Where are the people in BPM?

As I am reading through the second part of the BPM Roadmap, I cannot help but ask myself the question:

"Among so much information about processes and technologies, why there is no information about the people who will actually contribute to this revolutionary evolution?"

Is it just that I have not finished reading the book, or simply the people factor is not on the agenda?

On the first part of the BPM book

Some time ago I finished reading the first, theoretical part of the book BPM: the SAP Roadmap. It reminded me of the good old university years and the textbooks full of theories, history and new ideas. If you are not a believer in BPM, it probably will not manage to persuade you. For this, you will have to read the rest of the book. Probably a couple of independent source of information will prove usable as well.

However, this first part of the book will reveal you the enormous amount of effort behind BPM. You will feel the weight of the million hours of discussions and intellectual investement. The amount of experiments and improvements will finally dawn on you.

As a result you will feel the urge to continue reading it.
Just like I did.

Observations on People

To find out what is the population in a given area are, you should do what explorers are doing while researching different animal species. It is - visit the places where the subjects engage in the basic and most common activities. Simplistically, these activities are: eat (or buy food), drink (or have fun), mate (or have sex) and sleep. Note, that the values in the parenthesis describe the human equivalent to the animal activities.

From time to time I try to do such observations to get an idea about the society around me. Honestly speaking, the results are not promising.

Learning

I love learning.

Sometimes I just read or listen to new sources of information, just to check if they provide something new and interesting. I suppose this is the reason, why I was so happy when my wife pointed me to the UC Berkeley Webcasts

Watching the videos I can almost feel like I am actually there. At times I even feel like the Good Will Hunting.

Is it good, or is it sad?

I do not know. What I know is that I am grateful to the people at UC Berkeley for sharing their knowledge and culture of education with us. I hope to be able to pay them back some time (at least by spreading their cultural values ;- ))).

Confirm your information before acting upon it

One of the many advices in the Yes or No book is that you should research and confirm your information before acting upon it. This is an example of such a situation.

Yesterday I read in Powerful Reports and Proposals an advice about structuring your writing. Today I saw the very same structuring rule applied in the BPM book. This confirmed the theory that it is nice to warn your readers what to expect from the next part of your writing.

After that I prepared this post according to this rule.

TED

This is one of the places I go, whenever I need to convince myself that life is not "all about the money".

This week they are holding their talks in California. Although currently you can view only Bill Gates, one of the other speakers is Shai Agassi. I am anticipating his talk on TED, as he really is a man of vision. What I remember from his time at SAP is his inspiring presence.

If you have the time, my advice to you is - watch it! Even if you do not fully agree with him, you can learn from the passion with which he supports his "ideas worth spreading" and makes us dream with him.

"Let me see you make decisions...

...Without your televisions" - Depeche Mode

(Although I find it strange) I tend to watch television more, when I have to start working on a scary problem.

Based on this observation, lately I had to deal with a lot of such issues, since the last couple of evenings were wasted in front of the tube waiting for an answer...

So, the first phase, the realization of the problem, is successfully passed.

Do I have the courage to move to the next level - buy a book, talk to a friend and make up my mind?