February might be the shortest month of the year, but that’s not holding us back. Our calendar this month is jam-packed with informative webinars on a variety of topics around business process management (BPM) and enterprise architecture (EA). Check out the list below to see what we have to offer and be sure to register!

Communicating in the Language of Business
Thursday, February 9, 2012
11:00AM-12:00PM EST

It’s no secret that companies are looking to their enterprise architecture teams to increase business agility, cut costs, streamline operations and improve customer service. In this webinar, Sandra Moran, Director, Product Marketing for OpenText BPS will illustrate how enterprise architects can leverage customizable business performance intelligence dashboards to better demonstrate to both business and IT leaders the deeper value you can achieve from your EA investments. For more details and to register, click here.

Financial Services Webinar Series: Paperless Funding
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
11:00AM-12:00PM EST

In this 30 minute demo Brett Kovach, Senior Solution Consultant for OpenText BPS will show you how banks and major automotive and equipment financing organizations improved their lease and loan origination with three simple best practices for BPM. For more details and to register, click here.

Unlock the Secrets of BPM ROI: Insightful Study from Forrester Research
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
11:00AM-12:00PM EST

In the third installment of our Getting Started with BPM series, Clay Richardson, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, Nathaniel Palmer, Editor-in-Chief of BPM.com, and Donna Tellam, BPM Solutions Director, User Experience Specialist, OpenText BPS will share proven strategies for BPM success. Learn from real-world examples of the challenges organizations face with BPM and how they’ve managed to overcome them. We encourage you to watch the first two installments, Practical Approach to Get Started with Process Improvement and Building the Right Team to Drive Process Improvement. For more details and to register, click here.

New Matter Intake Meets the iPhone
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
11:00AM-12:00PM EST

Gone are the days of being chained to your desk! Today, law firms can leverage mobile BPM capabilities — on the go — to expedite critical processes – such as new matter intake.  Mobile BPM keeps processes moving, regardless of the lawyer’s location. Join Keith Levin, Legal Sales Manager for OpenText BPS and Kristian Uggla, Legal Solutions Engineer for OpenText BPS, as they explain how OpenText’s new mobile BPM capabilities can increase your agility and reduce your time to value. For more details and to register, click here.

If you can’t make it to one of these webinars, don’t worry! We’ll have the recording onDemand so that you can watch it whenever you have the time. You can access the recordings, here.

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Our theme this year is Expand Your Universe. Regardless of where you are on the spectrum of enterprise architecture, business process analysis, business process management, case management, and enterprise content management, there is opportunity to expand your reach to drive further strategic and operational improvements.

I have been a part of the User Summit since its beginning. There is no doubt in my mind the tremendous value you will gain by attending the Summit. However, if you are still deciding if you should attend – I have put together seven excellent reasons that should sway your decision.

The Top 7 Reasons Why You Should Attend #UC2011:

1.  Keynotes
Hear from John Shackleton, President and CEO of OpenText who will be revealing his vision for convergence of process and content and the value the new combination of Metastorm and Global 360 as OpenText BPM brings to our customers and partners. Bob Caldwell, general manager of OpenText BPM will also be sharing his vision for the continued growth and achievements of this newly created product group. Additionally, Clay Richardson, senior analyst at Forrester Research will be adding his insight into Social BPM and why collaborative and social technologies can drive serious, meaningful results.

2.  OpenText BPM Roadmap
Chief Technology Officer for OpenText BPM, Steve Russell, will address all attendees and share product roadmap insights and strategy. He will be discussing the future of enterprise architecture, business process analysis, business process management, case management, and enterprise content management and how these capabilities will come together to help your organization plan for and execute smart improvements. You will be the first to hear the plans and how they will increase your ability to change the way you do business. 

3.  Pre-Summit OpenText Metastorm Workshops
We’re offering a special one-day curriculum of unique workshops focused on giving you the knowledge to maximize your investment in OpenText Metastorm products. While the workshops are an additional cost to the Summit registration fee, our customers who invest in training are better utilizing our products and see a much higher return on investment from our technology. There are still seats available for our Pre-Summit Workshops – register today!

4.  Networking, networking, networking
With hundreds of attendees from a variety of industries, there are endless opportunities to network. By attending you can get new, fresh ideas about how to expand your EA, BPA, BPM, DCM and ECM efforts to support your business objectives.

