What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified: Recent Episodes
Roland Woldt / J-M Erlendson
This show is about Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management, and how you can set up your practice to get the most out of it.
It is for newbies who just get started with these topics, organizations who want to improve their EA/BPM groups (and the value that they get from it), as well as practitioners who want to get a different perspective and care about the discipline.
Learn more about the show and read articles about EA and BPM on www.whatsyourbaseline.com.
How do I get started? What is the first thing that I look at? Who will be my allies? What do I need to put in place? When you are tasked to build a brand new Business Architecture practice in an organization that has not had one before is a challenging task. When you have to do this in a 60-year old organization in a field that is relatively unique on the market, that might be even more challenging.
Our guest in this episode is Breanne Casteel, a catalyst for change enablement through collaboration and connections to drive empathetic business solutions.
She is a passionate advocate with 20+ years experience bringing awareness of Business Architecture and Business Analysis skills and mindset to numerous roles in the organization with an emphasis on communication, transparency, and collaboration across silos.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Breanne’s background
- The case for Business Architecture
- Finding sponsorship and allies
- Creating and showing the value of Business Architecture day-by-day
- (Lack of) Reference models
- How to get started without a BPM tool first – and then choosing one after the start
- Planning and building a roadmap – for the organization and the business architecture team as well
- Setting up a strategic project portfolio for the organization
You can find Breanne on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/breannecasteel/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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"I just bought your tool, now you have to tell me what I can do with it".
No kidding, that is what one client to said to me once. Well, here is a starter for you - in our latest episodes we are talking about the use cases for Business Process Management (not all of them, because we have that self-imposed limit of an hour-ish length for each episode).
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast we talk about:
- Short review of the Process Lifecycle
- (Process) Documentation, publishing, and standardization
- (Process) Inventory and analysis
- Process improvement
- System implementation
- Roll-out support
- Perishable insights response (BI and PI)
- Execution monitoring
- Customer experience design
- Risk mgmt and regulatory compliance
- Digital twin of an organization
- Quality management (Enterprise Mgmt System)
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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Why do some applications have a large following and their revenues soar, while others are struggling with making a sale and are virtually unknown? Or why do you struggle with building internal acceptance for your program?
One reason might be that the former companies were able to build a community that includes not only users (and ends up being a glorified help desk), but also people who are convinced that your program is the best in its market ("superfans" - there is a whole concept around this, but I don't want to go too far here). But now the question is: How do you build such a community?
The guest in this episode is Heather Wendt, the community manager for Gain, Grow, Retain, and she has a lot of experience in customer success and community building. She also worked extensively in the learning field, which is another area to increase adoption in organizations
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Heather’s background
- How “community” goes hand-in-hand with customer success
- Functions of communities - help, concepts, nerding out, learning/teaching
- Why should an organization stand up a community? How to pitch the idea to senior management?
- Find and involve super users
- Where to find “your people” - examples of good community
- How to stand up and manage a community
- Measuring the success
Heather can be reached via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hmwendt/, and her community can be found here: https://gaingrowretain.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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AI is the hot thing these days and you cannot pass any tool that does not have these two characters attached to it.
That is also true for the BPM space, and this week we have the pleasure to speak with a person who is working in this space for over 20 years and his tool has built in AI already, while other vendors are still thinking about how to integrate it in their stack.
The guest in this episode is Scott Armstrong, CEO of Interfacing, a BPM tool provider. He is a entrepreneur and investor at heart and also a partner in various consulting groups. In addition to this he is an avid skier.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Scott's background (and a lot of Canadian geography ;-)
- The evolution of BPM and the AI hype cycle
- How AI is currently implemented in tools and where things will go
- How to implement AI in your program
- Ethical concerns and other potential drawbacks
Scott can be reached via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/solution/ or via email at scott.armstrong@interfacing.com.
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The age old question: how do you make your processes "evergreen". Well, one way is to update your models on a regular basis (for example to comply with regulations), but is that really "the process" or is it just a picture of it? Your processes come to life when someone performs them and for this you need to be able measure them.
To support the process execution you can use an automation tool (a "heavy" BPMS, RPA, etc.) or you can use a lightweight low-code/no-code tool for this that business units can use themselves to solve their automation needs.
Our guest in this episode is Maximilian Neumaier, who is leading the Professional Services group at TIM Solutions and is implementing their low-code/no-code automation platform for over a decade now - starting as a working student and growing into his current leadership role.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Maximilian's background
- Workflow philosophy and some examples
- Benefits of automating things in a dedicated workflow tool
- Process as the starting point for every automation initiative
- How to implement a process using low-code/no-code automation
- General recommendations for your project
You can reach Maximilian via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilian-neumaier/) or TIM's website at https://tim-solutions.de.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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You have chosen to start your BPM journey and are now asking yourself the question "how DO I get started?".
Well, one way is to look at a BPM Adoption Framework, the other is to ask someone who has done that before.
We are lucky to speak with someone who fulfills both criteria - our guest today is Caspar Jans, who also already has been a guest in an earlier episode on the show before :-)
Since then he has raised his profile in the BPM space and was recognized as a thought leader and Top 50 voice in operational excellence by the PEX / Process Excellence Network in 2023. In this year he not only continuous to publish his thoughts in his newsletter, but also starts a podcast in which he and his co-host look at BPM from a holistic perspective / from every angle.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- The evolution of Caspar's thinking about BPM since the first episode we had him as a guest
- The origins of his BPM Adoption Framework
- Where it can be used (green-field or brown-field BPM implementations)
- The areas of the framework
Caspar is easy to reach on LinkedIn and also has a website that contains his writings (and his newsletter "Process Extraordinaire Weekly" on LinkedIn here). He also starts a new podcast BPM360 which you can find here: https://www.bpm360podcast.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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This episode closes out the mini series about data, and this time we talk about data modeling. Data models are some of the things that I have seen the least often in projects over the last two decades. Why is that? Is it because it is too geeky, or not interesting enough compared to, say, a process model in BPMN?
