note: When I spoke to him on the phone, Mr. Hedge pointed out that when specialists in ISO 9000, TQM and Six Sigma describe and define their own disciplines, they never use the term BPM to describe what they're doing. He has a point.