5.  Customer Success Stories
One of the best ways to get the most out of your investment in our products is to hear the incredible things your peers are doing. This year we have a dynamic group of customer speakers, including Blue Rhino, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, HP, Parsons Brinckerhoff, PCSU Financial Services, Salt River Project, SCRI, and Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP, who will all be sharing how they leveraged our technology to transform their operations.

6.  Location & Events
This year, our Global User Summit will be held in Reston, Virginia at the Hyatt Regency Reston – a premier hotel in the heart of Fairfax County’s technology hub and close to Washington, D.C. To further inspire you, we are providing a complimentary evening event for all Summit attendees. You can take advantage of this great opportunity to explore the world-renowned Steven F. Udar-Hazy Center – the companion facility to the National Air & Space Museum on the National Mall.

7.  Partner Symposium
This one-day event is exclusively for partners and designed to give you insight into the vision of the OpenText executive team for our partner community. By attending our Partner Symposium you will gain firsthand experience of how to maximize your sales success and maximize your potential as an OpenText partner.

By selecting Metastorm and Global 360 software, you’ve already made the commitment to innovation and business improvement. With two days of sessions, case studies, demos, networking, product roadmaps and more, you will gain some serious insight and deeper knowledge (that you can’t find anywhere else!) about our software solutions and how you can initiate positive change across your organization!

P.S.: Register by October 1^st and get $200 off the regular Summit rate!

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Are you having trouble aligning strategy to execution? Discover how you can establish better visibility across your enterprise to identify and understand the best business improvements for your organization.

In our brand-new Business Transformation Management course, you can learn how to leverage Metastorm ProVision to define and control positive change within your organization. Drive meaningful change across your organization by taking advantage of this webinar and truly understand how you can align your goals, strategies and capabilities with complex business transformation initiatives.

Here are the details for you to register today!
Metastorm Business Transformation Management Course
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

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Collaboration between business and IT
Bringing together business and IT helps organizations define better practices that can drive improvements in your company. Collaboration is critical for success. When business and IT start to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences there is greater opportunity to discover best practices that can be delivered back to the organization to improve the way the business operates. Having these two groups come together will deliver, strengthen and increase BPM buy-in throughout the organization. 

BPM is about transforming the way you do business
BPM isn’t just about automation – it’s about transforming and improving the way that your organization operates. BPM is about changing the way you engage your knowledge workers to drive positive, meaningful change across the enterprise.  Organizations that have implemented successful BPM projects are able to actually see a difference in the behavior of their users and how the organization functions as a unit.

BPM needs measurable results
How do you know if you have made the right improvements to your organization? Organizations need strong metrics to ensure they are executing according to plan. BPM tools today must offer users the ability to understand where and how they have made real business improvements.  Organizations want and need to see what projects have a significant, bottom-line impact. 

There are two more days of the Gartner BPM Summit.  Stay in the loop with all of the latest BPM news – follow us on Twitter @Metastorm and the event hashtag #bpm11 to get updates throughout the show.

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While the results of the poll were obviously influenced by the composition of the webinar attendees, the results can also be tied back to key market drivers.  In the past several years, both financial services and pharmaceutical companies have faced major compliance and regulation overhauls – forcing these companies to rethink and remodel they way they operate their business in order to cooperate with new compliance mandates.  These organizations are scrambling to meet new reporting requirements (and often want to be the leader in responding to them) and still push out new, successful and innovative products.  So, it makes sense that these organizations are looking for a framework that offers them expansive, accurate visibility into their organization. It is critical that the organization understands how they operate and how they can address these new requirements so that they can remain profitable in the market place and get ahead of the competition. 

However, organizations don’t just need a quick solution to solve one individual regulation.  They need a strong framework to prepare them for and support all change that is to come.

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When I asked the attendees to describe their ability to handle major and ongoing changes within their organization in a poll, 63% of participants indicated that it was “slow, painful and expensive” and 31% said that efforts were “disjointed and siloed.”  Meaning only 6% of the 83 participants who responded believed that their organization “could be an industry model for business transformation.”

I’m not surprised.  Often, organizations struggle to manage change because they lack a consistent approach to business transformations.  Determining the end goal of a transformation (whether it be upgrading to a new technology, seeking operational efficiency, or staying ahead of competitor innovation) is one thing, but trying to figure out a successful, cost effective way to roll out the transformation takes deep insight into the day in and day out activities and processes within the organization.  

What organizations need to do is figure out how to communicate and collaborate across the enterprise so they can break down the obstacles to change. One way to achieve this is to align the organizational structures against a framework that enables organizations to prioritize and manage transformation initiatives – while also providing visibility into key organizational practices and providing vehicles to help people in cross-functional roles communicate and work together more effectively.      