But being clear about data is important when it comes to designing solution architectures (and in other use cases, such as regulatory compliance), and the three questions that you have to answer are:
- What is the data that we are talking about?
- Where do I store data and how is it transformed?
- Where do I ask for the data?
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast we talk about:
- Conceptual / logical data modeling
- Canonical data models versus information asset views
- Application and data (from a logical perspective) - interface designs
- Data used in the context of processes
- Application diagrams and physical data models
- Data mapping in screen diagrams (wireframes)
- Screen navigation models for context
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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A lot of projects are just looking at processes and applications. One thing that typically does not get the limelight is the data that is needed to empower these two things. But why is that? Is it because data is "invisible" and cannot be touched or felt?
Our guest today is Wiebke Apitzsch, who is working in "data" for over 15 years with companies like the Boston Consulting Group. Currently she is working in a small organization named "Datahearts" that focusses on the combination of business, data, and change expertise.
Her role is the head of data strategy, in which she defines the use cases (that match the client strategy), looks at the systems that support the data strategy, and set up project and change management to make the project a success.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Wiebke's background
- Why you should focus on data in your projects
- Data as solid basis for discussions
- Change management as key for data project success
- Data strategy
- How to implement data (the example of a brick wall)
- How to manage stakeholders and their potential objections
Wiebke is very active on LinkeIn and you can contact her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wiebke-apitzsch/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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As we all know, the majority of time in a process mining project is in some form or fashion related to data preparation and a significant lower share of time is spent on the actual analysis. There are multiple ways of getting you data into shape (SQL, visual data modeling tools, etc.), but our guest today has developed an approach and a tool to flip this time relation and shorten process mining projects significantly.
Our guest today is Lotte Vugs, who, after 5 years working as a process mining consultant, co-founded Konekti to speed up data preparation for process mining.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Lotte's background
- A quick reminder on what process mining is
- Time as a critical factor in every process improvement initiative
- Why data preparation takes so much time
- Why organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reduce the time spent on data preparation: it's all about effort vs benefit
- Time-efficient data preparation strategies: Now we know that data preparation is the problem, how to fix it?
- Managing time in large datasets
You can reach Lotte via email, her LinkedIn, or go to her website getkonekti.io.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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This episode is a first for the podcast - we are not talking about something from an external perspective, but speak with someone "in the trenches" who is actively implementing BPM in an 160-year old organization.
Our guest today is Martin Holling, who is working at Kemna (a road construction company in northern Germany) and who has worked at Siemens, as well as a consultant in the BPM space before. His main objective is to figure out processes and how they should be designed and implemented to be efficient and effective. Then you should think about tools that can help you digitalize your work with continual improvement and automation.
Martin is also very active in the German BPM scene and is the co-host of the "BPM Stammtisch" (a regular meetup of BPM enthusiasts in Hamburg) that is organized via the New Process Pro community.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Martin's background
- His transition from Siemens to a consulting role, and his current BPM Lead role in a road construction company
- Challenges in road construction industry, including competition and thin profit margins
- Importance of efficiency and process improvement
- Martin's approach to introducing process management in a new organization
- Importance of employee engagement in the process
- Encouragement for listeners to stay open to new ideas and strategies
You can reach Martin via LinkedIn, and also via his website here: living-processes.de.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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We had a couple of episodes where we discussed the Solution / Process Lifecycle, but this time we look at it from the perspective of Business Process organizations. What we see is a distinction between the different disciplines that are needed to deliver a full solution and there are organizations that see a "them" and "us" between those.
Unfortunately, I see a lot of these organizations also display a "mercenary approach" ("I am just here to create this artifact") and don't show the ownership of their part of an solution architecture and the following implementation, roll-out, and monitoring steps. This hinders them being seen as valuable parts of the team that changes the larger organization, the IT landscape, the capabilities of the enterprise. And I have seen BPM orgs struggling because of that lack of acceptance by others.
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast we talk about:
- Phases of a BPM / Transformation project
- Where Processes and BPM (as discipline) intersect
- Other considerations in Process projects
- Team to assemble
- Deliverables to expect
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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Welcome to Season 6 of the What's Your Baseline Podcast!
We’ve got another fascinating season coming up, chock full of emerging trends and leading voices from the EA and BPM space.
We will be talking about customer success stories, architecture topics like “data”, and also about how to make YOUR program a success.
See you there!
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We are wrapping up Season 5 of this podcast with an episode that I was looking forward to for quite some time now – we are talking about operational intelligence.
What is that, you might ask. Well it is the insights into what your complex organization does by using technology and measuring the important things, while making them visible for you as a decider when you need to take not only the “big decisions”, but all those small decisions that you take dozens or more everyday. Those micro-decisions made by many, many people in organizations that pile up and determine the ‘actual’ direction.
Our guest this week is Shoeb Javed, the Chief Product Officer of iGrafx. He is a seasoned technology executive with broad experience in intelligent automation, process intelligence and enterprise software, and has a proven track record of leading product and technology teams that build amazing digital transformation solutions.
Shoeb loves to collaborate with digital transformation leaders to deliver meaningful business outcomes, and is a philosopher, swimmer, and biker.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Shoeb’s background
- What is operational intelligence?
- Why is it important to businesses?
- What technologies are available today that help companies use operational intelligence to benefit their business?
- How do I implement operational intelligence in my organization?
- How should I measure the success of my operational intelligence efforts?
- As a Chief Product Officer, how do you approach this in your company’s technology? Can you tell us more about what iGrafx is doing in this area?
You can reach Shoeb via email or LinkedIn, and also via the company website here: https://www.igrafx.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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You might have heard it in the last episode of the podcast (Ep. 59: Process Inventory), that our guest Michael Schank has written a book ;-)
That triggered two things with us - first, making a WYB Shorts about the process of writing a book and become a published author, and second, nudging Michael for a giveaway of three books to some randomly drawn winners.
