I hired ChatGPT to help me pushing Human Centric Business Process Management

I even asked ChatGPT to write this article... but in the end it turns out that ChatGPT is on the level of a student worker, but a very knowledgeable one!

So, I can use quite a lot of bits and peaces and some very good phrases from ChatGPTs work as an input. In the end the article is compiled by me as a real human being.

Let′s start:

As an experienced process manager, I am constantly seeking innovative ways to optimize business processes and drive operational excellence in order to bring BPM to a much more human centric approach. Following the actual trend in e.g. LinkedIn, I made an exciting decision to test ChatGPT as a sparring partner or student worker to support me in my strategic approach. In this article, I will share the results and my evaluation oftesting to incorporate ChatGPT into my team.

The Challenge: Getting to a BPMN model from plain text process descriptions:

Traditional process modeling tools most often are able to automatically transform BPMN diagrams into executable XML code. ChatGPT being a text based AI tool offers all kind of text crunching, even up to coding e.g. XML, one thing that I am not capable of (and I do not want to get into that). I faced a significant hurdle: How can I get a graphic process model out of plain text when ChatGPT does not provide any graphics? Interestingly enough the other way round: When ChatGPT gets a BPMN diagram it is able to extract a textbased process description out of it. However, the standard BPM Tools provide an import interface for XML code... so the advent of AI-powered language models like ChatGPT might offer a promising solution.

My first step was to leverage ChatGPT's natural language understanding capabilities to collaborate on process modeling tasks. I would describe a process in plain English to ChatGPT, and it would help me convert the description into XML code.

I even got a clear hint on how to import the XML file into the modeling tool of my (momentary) choice, as I was struggeling a bit with that on my first trial:

It lead to this BPMN diagram:

This diagram was missing quite some information I had given to ChatGPT in my initial prompt, so I started the interactive and iterative process with ChatGPT allowing me to refine my ideas and integrate much more into the process model via XML:

Very interestingly ChatGPT managed to integrate a coding error into its next iteration of the XML code:

Here comes a great feature of ChatGPT: It is able to correct itself and after me providing more details it came back with a solution that enabled me to correct the XML-file in a way that the modeling tool was able to import it:

In the end I got this BPMN model out of the process:

For sure this is not something that I can use right away, specifically it is not showing the right connection of the activities to the roles (using the swimlanes) and over all more or less a big pile of single elements that I have to rearrange and finetune quite a bit until it is a readable BPMN model.

My conclusion for the time being, and I am really looking forward to testing more and experience future developments:

Integrating ChatGPT as a sparring partner or on the level of a student worker into my process management team is a possibility for further evolution of the outcome of our work but we have to be aware of the limits and also keep an eye on real time benefits if we want to use it. Fiddling with prompts and going into an extended iteration process until you get something that will still need quite some creative work to bring it to a useable level in your Process Documentation has to be thoroughly evaluated against the time and effort you spent without using ChatGPT.

Best for AI is to use it to find all the tiny bits and peaces you need for your process out of the big pile of information available... like finding the right lego bricks in the big big pile:

But for building the big Lego city you have to rely on all the creativity and knowledge of your team and the process experts out there:

One thing that really amused me in the coorperation with ChatGPT was the enormous self confidence that ChatGPT was radiating from its proposed article on this topic:

ChatGPT was pointing out its huge capabilities in natural language understanding, BPMN diagram generation, and XML code generation and assumed to be an indispensable partner in my quest for operational excellence. Seeing the fact that ChatGPT cannot create any BPMN models directly and is missing a lot of the graphical needs to make a model understandable, not talking about the ideas of Human Centric BPM or Process-bility like Mirko Kloppenburg and Kevin Tan are promoting in the business, I don′t see ChatGPT at this point yet.

Nevertheless let`s give the last words to our fellow sparring partner ChatGPT on the outlook of how we can collaborate even further in the future:

As AI technology continues to evolve, embracing AI-powered student workers like ChatGPT opens up new possibilities for process managers. By delegating routine coding tasks to AI, we can focus on strategic decision-making, creative problem-solving, and driving business outcomes. With ChatGPT as a valuable member of my team, I am confident in my ability to navigate the complexities of process management and unlock new levels of operational efficiency.