Today, Metastorm announced a new Business Transformation Practices Framework that is designed to do just that.  The framework helps organizations eliminate the competing practices and communication barriers that prevent change and help them prioritize and manage transformation initiatives to achieve consistent and repeatable processes across current and future transformation activities.  The framework is complementary to and integrated with the Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® software – ensuring that multiple, business transformation initiatives can be tracked, monitored,  implemented and fine-tuned through business architecture and business process adjustments on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like more information about the Business Transformation Practices Framework, you can contact me or go to www.metastorm.com/transform to read white papers, download solution sheets and register for upcoming business transformation webinars. An onDemand video of The Power of Business Transformation webinar from last week is also available here. 

I also encourage you to join me for my next webinar – How to Manage Industry-Specific Change Using a Business Transformation Practices Framework – on Tuesday, March 15^th at 11:00 am EST, register here.

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But without a clear, well defined plan in place—one that allows you to see and understand all of your business capabilities and determine the best possible transformation strategy—your organization won’t be in a good position to effectively implement and manage change.  

Why invest in a business transformation strategy?  Here are three business reasons to create a formal business transformation strategy and implement a consistent framework for managing change: 

1. Eliminate siloed departments and competing practices

Executives and senior managers often don’t realize how many complex, competing practices exist within their organization.  Siloed departments cause huge communication barriers, which end up preventing any sort of meaningful change, while also stifling innovation and blocking agility.  A business transformation strategy will give you ability to identify and remove these redundant practices, and help you map out a more effective and strategic way to establish consistency, repeatability and measurability across business transformation activities to better manage change and foster innovation.

2. Gain visibility and control into business operations

If you can’t see how your organization operates on a day-to-day basis, how can you determine the right change and manage it once it has taken place? Investing in a business transformation framework solution will allow you to drill down in the daily operations to see exactly how people and processes work together and simulate potential business transformations to deliver ongoing improvements and remain competitive.

3. Establish collaboration and a common vocabulary across all business practices

Communication is the key to success.  Organizations need to figure out how to establish a common vocabulary and enhance communication between people from various departments and locations.  By mapping out each role and responsibility within the organization and having a tool that establishes an effective form of communication, you can remove the communication barriers that keep your organization from being able to keep up with and positively contribute to change. Real-time chat and model viewing capabilities across multiple users allows organizations to model, discuss, and improve their business operations, making it easier to execute and manage a business transformation.

To remain successful and competitive, your business has to change.  The best approach to managing any change is being prepared for the unknown.  Metastorm offers a business transformation practices framework that can be implemented directly with our complete software portfolio, to give your organization broad understanding and visibility into your practices and allow you to prepare and respond more quickly and effectively to environmental, technological, or regulatory changes.   

If you’re interested in learning more about how a business transformation framework can help your organization manage change, I encourage you to participate in Metastorm’s upcoming webinar The Power of Business Transformation on February 8^th at 11:00am EST.

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Organizational leaders spend countless hours analyzing, planning, and mapping out how specific people – in a variety of departments and locations – will all come together to achieve common strategic goals related to profitability, customer service and support, market leadership, business agility, and competitive differentiation.  However, much like your personal new year’s resolution, you get busy and the daily and unexpected demands of your work week take over and things begin to fizzle out.  You assume you are all working towards these goals, but the fact is there is a disconnect.  Oftentimes, what your organization needs is take a step back and figure out exactly how effective you are at executing these strategies.  Getting fresh ideas for your approach could be as simple as attending a thought leadership conference and networking with others who face similar challenges.

To jump start our new year, Metastorm will be the lead sponsor of the IQPC Next Generation Business Process Management Summit in Orlando, FL, January 17-20.  At the event, Neal Lohmann, director of business transformation will take part in a six-member BPM panel debate, which will discuss the reality of customer-centric business operations, whether IT or operations drive business process management initiatives, how to combat resistance to change, and ways to implement business process excellence strategies to achieve results.

Metastorm customer, Spring Garcia, special staff supervisor at the State of Louisiana Office of Community Development Disaster Recovery Unit, will deliver the keynote address of the event.  Attendees will be able to hear how the Disaster Recovery Unit of Louisiana uses the Metastorm BPM software suite to align their strategy with execution, ensuring that critical systems and processes are operating when they are needed the most – in times of life-threatening crisis. 