To win, you need to do two things:
- Follow @whatsyourbaseline on LinkedIn (here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whatsyourbaseline/),
- Add a comment to one of the LinkedIn posts that advertise this WYB Shorts episode.
We will have the following/commenting period open until Dec 19, 2023 and draw three lucky winners at 1800 ET. The next day, we will reach out to them to get their mailing addresses and once the book is published (ETA end of December 2023), Michael will send them out to the lucky people.
In the meantime, enjoy the Shorts episode with Michael.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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How do you plan your transformation? By looking out of the window or asking your two best friends? Or would it be better if you had an overview of all the things that your organization does - in the form of a process inventory?
Michael is a distinguished thought leader and executive, specializing in addressing Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence challenges through his innovative, process-based framework. With over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services industry, he has primarily served as a management consultant, empowering clients with forward-thinking solutions in technology, processes, and risk and spearheading large-scale business and digital transformations. Michael brings a powerful combination of superior sales and delivery skills, having personally sold and delivered over $100M in consulting services.
He is the author of the forthcoming book, ‘Digital Transformation Success,’ in which he introduces his groundbreaking Process Inventory framework. This promises to be a transformative approach to achieving success in the digital era, unlocking unprecedented levels of operational efficiency and strategic alignment.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Michael's background
- Why do 70% of transformations fail?
- What is the Process Inventory Framework?
- What are the potential use cases?
- What are key success factors in this approach?
- Which role play CoEs and Process Owners?
- What are the steps to create and maintain a Process Inventory and the connected models?
Michael can be found on LinkedIn (of course) and on his website at https://www.processinventory.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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Last week's episode of the podcast was a very good conversation about learning and enablement with Ron Cohen, Peter Dern, and Adam Egger, and we could have talked for hours about this topic.
However, the conversation took quite a turn after I asked how the future of learning will look like. But we also were at the top of the hour and we didn't want to cut it out unheard.
The solution to the problem? Another What's Your Baseline Shorts! Enjoy the conversation and -sometimes creepy- outlook into the business of learning and enablement, and let us know what you think where the future will go. Have you or your organization already started on this track?
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How do you set up learning and enablement for your architecture/process people? What has changed since the days of instructor-led training, and where will the field of enablement go into the future (hint: it might be creepy for some of us). In this episode of the What's Your Baseline? podcast we are looking into the field of learning and enablement and discuss this topic with three experts of the field, and the background of working/having worked in process organizations.
Ron is the Director Global Learning at iGrafx, and an adept and insightful learning and development professional with a 20-year career leading training strategy and programs for a diverse set of global companies. He has a proven track record of building organizational development initiatives from inception to delivery—coaching large, complex teams through content assessment, design, and implementation.
Peter is the co-founder of SKLLD.de, a company that is all about Empowered Employees, Delighted Users, and Captivated Customers by combining Customer Centricity (CX), Employee Centricity (EX), and User Centricity (UX) with the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
His focus is on leadership development and team training, and he works as a coach, trainer, author, speaker, and podcaster. As a person, he is highly driven and motivated with more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He believes in leading by example with a clear focus on growing talent instead of just managing people.
Adam is the other co-founder of SKLLD. For over a decade, he has helped visionary teams worldwide build highly innovative products and cultures focused on customer satisfaction. Adam's training sessions teach teams innovation methods, optimization strategies, and how to use AI to be 10x more efficient at work. The end result? Customer-centric products, cost savings after a few days of workshops, new revenue streams—and owning the future of your industry.
When Adam is not obsessing about innovation and AI, you can find him shaping our future leaders - he teaches young people communication, creativity, AI skills, and empathy, so they can thrive in an AI-powered world.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Our guest's backgrounds
- Training/coaching/enablement (sender perspective) vs. learning (receiver perspective)
- What brings people to learn?
- Continuous learning as culture (and business benefits of it)
- Demands of reducing training/enablement time
- The influence of AI on learning and what to learn
- What to focus on in a corporate learning environment
- Implications for learning content creation
- How to measure the value of learning and enablement?
All three can be found on Linked In: Ron Cohen, Peter Dern, Adam Egger.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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You bought the tool and now the most critical question for your success comes up: “Now what?”.
This leads to these questions: what you can do in the tools, what can you expect, and -maybe most importantly- what do you do after you’ve done a part of the analysis. You also need to have a “meta process” on how to approach a Process Mining project.
These are all the topics that we are talking about in this episode of the What’s Your Baseline? podcast. Since this is a comprehensive (and long) episode, I have added timestamps to the different topics, so that you can find the snippets that are relevant for you after listening to the whole episode 🙂
- Process Mining project approach
- High-level Process Mining Analysis
- Detailed Process Analysis
- Analysis Presentation
The full show notes, including time stamps and graphics can be found at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode57.
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Implementing a tool or standing up a new capability can be a complex task. Standing up a Center of Excellence as part of this implementation can help ease the pain for new users. However, it is not always clear what a CoE shall do and how it is integrated into an organization (or where it is located in the org structure). In this episode we are talking with Thi Nguyen about exactly this topic, and he has some interesting -and maybe sometime controversial?- opinions about this topic.
Thi is a Vice President at SAP in Asia and spent a significant amount of time in various positions at Siemens in Vietnam, Germany, the UK, and the Czech Republic - being a CIO as well as a CFO, and leading CoEs.
However, his passion lies in sharing his knowledge and ideas in two shows: "Tea with Thi" and "Differential Hallucinations".
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Thi's background
- What is a Center of Excellence?
- How are they structured?
- What is the business case for a CoE?
- How do you stand up a CoE?
- When do you move on from a Center of Excellence (think a hamster lifespan)?
- Do you need a COE for each technology or each process?
- What's next?
