| Let’s take a step back. Relax, calm down and then | | | | pure heresy. This is why asking for innovation and |
| look at the IT marketplace from a little distance. | | | | agility requires the people – executives, IT and users |
| Correct. It is nearly impossible to understand what is | | | | – to have the gut to drop these useless industry |
| going on. Software vendors face the same problem | | | | best practices. Traditional waterfall-style methodology |
| when trying to understand their customers. The current | | | | or others that are more user-interactive are holding IT |
| environment of selling and buying IT solutions has not | | | | and therefore the business back. Yes, a single |
| only driven up IT costs, it has also completely killed true | | | | repository that manages development, test and |
| innovation. Why? Because no one – no the big | | | | production is essential to truly alive services that are |
| vendors, not the outsourcers and certainly not analysts | | | | impossible with the barrier between users and IT. |
| - want to admit that the time has come for a | | | | Who needs projects and governance? |
| substantial change and that the concepts and solutions | | | | Actually, no one! If a business application requires a |
| of the last years just made the situation worse. | | | | huge project management effort then it should be |
| Welcome to the real world! | | | | dropped immediately, because the same amount of |
| Does a business really need five to seven different | | | | effort will go into maintenance. It does not matter how |
| software products to service a single customer? No. | | | | well things are being standardized, the world will be |
| The market fragmentation of analysts puts needs and | | | | moving on and the more complex a solution is the |
| vendors in little boxes. Why? So that everyone can be | | | | more it will struggle to keep up! That is simply the way |
| a leader in his little box. Innovation requires however | | | | it is and every one in IT knows it and no one wants to |
| out-of-the-box thinking. CRM is used for call center and | | | | admit it! If you buy a complex car then maintenance |
| marketing processes, ECM for document oriented | | | | requires experts at higher cost and more time. The |
| processes and BPM for everything else that is not so | | | | only solution is to buy a simpler car. And no, it is not |
| easily mapped into a generic application. Then there | | | | different in IT. The laws of economy apply here also. |
| are business rules and intelligence. Does a business | | | | Obviously any serious implementation needs some |
| need SOA to be agile? And what about Mashups? Or | | | | planning and targets. But the smaller the elements are |
| Cloud Computing? SaaS? No, no, no and NO! Business | | | | that have to be implemented then the easier they will |
| just needs a way for IT to simply support the | | | | be to maintain. That opens the question how all these |
| customer-oriented business processes and related | | | | elements can work together as a large system? |
| content without huge projects and expenditures. It is | | | | Answer: In the same way that people work together |
| not the business that has a real problem to adapt to | | | | without having to be rigidly controlled robots. Dynamic |
| the market place. Today it is IT that is truly and surely | | | | state/event driven process can be linked together with |
| holding back the business. Yes, an agile software | | | | complex event processing and certainly not with |
| world sounds great, but then it truly needs a BIG step | | | | simplistic, rigid flowcharts that are always wrong. |
| forward and not two steps backward by first | | | | Is the solution to simply do everything with process |
| implementing SOA and huge governance | | | | management or Mashup-ped (what a silly name) |
| bureaucracies. But the problem is people, not software. | | | | software components and services? Maybe that is |
| Information technology has been made so complex by | | | | not a bad start, but it seriously lacks flexibility to |
| IT people that business managers and executives are | | | | consolidate as much as possible. Well, there is a |
| scared to move ahead without getting their decisions | | | | reason that the large software vendors are buying |
| verified by external sources to make sure no one is to | | | | BPM, ECM, CRM, BR and BI left and right! They do |
| blame for failure. But why do things go wrong? Why | | | | see the signs on the wall. All the features for providing |
| are 50 to 60 percent of all projects cancelled? It is the | | | | a business service must be available in a single |
| complexity created by monopolist vendors, | | | | environment and from a single vendor. |
| outsourcers, external consultants and analysts. The | | | | Is there a solution that fulfils above needs? |
| billions spent on advertizing completely distort IT reality. | | | | Yes. The Papyrus Platform is an end-to-end, process- |
| 50 percent of all money spent in information | | | | and content centric solution that automates the full |
| technology is cost of sales! So it is a perfect Catch 22! | | | | application lifecycle from business need to production. |
| What does business need? | | | | Even Gartner group stated that a single lifecycle |
| The very first thing every business needs for IT is a | | | | repository is the key to delivering business-changing |
| customer focus. That immediately leads to a focus on | | | | software. By setting up Papyrus WebRepository tools, |
| the business user servicing the customer. That does | | | | IT enables business users to define applications that tie |
| not mean that business users must have the only say | | | | business processes, content and applications together |
| in what they want to work with, because they are | | | | without the need for complex projects. |
| obviously human and mostly do not understand the | | | | ISIS Papyrus has been promoting the forgotten link |
| greater needs of the business. But they must have the | | | | between business process and all business content |
| opportunity to influence the service that they get. The | | | | since 2001 when it announced its Inbound/Outbound |
| second focus has to be business services that are | | | | Process strategy. Documents (now called content) |
| alive and not frozen. But ‘code freeze’ is a | | | | used to be the carrier of the business process. Only |
| must to achieve the quality requirements put upon IT. | | | | now the world seems to recognize that the problems |
| So why are business users surprised that their | | | | of ECM, CRM and BPM lie in a lack of understanding |
| applications are not agile? Business created the | | | | the business context - how people and business |
| requirement for quality that is not human and therefore | | | | processes are related to content. It is in fact impossible |
| that is exactly what business users get. | | | | to determine the business context for all of the |
| Rather than using SCCM change management tools | | | | unstructured information within your organization as |
| to manage the code freeze, a business needs a | | | | long as it is treated independently. A process that does |
| simple way to manage software lifecycle into | | | | not deal with content and content that does not relate |
| production. Asking IT departments today to allow | | | | to a process are irrelevant in a business sense. |
| application changes in the production environment is | | | | |