Whether or not you are able to attend the event in person, you can access some of the online resources available from IQPC and Metastorm.  In this podcast interview between Laura Mooney, vice president corporate communications for Metastorm, and Diana Davis, editor for Six Sigma and Process IQ, Laura discusses how organizations can work together in 2011 to mend the gap between strategy and execution. Laura explains that organizations need to enhance the collaboration between the people who come up with strategic objectives and the people who are executing these objectives on a day-to-day basis.  By pulling these groups together and determining the right way to reach the targets, organizations will achieve enterprise-wide visibility and eliminate siloed departments, practices and information.     

To register and find more information about Process through Process Week and the Next Generation BPM Summit, go to http://www.bpm-summit.com/.   To access additional online resources from Metastorm, visit http://www.metastorm.com/ and click on Downloads for access to podcasts, whitepapers, videos and customer case studies.   We hope you have a successful start to your new year!

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Several analysts at the conference focused on addressing this topic and while each came at it from a different angle – depending on their research coverage area or discipline, one thing remained consistent:  transforming business is all about managing organizational change and culture change. This often understated consideration is critically important because without support, consensus and buy-in within and across the organization, true business transformation is not possible.   

If the goal of business transformation is increased productivity, we need to figure out how to align IT goals with business needs and how to measure results against business outcomes.  According to John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, who delivered one of the conference keynotes, changing process is the only way to bring about productivity improvement.  I think many people agree that process change, management and optimization are essential for enabling business results.

We heard over and over that the key to addressing the IT/business alignment challenge is making sure that business and IT speak the same language.  If you are talking about databases and routers and I am talking about revenue per employee and faster time to market, we are not speaking the same language and our goals are not the same.   When evaluating technologies and concepts, we need to ask how they are going to enable business results.  If we can successfully translate technology into productivity, IT budgets will grow dramatically.  If we can speak a common language, it’s a win-win for business and IT and we can move the culture of the organization forward.

ITxpo highlights:

The business/IT alignment conference theme resonated with the attendees we spoke with during the conference.  We met with attendees from a wide range of industries – financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities, telecom, Federal government, armed services, state and local governments – who are looking at how EA, BPA and BPM can help them better understand their enterprise, simulate and analyze changes and process improvements and execute those changes in a way that positively impacts business outcomes. Several current customers who stopped to speak with us (thank you for stopping by!) are looking to expand their use of Metastorm, with many interested in learning more about our cloud modeling capabilities in Metastorm M3 and about Metastorm Smart Business Workspace.  

Neal Lohmann’s Business Transformation and Architecting for the Cloud education sessions held during the conference were very popular as were Kevin Haugh’s Business Process Management (BPM) and Modeling for the Cloud sessions.  Mark DiGirolamo’s Enterprise Business Architecture sessions were packed with CIOs, Enterprise Architects, PMOs and technology leaders wanting to learn how to deliver more effective strategic business and IT planning.

Many attendees stopped  by after Salt River Project’s presentation on Tuesday and wanted to learn more about how Metastorm ProVision could be used to help them with their initiatives.  Many also visited us after Gartner’s sessions on the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) and the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis (BPA), both of which positioned Metastorm in the Leaders quadrant.

The message echoed loud and clear throughout the conference: bridging technology and the business through business architecture and process improvement is critical for managing enterprise change and improving business productivity.  All in all, it was an informative and insightful week hearing from IT leaders who recognize that it is up to them to translate technology into business value. They seem energized to take on this challenge (or, perhaps more appropriately, this opportunity), and are ready for change.   

I think Mr. Chambers summed this point up and brought the conversation full circle by reminding attendees that: “One of the important things to remember as an IT administrator or business leader is that transitions wait for no one.”

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Yesterday I attended a presentation delivered by Salt River Project, the world’s 3^rd largest public power utility and a Metastorm customer.  SRP’s presentation provided a comprehensive look at how SRP is growing BPM from project focused, to business unit, to Enterprise IT within the organization. SRP also discussed the time and cost value (hard dollar savings) BPM is delivering to their 100+ year old organization and the role Metastorm ProVision has played in the success of SRP’s BPM program and initiatives.  During the presentation SRP made the following two comments, sparking universal nods across the audience:  

1.  Transformation relies upon the creation of scalable approaches, enabled by technology, to direct change that drives results. This requires bringing together people, process and technology.

2.  You are never done – BPM is an evolution.

You can read more about SRP’s BPM project and how they are using Metastorm ProVision to drive business value by reading Salt River Project’s customer success story.

