Processes: They are all not created the same

For some time, I’ve been thinking about opening a blog to write and share thoughts and experiences on the business process management and workflow space. As I kick off this idea, I wanted to start by sharing some thoughts on user centric workflow/process model types. During this first writing, I will use the terms workflows and processes indistinctly.

Processes are an ubiquitous part of our everyday life. Each day, we are participants of multiple interactions where we take different roles (sometimes we are initiating an action or many more we are reacting to other events) in different contexts. Examples of this go from simple things like brushing our teeth every morning to more complex activities we do at work in collaborative environments. Regardless of the interaction, we participate in processes that have different levels of rigor or structure. Some are more flexible and ad-hoc, while others are more prescriptive and do not leave much room for improvisation or going off the script. In a broad sense, we follow “recipes” that aggregate best practices and guidelines to successfully accomplish a particular goal or result.

When we map the day to day reality to the business process management space, we can see some parallelisms. In the context of user centric scenarios, I usually like categorizing process models on a scale of structure governing their actions. With this criteria in mind, we can use the following taxonomy or categorization to group processes.

Flow-based workflows/processes: These type of process models define a prescriptive and repeatable sequence of steps that cannot be altered. These processes are created to enforce consistency and make its participants follow a specific and common behavior. These processes all start the same, and finish once the goal of the process has been accomplished (usually by means of executing a particular path in the process). This model offers variability and dynamism by allowing conditional paths supported by branching points in the process. These models are on the extreme of maximum rigor and control on the structure scale.

Milestone workflow/processes: These type of process models are used for simpler use cases than the one described before. Milestone-based processes tend to be more linear in fashion and once a milestone was reached, the flow moves to the next milestone. This model is quite useful for scenarios where we need to track and check progress of projects or tasks. Like on the Flow-based process models, all milestone steps are still mandatory and the process needs to successfully complete all milestones before the process can be considered complete. However, this model allows for ad-hoc activities and tasks to take place before a milestone is considered done and marked as such in the milestone-based process. These models fit in the middle of rigor scale.

To-Do workflow/processes: These type of process models are the less rigorous. The process is composed of a list of suggested tasks and activities to be complete before the process is completed. In this model, not all tasks or activities are mandatory and usually it is a single person executing all the activities in the To-Do list. This model has the greatest flexibility of the three models as the process tasks can be exercised in any order and appeals to the participant good criteria to determine when the process should be finished.

Another very important dimension to place in perspective and in connecting to the process model types described before, is agility. “Agility” subsumes the qualities, by which a process can be defined and changed over time. Not only that, but also how easy it is for their owners and managers to change and update these models on a day to day basis when they need it.

Unfortunately, most business process management and workflow vendors have opted for a single silver bullet modeling paradigm. The selected process model type is the one addressing the more complex and rigorous use cases (the flow-based processes in the taxonomy suggested before). As with most every situation, there are pros and cons. While tools supporting flow-based process approach offers a rich set of features and functions to model structured processes/workflows, it also poses a high bar and skill set to implement the other two models. Even when change management has been greatly simplified, it is still affecting agility for these simpler process model types to be adopted successfully. The reality is that it is too complex to implement and manage the less rigorous use cases with flow-based models. The easy way out is to implement these scenarios outside business process management and workflow tools. How many times have you found yourself coordinating work via email or spreadsheets?

Unless there are alternatives models to define these simpler use cases (milestone-based and To-Do process models), we will continue to experience this divide and low adoption rate for business process management software. I would be interested in your feedback and how close these thoughts reflect your reality and the need for simpler models to map a wider range of processes without the need to have a silo workflow toolset.