2007 BPM & Workflow Handbook

Methods, Concepts, Case Studies and Standards in Business Process Management and Workflow

The 2007 BPM and Workflow Handbook focuses primarily on the human or workflow aspects of business process management software applications. It focuses more on standards and arguments about standards than it might, but the best of the technical papers are very good, and if you are interested in standards issues as they exist today -- then this is a book you will need.
The overall organization of the handbook divides the articles into three major sections, one on the business value of workflow and BPM, another on BPM in Healthcare, and the third on Standards and Technology. There are thoughtful, excellent and detailed articles in each section. My preferences obviously reflect my concerns; someone else might select other articles for special praise. My short list, however, would include:
Nathaniel Palmer s Introduction: Workflow and BPM in 2007: Business Process Standards See a New Global Imperative. (Palmer has just replaced long time WfMC executive director Layna Fischer as the WfMC s professional leader.)

BPM and Service-Oriented Architecture Team Together: A Pathway to Success for an Agile Government by Linus Chow and Charles Medley from BEA and Clay Richardson from Project Performance Corp.
Analyzing and Improving Core Telecom Business Processes: A Case Study by Kyeong Eon Lee of KTF and Robert Cain of Handysoft.
BPM Center of Excellence Manifesto by Setrag Khoshafian s of Pegasystems.
Applying MDA Concepts to Business Process Management by Alexander Petzmann, Michael Pncochar, Christian Kuplich and David Orenzanz, all from BOC.
Ray Hess s article on improving bed cleaning processes in The Chester County Hospital. (Who would have thought that BPM could be used so effectively to analyze and improve such a mundane but important process?)
Quality Metrics for Business Process Models by Irene Vanderfeesten, Hajo A. Reijers, Wil van der Aalst, Jorge Cardoso and Jan Mendling.
Defining Easy Business Rules for Accomplishing the Basel II Risk Handling in Banks by Juan J. Trilles of AuraPortal BPMS.

As I suggested earlier, there are many other articles, and some will be of more interest to others. They key here, however, is the quality and the range of articles. If you are like I am, you have read several of the workflow Handbooks over the years. They constitute a benchmark to the research and the practice of workflow systems development, and to the integration of workflow technology into the larger technology that we now know as BPM.
The 2007 BPM and Workflow Handbook isn t inexpensive, but it s printed in small type with small margins and packs a great deal of information into 300 pages. I recommend it to anyone who wants to develop a good understanding of how workflow and BPM are evolving, and especially to anyone who wants some good case studies demonstrating how workflow can be used to automate the management of the human side of business processing. --Paul Harmon, Executive Editor of BPTrends