I also attended David Cearley and Carl Crunch’s session on Gartner’s Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2011.  The list they unveiled is consistent with what we are seeing and hearing.  In my view, a number of these technologies will prove to be highly disruptive and transformational over time.  The challenge and the opportunity we face today is that these technologies can be implemented in an almost unlimited number of ways.  The key though, is that they be applied in ways that deliver clear business value in 2011.  For instance, certain applications and solutions are superior candidates for Cloud-based deployment—those that benefit most from broad, elastic and collaborative usage.   An example of this is an offering Metastorm recently released – Metastorm M3 – which allows the masses to easily model/document the current state of the enterprise as well as desired improvements to it. 

The social and collaborative technologies mentioned are also exciting and hot.  But, if used in an unfocused way, can actually be detrimental to organizations by distracting people from their day to day work.  Hence, they too need to be implemented in ways that are designed to generate value.   One way that this can be done is by anchoring these technologies to the core business processes and work activities of employees, as we do in a number of our solutions.  

In short, these are some of the most exciting technologies we have seen in years.  Like many things their success will depend on how and where they are used.  Used well, they present opportunities for almost immediate value and competitive differentiation.  Used poorly, they could actually delay broader adoption in the organization.

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Metastorm is very excited to offer attendees the opportunity to deliver live demonstrations and presentations highlighting key business challenges related to business transformation, architecting for the Cloud, and business architecture and process excellence. You can see these presentations at Booth 321– located in the Business Process Management marketplace and on the perimeter of the Enterprise Architecture marketplace in the ITxpo exhibit hall.

In addition to the in-booth presentations hosted by Metastorm, one feature presentation on the Symposium main agenda that we encourage you to attend is the Salt River Project BPM case study session on Tuesday morning at 8:00am. This is not a sponsor session, but the company is using Metastorm ProVision to drive business process excellence enterprise-wide. The session is titled, “Case Study: Growing BPM Success: From Project Focused to Business Unit to Enterprise IT.”

Over the past year, Metastorm has been consistently recognized for our unique ability to provide BPM, BPA, and EA software applications, which are market leaders in their respective disciplines, and work together as an integrated software platform, to form one of the most comprehensive solutions for enterprise efficiency, visibility, governance and business improvement available today.

So, please don’t hesitate to stop on by Metastorm Booth 321 and learn first-hand how Metastorm delivers the highest business value to customers.

Interested in requesting a one-on-one meeting with Metastorm during the event?  Go to http://agendabuilder.gartner.com/SYM20/WebPages/browseexhibitors.aspx.

If you are not attending the event, you can follow the highlights by monitoring our Twitter and blog posts next week.  Metastorm will be tweeting all week – just follow us @Metastorm or monitor the Gartner event hashtag #gartnersym.  In addition, we will be recapping conference highlights daily on the Because Process Matters blog site.  So stay in touch online!

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In an audience poll, 49% of participants said that their current EA and BPM efforts were separate and not aligned, 47% said they were separate but collaborating, and only 4% said they were fully aligned. 

Clay Richardson said that the problem we are seeing within organizations today is that everyone wants to drive strategy in different directions.  BPM teams are responsible for driving strategy for process transformation and EA teams are responsible for driving strategy for IT investments.  One major problem is that the teams do not see the value in the others’ goals and purpose.  EA teams just think of BPM as another technology investment and BPM teams just think EA is all about making pretty pictures.

 This poor collaboration between EA and BPM teams creates a major disconnect between the strategic goals and objectives of organizations and the actual day-to-day execution at the process level.  Clay talked briefly about the hundreds of different frameworks that are designed to bring EA and BPM together to meet a common shared vision – ideally an organization would find a middle ground that incorporates standards but also gives them the flexibility to incorporate their own uniqueness.

Clay explains that capability maps –which are an organizational model associating the business capabilities, processes, and functions required for business success with the IT resources that enable them – are important to have because they identify and prioritize the capabilities that need to change and transform over time.  Business and IT users can utilize capability maps to highlight the weak and broken processes within their organizations and also identify the relationship between bad data and broken processes.  In essence, capabilities serve as a common language that both business architects and process professionals understand.

But organizations are not necessarily taking advantage of capability maps to bridge the EA/BPM gap.  Of the 80% of webinar participants that responded to our second poll question – Where are you with capability mapping? –  50% said they would like to start a capability mapping initiative, 31% said they have already started capability mapping, and 18% said they are currently starting a capability mapping project. 

Clay mentions that more and more BPM vendors are beginning to think about capability models, and Metastorm leads the market in providing native capability mapping and enterprise modeling in its enterprise EA and BPA software which can be directly aligned with processes on the Metastorm BPM platform.