Thi is very active on LinkedIn with is "Tea with Thi" and can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teawiththi/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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The way how we communicate and learn has changed over the last couple of years. One contributing factor is podcasting (or videocasting - we are no purists over here at What's Your Baseline?). By now there are tons of excellent podcasts about Business Process Management, Process Mining, and Enterprise Architecture out there free of charge for you.
We thought that it was a good idea to look at this phenomenon and invited three former guests of our show who also run their successful podcasts to discuss the impact of podcasting for our discipline. Listen to our panel session with Josèphe Blondaut, Mirko Kloppenburg, and Jakub Dvořák.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Why did our guests start their podcasts?
- Which hurdles did they encounter?
- Do you think podcasting is relevant for the discipline and how is their audience's reaction?
- What were favorite moments from their podcasting days?
- What has podcasting done for you, your career, your company, and how did you see this realized and measured?
- How do you increase reach?
- What are some hard earned best practices that helped propel the success in podcasting?
If you like to connect with our panel you can find them here on LinkedIn: Jakub Dvořák, Josèphe Blondaut, and Mirko Kloppenburg.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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This is another What's Your Baseline? Shorts episode and we are following up with the guest from our last episode, Moritz Berger.
Moritz took the APQC Process Classification Framework and imported it into "The Brain" to visualize the breakdown and connectivity of processes to each other.
Since this Shorts consists mostly of a demonstration, you might want to watch at it on Spotify, YouTube, or on our website at whatsyourbaseline.com/shorts10. And if you like to click through the Brain for yourself, please go here: https://bra.in/3qzgr6.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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We spoke about frameworks and reference content as accelerators in a previous episode (listen here), but one of those is pretty popular here in North America, so that we have a deeper look into the APQC Process Classification Framework today. We are talking with Moritz Berger about the ins-and-outs of APQC, and will extend this conversation with another What's Your Baseline Shorts in a week from now (WYB Shorts 10).
Moritz is a senior leader with credentials in technology strategy, management consulting, sales, business development, marketing, and enterprise architecture. He has 20+ years of global industry experience including AWS, KPMG, and Microsoft and is a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 organizations.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Moritz' background
- What is APQC and the PCF?
- What is the structure and what is included?
- Who is the framework for and which use cases can be covered?
- What are the benefits of using a structure like the PCF?
- How to get started?
- Considerations and lessons learned
If you like to connect with Moritz, reach out to him via LinkedIh here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritzberger/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
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Process Management has a bad reputation of downsizing, replacing humans with bots, and all those other things that one relates to "bad capitalism". But there are also other ways to include humans into process management that are outside of these parameters. And, believe it or not, you still need humans to analyze, design, and improve processes.
Today we are talking with Christoph Piller about the topic of subject-oriented process management.
Christoph, also known as the Process Wizard, has a focus on (S-)BPM, Hyperautomation, Process Sprint, and AI, I empowering businesses and individuals to excel. He offers personalized coaching, consulting, and training in (subject-oriented) BPM, Hyperautomation and Process Sprint Week. He wants you to experience the power of Hyperautomation and AI as a BPM assistant, optimizing processes for maximum efficiency.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Christoph's background
- What is S-BPM?
- Why should one care about subject-oriented process management?
- How do you model this (using the PASS notation - Parallel Activity Specification Scheme)
- Why hasn't S-BPM conquered the world?
- What is next for S-BPM?
You can find Christoph on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and on his website.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Sometimes you have to mix up things a bit and come down to the level of practicality ... in this case we are looking at process-bility in this week's episode of the podcast.
What that is? Oh, it is the approach to process modeling that our guest Kevin Tan has developed.
Kevin is an accomplished Business Process Analyst with more than 20 years of global experience gained through roles in Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and the UK. His industry experience includes insurance, supply chain, utilities, technology, HR, education and telecommunications.
Kevin helps organizations create sustainable competitive advantage by establish Process Governance Framework and Architecture, continuous business process improvement, implementing modeling best practices, ensure quality BPM models and uplifting BPM competency.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Kevin' background
- The creation of Process-bility and how it came to this
- The three layers of Process-bility - why, how, what
- How to apply the three layers to your process diagrams, especially to accomplish storytelling, visual balance, and simplicity
You can find Kevin on LinkedIn, or connect with him via the process-bility website.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
We had the topic of today's episode - transformation - a couple of times on this podcast, even though we did not call the episodes like that. But why?
Because transformation in today's times is not an exception but the reality for all organizations. It is not just "an update by IT", or something that is a "one and done". We all need to change and transform our organizations all the time.
However, a lot of organizations are caught in their day-to-day issues and don't plan the change - they don't know how their "tomorrow" should look like.
Our guest this week is James Toomey, one of the founders of TMWR Lab and an expert in defining the strategy to get to the desired "tomorrow" but also in the "how" to get there.
He is a Connected SaaS Business, Commercial Innovation, and Brand Strategy executive with a proven track record in creating, enhancing, and building tangible value for companies, products, and brands across a diverse range of sectors.
In addition to this he's an Expert Design-thinking and workshop facilitator and seasoned problem-solver with proven ability to tackle an issue/opportunity from all perspectives to deliver actionable roadmaps: new revenues, new business models, advanced capability building, and culture advancement.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- James' background
- Companies are looking how to modernize and transform, but often don't have a clear vision and strategy
- Development of a top-down strategy: Customers and Go-to-Market; Operational capabilities; Employee engagement and/or empowerment; Vendors and networked value
- Automation capabilities vs. innovation capabilities
- How to activate transformation programs
You can find James on LinkedIn, or have a look at his website here: https://www.thetmrwlab.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Some topics seem to be a "stretch too far" for this podcast, and the topic for today's episode seems to be one of those: Sustainability.
