Process and
Document
Management
Moving Beyond Models
Authored by
Sandy Kemsley
Agile Processes, Brittle User Experiences
Today’s business process management systems (BPMS) have made huge advances from the past, especially in the area of model-driven design: the concept that you can create a process model graphically that is also an executable process. With the rise of service-oriented
architecture (SOA), it’s easy to plug in external services directly to that process model using a standards-based interface. In other words, it’s become standard functionality in any BPMS for a process analyst to be able to quickly create, modify and optimize a business process. This degree of process agility is a key selling point for BPM and SOA-related technologies, but there’s a dirty little secret buried inside most products: although the processes are agile, the user experience is not. Instead, interfaces that are used by participants in the process are often the result of an excessive amount of customization and coding, or may be restricted to the
capabilities provided by the vendor.
Although the process is agile, the user experience is brittle. In the rush to become process-centric, most BPMS vendors have forgotten that we also need to be people-process-centric, providing the same level of flexibility and agility to the user that we do to the process.
Becoming People-Centric
The increased ease of process design has been beneficial, but we now need to bring the ease of user-experience design to that same level. Instead of just building tools for the process designer, it’s time to focus on the end users of the process as well, specifically on the user interfaces through which they interact with the process. In many cases, the users don’t see the process; they only see the point at which they interact with the process, making this a critical touchpoint. The user experience must be able to be created and modified quickly and easily in order to have the user’s interaction with the process be as agile as the underlying process itself.
There are two key components to making a BPMS people-centric:
• Better tools for semi-technical analysts to easily create and modify user interfaces • Intuitive and configurable user environments that allow the end user to personalize the
Creating Persona-Based User Experiences
Drag-and-drop process modeling is expected in any BPMS; next up is drag-and-drop user-experience design.
Since process modeling has become easier and faster, user interface creation now consumes most of the time required to deploy an executable process: as much as 80% of the total, and often requiring the skills of a technical developer. This may be done using a technical forms design environment, a coding environment, or even a third-party user interface development tool. The developer may start from scratch, designing a new, unrelated interface for each human task. However, in many cases, the developer is not a skilled user interaction designer, and can end up including many features that are not required and serve only to clutter the user environment. Alternatively, a simplistic forms generator may be used by a less technical designer, but may only result in simple forms containing process instance data.
Persona-based interaction design provides a paradigm for creating user interfaces based on the goals, skills and general work flow of a specific class of users. The focus is on the most used functions of the most important users, not on trying to provide all functions to all people. The result is a small set of personas, and a template for the user environment for each of those personas.
BPMS products tend to focus on creating tools for the builder personas – developer, product expert, process analyst – while neglecting the major end-user personas: processor, supervisor, researcher, executive, and end customer.
With the availability of easily-configurable templates for end-user personas, a process analyst or other semi-technical designer can create user experiences for each end-user task environment without writing code.
Furthermore, the designer can make any corporate asset, such as documents, an integral part of the user experience in order to provide context for the task at hand, reducing the need for the user to hunt around for the information that they need, or to keep related information in unrelated locations.
Empowering the User to Configure His Workspace
Easily created and modifiable user interfaces are only half of the equation: end users also need to be able to configure their own environment, within boundaries set by the designer, to best suit their work habits. Furthermore, the user interfaces and the methods for configuring them must be intuitive and obvious, based on lessons learned from Web 2.0 consumer applications:
• Portal environment with embeddable, movable widgets
• On-the-fly collaboration for stepping outside the pre-determined process flow to engage other participants, while remaining inside the audited work environment
• Presence and instant messaging embedded within the environment for fast collaboration • Open API access to allow user-created mashups, with data exchanged between process
instances and other data sources available to them
• RSS feeds to allow users to create their own dashboards or otherwise monitor any combination of data sources
• Built-in feedback to the designers/builders for any changes required in the system
• Ancillary functionality such as context-independent notes to replace the paper-sticky notes on every users’ desk
• Training, mentoring, performance feedback and coaching as part of the user experience, not as separate applications, to allow the users to learn new tasks, access supporting
information, and track their learning progress
Minimizing the features in each persona’s base environment and maximizing the user’s ability to configure that environment has the effect of maximizing the usefulness of the software. It’s critical to allow users to do what they want to do, not just what the designer thinks that they should do.
Benefits of People-Centricity
A persona-based user experience environment provides several major benefits. First, development time is reduced, since user interfaces are generated from templates corresponding to the related personas. By understanding the goals of each major persona and building the tools required to achieve those goals into the template, little additional customization
Second, implementation time is reduced due to greater user acceptance: the more intuitive and useful the user experience, the faster the users will embrace it.
Third, the user effectiveness is greatly increased since the user experience is built to support the goals of the end user. Focused on their tasks rather than the overall process, it provides them with a flexible and configurable environment where their view of the process can be integrated with other information that they need to get their job done.
Overall, there is a greater overall return on investment since the users have greater buy-in, are motivated to use it, and participate more fully in its success.
Summary
It is well recognized that BPMS provides real benefits to businesses. Being people-centric enhances these benefits further:
• An intuitive and engaging user experience reduces resistance to adoption, shortens learning time and makes workers more productive
• Pre-built persona-based templates shorten implementation time for the user interfaces • A user-customizable environment allows for continuous improvement through the flexibility
and agility provided to the user
Bottom line: to get the full value from your BPMS implementation, you need to focus not only on the way that work moves through your organization, but more completely on how work gets done at each step of the way.
About the Author – Sandy Kemsley
Sandy is an independent analyst and systems architect, specializing in business process
management, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise architecture and business intelligence. In addition to her technical background, she has worked on the business operations end of projects, often involved from business requirements and analysis through technology design and deployment.
During her career of more than 20 years, she has started and run successful product and service companies, including a desktop workflow and document management product company from 1988-90, and a 40-person services firm specializing in BPM and e-commerce from 1990-2000. During 2000-2001, Sandy worked for FileNet (now IBM) as Director of eBusiness Evangelism during the launch of their eProcess BPM product, and was a featured speaker on BPM and its impact on business at conferences and customer sites in 14 countries during that time. Since 2001, Sandy has returned to private consulting practice as a BPM architect, performing engagements for financial services and insurance organizations across North America, and as an analyst working with BPM vendors. Sandy also creates and delivers BPM and related training courses.