To close the webinar, Neal Lohmann discussed Metastorm’s Business Transformation Practices Framework, which is an executive management framework designed to align the people, process and technology initiatives of an organization closer to its business strategy and vision to help support and promote new, innovative business strategies, while meeting long-term objectives.  The Metastorm Business Transformation Practices framework is founded on capability and operating models, and when aligned to an organization’s own framework supports the development of operating models that accelerate productivity, reduce system complexity, create market driven strategies and enable ongoing change and transformation.   

Neal encourages organizations to align business practices against the Metastorm Business Transformation Practices Framework in order to identify the gaps and mitigate the risk between EA and BPM users.  Establishing a clearly defined vocabulary through capability modeling will allow organizations to operate more effectively and implement successful business transformations.

If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry!  You can view the complete Forrester webinar in the onDemand section Metastorm’s website.   Interested in learning even more about Business Transformation Practices?  You can also listen to the “Leveraging the Business Transformation Practices Framework to Transform Your Business” onDemand webcast, featuring Kevin Haugh and Neal Lohmann.

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In order to achieve the most success with a Lean BPM initiative, Chaney recommended that teams be small and agile. He said that it is important to ensure that a team has the right combination of skill sets, and that all members have a well-defined role. Make sure that the team has the correct mindset to work well with the business analysts and developers, and that everyone is brought into an executable environment. As usual, communication is a key factor in making a team successful, as is supporting the team and development cycles with the right tool sets and skills so that the project can move quickly and effectively.

Chaney also recommended that project managers time box the analysis phase so that the project doesn’t fall into analysis paralysis, because this will diminish its overall value. Setting a limit to the amount of time spent on analysis will help everybody on the team focus on what’s important for the project. With an end goal and a specific date, everyone can be better focused. BPM by nature should be  flexible and agile, so it is important to ensure that the team doesn’t get so caught up in analysis that they lose sight of that fact.

Prioritization of requirements is also critical. Make sure the team works on the most important things first. Chaney commented that 20% of processes are used 80% of the time, so if a team can get that core 20% “Leaned,” then they’ve addressed 80% of inefficiencies. He suggested prototyping the top 5 processes to show significant improvement early on, and to get everyone on board to expand the project across the enterprise.

Finally, Chaney encouraged rewarding the team if they have done a good job and are tracking ahead of schedule. Morale is very important to any process improvement initiative. If the team is not productively moving, they’re not really adding value.  So, if they’ve achieved their goal for a particular day, tell them to take the rest of the day off, and they will ultimately be more productive in the future.

Want to watch this webinar? Check it out as an onDemand webcast .

And don’t forget to sign up for the final webinar in Metastorm’s Lean Webinar Series, Lean to the Power of Three, which will run twice on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM EST and 1:00 PM EST.

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If not, why wait? The early bird registration discount ends this Sunday, January 31, 2010.

Registering is easy! Just go to the official 2010 Metastorm Global User Conference page found here. Also, don’t forget that Metastorm is now accepting nominations for the 2010 Metastorm Enterprise Process Advantage award program. Details can be found here.

How to enter: 

In approximately 500 words, tell us how you or your customers have leveraged Metastorm ProVision®, Metastorm BPM®, or Metastorm Integration Manager (or all three!) to deliver efficiency, control, visibility, agility, and innovation in mission-critical ways.

Entries should be sent via email to erin.obrien@metastorm.com.  A team of respected industry leaders will evaluate entries and winners will be recognized at the 2010 Metastorm Global User Conference. 

If you have questions about the award program or your entry, send queries to Erin O’Brien at erin.obrien@metastorm.com.

Learn about last year’s award winners here.

The submission Deadline is approaching quickly! Don’t miss this opportunity to showcase your success!

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Metastorm is uniquely positioned to participate in both summits because it offers both BPM and EA software and services. The company is one of the few in the industry leading the charge in combining BPM and EA technologies to better align strategy with execution and allow its customers to better optimize the use of enterprise assets within and across business processes.

During the Gartner Summits, Metastorm will also be available in the Product Showcase area to provide live demonstrations of its BPM and EA software and to engage in discussions with conference attendees.

In addition, two of Metastorm’s customers will be on site to share their success stories. If you are not attending the event, you can get some insight into the customer success stories being presented by reviewing these two prior blog posts:

• BPM in the pharmaceutical industry
• Creating efficiency at a major branch of the U.S. Military

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