But is it? Yes, Sustainability -or the lack of it- is a global problem, that manifests itself in climate change, social restructuring, and many other forms. But it also becomes a topic that organizations have to adjust to in their business practices. And some areas of the world are doing this for decades by now - not only being pushed by the desire to do something good, but also because regulations require it and it is just "good business practice".
Our guest this week is Anthony Gilbreath. He has over 20 years experience in oil & gas, alternative energy and sustainability consulting. He authored the CurrentState Sustainability Audit for Caelus as well as many sustainability consulting services for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). He has extensive international experience (10 years + in Moscow, 5 years + in the UK) as well as experience with blue-chip clients such as BAE Systems, Raytheon, Unilever, Gazprom, Bombardier, Transport for London, Virgin, SAP and others.
He was also a subject matter expert and contributor to Ted Turner and Sam Nunn founded NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE (NTI) study on “High Technology Business Accelerators for Russia”. Finally, he authored the book 'The Ultimate Guide to Greening your Home' in 2010 (https://tinyurl.com/y4j45x4n).
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Anthony's background
- A brief history of Sustainability
- Standards and frameworks
- How to approach Sustainability when you get started with this topic in your organization
- ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and TFCD (Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures)
- The future of Sustainability
You can reach Anthony via email or LinkedIn, and also via his website here: https://www.caelusconsulting.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Welcome back to the What's Your Baseline? Podcast. We are starting our Season 5 (who would have guessed that?) next Monday, July 31, with our 50th episode about Sustainability.
We can't wait to hear back from you :-)
Welcome to the last episode of our podcast in Season 4 (no worries, we'll be back for a Season 5). Today we are talking about Customer Experience Management, which is complimentary to BPM and EA.
The key difference is that Customer Experience Management has an outside-in perspective on things, versus the inside-out perspective of your organization, which many BPM groups try to capture and manage. The point is that you shouldn't stop with this, but rather create an additional view in your architecture, that then can be designed - just as you design your process or app landscapes.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- What is the purpose of Customer Journey Mapping?
- Outside-in vs inside-out perspective
- What benefits / risks are there on businesses that justify the need for CXM/CJM?
- How does this fit into a process and architecture transformation lifecycle?
- Who contributes to Customer Experience Management?
- How to design Customer Experience
- How to measure Customer Experience?
- How to analyze Customer Journeys?
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
We have spoken about Process Mining and data-driven decision making quite a lot on this podcast.
But does it stop with mining processes? I think the next step is growing this field of data analysis to "Enterprise Mining" where the same idea will be applied to apps, data, orgs, risks, etc. And the idea is the same - get a factual basis from system records and then augment it with human information and interpretation.
Our guest this week is Mark McGregor, a former Research Director at leading IT industry analysis firm Gartner, Mark has an extensive background in enterprise architecture, business process management, process modeling, process mining, and change management. He has held executive positions with several technology companies. Since retiring from Gartner, he has worked with clients such as Changepoint, Erwin, Mega, Planview, LeanIX, Signavio, ABBYY, Workpath, Axellience and iGrafx. Currently he serves as a Head of Product Marketing & Strategy at Apromore, while also providing advice to investors and management consultancies on these specialist markets.
Mark has authored or co-authored four books on business and process management, including “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and “In Search of BPM Excellence” and “People-Centric Process Management”. Widely respected for his knowledge and views on business change, he is the creator of "Next Practice" and has been described as a “BPM Guru," a "Thought Leader" and a "Master of Mindset”.
Mark spent much of the last twenty five years traveling the world, learning, teaching, and researching the cultural issues of change and how executives perceive business and process improvement. In this capacity, he has taught hundreds of people and been fortunate to interview and interact with many CEOs.
Mark is passionate about the people aspects of change, and has travelled the world, learning, teaching and researching the cultural aspects of change and how executives perceive business and process improvement. He has presented and taught thousands of people the importance of process and how to harness the power of process. He has also been fortunate to interview and interact with many CEOs about their perception and views on BPM.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Mark's background
- His perspective on the Process Mining market today (and how we got there when looking at Business Process Management vendors)
- Full process lifecycle support (mining > design > simulation > automation), and how people try to shortcut things
- Enterprise Mining - extending the concept of mining to other areas (rule discovery, etc.)
- Workforce productivity management and how process/task mining fit into the picture of Enterprise Mining
- How BI and Mining will come/work together and the ethics on these topics
You can reach Mark via email or LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgregor/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Welcome to the next episode of our podcast. Today we are talking about Gamification, a topic that we are a bit critical towards, but which seems to be here to stay (it's a generational thing, I guess...). But the twist in this episode is how it influences the performance of your architecture or business process team.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- What is a gamification and what are the core elements?
- Why should you gamify everything (or not)?
- How do process/architecture and gamification fit?
- How to create a gamification strategy
- What are the day-to-day "mechanics" and how do you reward success?
- What does that mean for process management and architecture?
- Potential benefits of gamification
- Four examples of organizations that deployed gamification and had success with it
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Enterprise Architects? Aren’t those the useless people who always say “no”? That is one of the perspectives we have heard about EAs in the past. But what can EAs do and how do the progress from “noisy” to “influential”?
In this episode of the What’s Your Baseline? podcast we discuss the role of Enterprise Architects and the changes to the discipline with Luca de Risi from Mega International, who brings a wealth of experience in this field to the episode.
Luca is Mega’s Chief Executive Officer and he held various leadership positions at the firm before that, like, being the country manager for the APAC business while being located in Singapore, or as Business Development Executive in the United States. He started his career as an internal auditor for a major French car maker before joining Mega.
Luca lives in Paris with his wife and young daughter, so we all know that he’s busy on two fronts 🙂
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Luca’s background
- Key drivers for EA today and the key role of the architect
- Business Transformation and continuous change
- Examples of transformation projects
- EA and Security – a connected approach
- Resilency and change of the EA role from designer to orchestrator
- What slows EAs down?
Luca can be reached via LinkedIn or you can contact him via Mega’s website.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
When starting with process management one of the first questions is “what process notation shall I use”. In this episode of the What’s Your Baseline? podcast we discuss this question with Walter Bril, who is one of the co-inventors of the Universal Process Notation (UPN) and why it is not really important what notation you should use … it is more important which approach to Business Process Management you choose.
Walter has a strong process knowledge management background, combined with skills and experience in technology management for more than 20 years. Involved in and contributed to the field of practical process knowledge preservation. As you will hear, he has a no-nonsense approach and a unique and practical way to involve and motivate people regarding process knowledge management, process thinking and creating awareness.
Besides nerding out on process notations, he spends more time in the interesting developments around the Bitcoin protocol and public blockchain. Particularly in the context of social developments, concerns regarding the sustainability of traditional thinking models, and the socio-economic potential that a public blockchain has to offer. The combination “process-nerd” and blockchain evangelist is particularly valuable in this (oh, and he is the co-author on two books on this topic as well).
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Walter’s background
- The UPN notation and the 5 questions you should ask when modeling a process
- The “why” behind all this
- How to implement a new notation/approach in an organization
- How to convince people
- What is the “now what” then?
You can reach Walter on LinkedIn or by sending him an email to walter@elements.cloud.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
What are the needs of a small business compared to a larger one? Can they use the same approaches for process improvement and business process management? Shall they use the same tools?
Yhis week we are speaking with an expert on this topic (and also a small business owner herself - Adi Klevit. Adi is running her own firm that has specialized on helping small organizations with process documentation/process management and helps them to create the consistency that they need ... just like larger organizations. She also runs her own podcast on that topic called "Systems Simplified Podcast".
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Adi's background
- Why doing processes for a small organization?
- Sales of “process” to small organizations (vs. large organizations)
- Processes start with a “Why” and change management is important
- Uses of process documentation in small orgs
- Where to start when beginning the process journey? What is her approach to mapping?
- How to make sure that the process documentation is used?
You can reach Adi via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adiklevit/. Her business can be found at bizsuccesscg.com and her podcast is called Systems Simplified Podcast.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
I see a lot of separated efforts in organization, and model processes. Aren't these all connected activities that should be coordinated to create a gulp architecture that carries the load?
But what is a "Business Architecture" and how is it different from just an assembly of processes? Are these terms synonyms or is there more to a Business Architecture than that?
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- What is a Business Architecture?
- Why should I care and where to start?
- Align strategy to (business) architecture
- Two process views - functional processes vs. End-to-End processes
- Both process views are connected (big map vs. trip map)
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
If you have listened to a couple of podcast episodes you know that we are true believers in that the biggest "problem" in any architecture, BPM, or Process Mining project is not the technology or the processes and other architecture views - it is the people!
Getting people along with your change is the hardest thing to do and therefore we are happy to revisit the topic of Organizational Change Management on a semi-regular basis.
Jehane has worked as a Change Management and Business Transformation lead for over 15 years working on large multinational projects in multiple industries including financial services, consulting, manufacturing, sports and entertainment, healthcare, transportation and the public sector. She likes to focus on helping clients to drive lasting change and to support teams in working better together while achieving their aims.
In her down time, Jehane enjoys coaching, reading, continuously learning and spending time with her tribe in relaxing environments like the spa...
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Jehane's background
- Evaluating what you actually need to make org. change management real for your audience
- The five "Whys" and the "WIIFM" (What's In It For Me?)
- Meet people where they are, not where you want them or need them to be
- Questions to ask when making a change
- How to create a compelling story
- Setting up for successful adoption
- Partnering effectively with change managers
- Common mistakes
- What makes a good Org. Change Management professional
You can reach Jehane via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jehaneadam/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Developing a strategy for your organization seems like a mystery for a lot of people (and some organizations make a large coin from keeping that mystery), but in all reality it has a big part of “wild guesses” included. In this episode of the What’s Your Baseline Podcast we have Dan Marquez on the show, who knows a thing or two about this topic from his time at Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, or Google.
Dan is a passionate and eminently capable digital transformation professional, and also an expert in helping organizations understand and capitalize on the power of technology.
He specializes in adapting the enterprise strategies of his clients to find the real value opportunities and disruption resilience that can be powered by digital solutions. He also has deep knowledge of Operating Model and Culture design, supporting companies to drive the change necessary to make transformations sustainable.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Dan’s background
- What is a “strategy”?
- What to look for when developing a strategy (and which traps to avoid)
- Explore the space by using an “intersectional strategy” method
- How to implement a strategy – duality of leadership mentalities
- PSA: style trumps substance
- Most challenges boil down to cultural problems
- Pursue an “L-shaped” transformation – focus on building foundational improvements while delivering value through narrow end-to-end use cases
Dan can be contacted via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marquezd/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
A lot of people think that the work is done when they have a process be visualized in their process mining tool and a nice dashboard is built. Nothing could be further from the truth and our guest today, Sebastian Kotulla, talks with us about why that is. To bridge the gap between visualizing data/information to knowledge as the result of the analysis Lean techniques can be applied.
Sebastian has a strong focus on and passion for digital solutions to support business transformation such as virtual factories, computer vision, AI, process mining and engines. As Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Prosci Certified Change Practitioner he's used to run and consult in transformational initiatives from concept to successful implementation.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Sebastian’s background
- Define - (DMAIC and how to apply this to process mining, CRISP framework, leading and lagging indicators)
- Analysis (flow is key in Lean, different types of waste (TIMWOODS), Process Mining gives the reference points for the Control phase, Theory of constraints / bottlenecks, most of the problems are outside of the discovered process model!)
- How to prioritize which process to choose
- How to do the analysis - first look to define the problem (time analysis, Gemba)
- Fishbone to structure hypotheses (manual cluster analysis) - Find the story in your analysis, five Whys to find the systematic problems
- FMEA analysis risk analysis > risk simulation
- Design of experiments - statical method on how to design an experiment and then make predictions from the result; understand input variables better
- Advanced analysis
- A practical project example
Sebastian can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-kotulla-1645ab88/ and also be contacted via email: sebastian-kotulla@web.de.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Welcome to Season 4 of our podcast. Today we are talking about Solution Engineering, aka Presales, and what you can expect from your vendor's solution engineers (vs. their consultants).
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- What is a Solution Engineer?
- What is their primary job focus and their scope of work and process?
- What are Consultants (and are they different from Solution Engineers)
- What are the required skill sets for Solution Engineers (and Consultants)?
- How to work with both - when to contact, what info they need, and what to expect.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Today we have a special What's Your Baseline Shorts episode for you, that has nothing to do with Enterprise Architecture or Business Process Management.
However, we think that you will like it: our guest today is Jeremy Voltz, an indie-soul musician from Toronto, Ontario, who is gracefully letting us use his music for all intros, outros, and intermissions. In this episode we are talking with him about:
- how he got into music (he has a PhD in Mathematics)
- what kind of music he produces -
- how his process works (well, at least a bit of BPM)
- and what is next for him
You can reach Jeremy at jeremyvoltzmusic.com or via his LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-voltz-758118101/.
We're closing out the episode with the full Non-Christmas Christmas song "When You're Near" by him as a small token of our appreciation for you. Please enjoy the upcoming holidays with your loved ones and we will see each other in Season 4 starting in mid-January!
Welcome to another episode of our podcast. In the final episode of the final season for this year, we are talking about another ten things we’ve learned over the years:
How to do things
- Transparency is more important than ever
- Strategic alignment is key to your success
- Sometimes you have to say “no” to requirements
- Make clear from the outset how a project’s success is measured
Tools
- BPM/EA tools are still too nerdy
- Tools need to be simpler - how to get to information in three clicks or fewer
- How to provide self-help resources
- (Bonus) Do not google “how to create subway maps”
The discipline/industry
- There will be a renaissance of forward-looking data-driven decision making (e.g., Simulation)
- Process Mining will cease to exist as its own market in 3-5 years
- Knowledge Management needs to be more in focus
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
There was a lot of buzz around Lean and Six Sigma back in the 80s and 90s, but not today anymore.
However, the practice is not dead and it is still relevant and used in many industries today. And there are good reasons to take a step back and have another look at why it was so successful and what of the practice still creates value and should be included in your process improvement and process excellence initiatives.
Today's guest on the What's Your Baseline Podcast is Ron Baker. He is an American Society of Quality (ASQ) Certified Black Belt and a SixSigma.us Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt with over 26 years of proven success and increasing levels of responsibility in both domestic and international environments.
He has an expert level of business process improvement knowledge in transactional (Department of Defense, Financial & Retail) and manufacturing (Oil & Gas/Pharmaceutical/Health Care/Medical Device & Semiconductor) environments.
In addition to this he has recent program management office implementation experience, deploying continuous improvement techniques (Lean Six Sigma), and strategy development.
We are talking about these topics:
- Ron's background and how a 400m runner becomes a process improvement consultant
- What is Lean and Six Sigma?
- What are "belts" and what do they indicate?
- What is a typical approach of a Lean/6 Sigma project and how do you get buy in?
- Do you need special tools for a Lean/6 Sigma project?
You can find Ron on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-baker/ or send an email to ronwbaker@gmail.com.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, and credits are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode36.
Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Today we are talking about what to do before, during, and after process discovery and design sessions.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- Before the session
- Identify what to change/purpose
- Identify who to invite
- Create strategic alignment
- What to prepare
- During the session
- How to structure a business architecture (> process discovery)
- How to start the session (facilitation)
- Structure of design sessions
- Follow-up sessions
- After the session
- Clean up of models and sharing with participants
- After the final session
- After publishing
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, and credits are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode35.
Being the reasonable adult seems to be the parallel topic of this week's episode - even though the main topic is process automation. We were just so excited in our conversation that we got carried away
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast we speak with Bernd Rücker. He is a software developer at heart who has been innovating process automation deployed in highly scalable and agile environments of industry leaders such as T-Mobile, Lufthansa, ING, and Atlassian. Bernd contributed to various open-source workflow engines for more than 15 years and is the Co-Founder and Chief Technologist of Camunda – an open-source software company reinventing process automation.
Bernd is also the author of "Practical Process Automation" and co-author of "Real-Life BPMN". Additionally, he's a regular speaker at conferences around the world and a frequent contributor to several technology publications. He focusses on new process automation paradigms that fit into modern architectures around distributed systems, microservices, domain-driven design, event-driven architecture, and reactive systems.
We are talking about these topics:
- Bernd's background and why he never had a 'proper job', and how Consulting influenced the product development
- The difference between process orchestration and process (task) automation
- How to use BPMN for orchestration and how the orchestration engine, well, orchestrates automation at the end points
- Automation with code and other means (RPA, low code/no code)
- Client examples and what to do or not to do
You can find Bernd on LinkedIn here: Bernd Ruecker | LinkedIn or send an email to bernd.ruecker@camunda.com. His personal website is https://berndruecker.io/.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode34.
A few weeks ago (in Episode 30) we spoke about how to select your process mining tool. And the conversation was so good, that we totally overran our planned time of an hour.
But instead of leaving our thoughts about use cases for process mining, that are currently not implemented in standard process mining tools, we decided to use them as a What's Your Baseline Shorts episode. We are talking about:
- Customer mining
- Processes in the ecosystem
- Process mining for sustainability (add this to analysis, not only of one firm, but a chain of more organizations)
- Process mining for ESG
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
We talk (a lot) about technology and processes here on the podcast. But what about the human side of Business Process Management? Do we just forget them and aim for the desired outcome no matter what? No, we don't ...
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast we speak with Mirko Kloppenburg, who started his own company and project "New Process Lab" a few months ago after 20+ successful years at Lufthansa Group.
To start the New Process Lab, he linked the often fuzzy New Work ideas with tangible processes. As symbiosis of Process Management and New Work, the “New Process” approach was created. It adds a human-centric mindset to the already proven BPM tools and methods we know from the past.
The exchange about New Process has shown him that there is a great need to explore these ideas more deeply. To do this, he created the a platform to build a community, to perform experiments, and to share experiences. The NewProcessLab.com is driven by the purpose to empower you to rethink your process. In addition, he started the New Process Podcast to explore new ways to rethink processes and to share his journey with you!
We are talking about these topics:
• Mirko's background and his revelation that it is all about the people when doing process management
• The New Process principles: trust the people, involve the people, foster the development of people, give meaning to the people
• Inspire people for process by community building, focusing on experience design, and being a process influencer
• Examples of the New Process principles
• How to bring the principles to life
• The New Process lifecycle
You can find Mirko on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirkokloppenburg/. His website is newprocesslab.com, and his podcast can be found here: newprocesslab.com/new-process-podcast.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode33.
Even given the fact that we are living in the 21st century, it is interesting to see that the percentage of women who studied technology or worked in the process industry actually decreased over time. Which is a sad state of affairs. So the question now is, how we -as an industry- can add more diversity and pick the brain pool of intelligent female professionals. In this episode of the What’s Your Baseline podcast we speak with two women who have taken things into their own hands and started their own initiatives to improve this situation.
Josèphe leads the ARIS Product Marketing team at Software AG, dealing with all topics around ARIS from global marketing campaigns, social media, public relations, events to “simple” release activities. She is also a newly certified as a Sustainability Manager from the Cambridge University, Institute of Sustainable Leadership, and wants to make things move forward here too. And last but not least, she founded and leads a regional sustainable gourmet food business from the greater #saarlorlux region available onsite in Saarbrücken, Germany and online here: www.saar-lor-deluxe.com.
In addition to this she also runs two podcasts/shows about “Passion for Process” and “Women in BPM”.
Gabriela is a Manager at Deloitte in NYC and is leading Process Mining projects, educating junior process mining talents, and identifying optimization potentials with process mining. She is so excited about process mining that she founded a new community “Women in Process Mining”, which targets women, girls and female leaders who work, study or research in the field of process mining.
We are talking about these topics:
- Josephe’s and Gabriela’s background
- Gabriela’s “Women in Process Mining” and Josephe’s “Women in BPM” initiative initiatives
- Their motivations and how things got started
- The experience they have in interacting with their audience
- What it takes to build a community and where they go from here
You can find Josèphe on LinkedIn here: Josèphe Blondaut | LinkedIn. Gabriela can be found here: Gabriela Galic, M.Sc. | LinkedIn.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode32.
Updating the "plumbing" is not sexy. Looking at measures being put in place to avoid the worst case or deal with it when it happens is not fancy. Educating people and reminding them on being alert is exhausting.
However, the topic of Security and Security Architecture is one of the most important things to do, now that we outgrow the industrial age and move into the information age. In this episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast we are talking with Rick Smith about Security Architecture.
Rick has over 18 years of experience in managing information systems to include, developing policies, portfolio management, writing programs and procedure development for information assurance programs. His various roles include a Network Administrator/Manager, Threat Analyst Subject Matter Expert, IA Strategic Planning and Database Manager. He is proficient in certification and accreditation policy and procedure including DoD policy, intelligence community policy, United States Postal Service (USPS) AS805, and NIST guidelines. He also has experience in cyber security architecture development for these same organizations.
Rick has developed and taught CISSP classes. He has developed his own curriculum and approach in helping candidates become a CISSP.
In this episode we are talking about:
- What is Security Architecture?
- Define mission, threat
- Policies and SOPs need accountability, the need for education
- Digital natives and their approach to security - leading to decentralized security architecture
- How to approach threats
- How to mature your organization’s security by using NIST’s Cyber Security Framework CMMC and security self assessments
- Implement the framework
Rick can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricksmth477/.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode31.
Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Today we are talking about how to choose a process mining tool, to close the loop to the "How to select an architecture tool" episode (link in the full show notes on whatsyourbaseline.com/episode30).
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
• What are process mining tools and how they are different than other tools (BI tools, modeling tools) and how can they work together
• Features to look at when choosing a process mining tool
◦ Process Explorer (listen to the details what tools today can and cannot do)
◦ Variant analysis
◦ Root/cause miner, ideally AI-driven
◦ Custom dashboards
◦ Calculate new fields
◦ Package (dashboards, transformations, calculations) and make it reusable
◦ Predictive analysis
◦ Trigger actions (as a quick fix for a process, not a redesign)
• Integration requirements
◦ Integration with source tools
◦ Integration with other mining tools (task mining)
◦ Integration with architecture tool
◦ Integration with process execution
• Cost and other considerations
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode30.
A few months ago we had an initial look at how to manage and implement change in our conversation with Caspar Jans (in Episode 16) and we are continuing that series with an excellent conversation with Wings Liang about Quality Excellence and how organizations need to "shift left" and can gain competitive advantage by changing their perspective.
Wings helps organizations pave the road to the future by building high-performance teams, aligning organizational structure, shifting colleague mindset and changing the way people work, designing and streamlining end-to-end business processes, and implementing technology and digital solutions. Her work has advanced business strategy, increased organization agility, improved customer satisfaction, achieved cost savings and ensured regulatory compliance.
She is also passionate about gender equity, diversity and inclusion (D&I). Wings has organized, hosted and participated in large and small D&I events, programs and support groups. Her work has raised awareness, encouraged allyship, and elevated colleagues; resulting in increased female executive representations.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Wings' background and very diverse experiences
- What is QA (Quality Assurance) and QC (Quality Control)
- How to transform from QA to Quality Excellence (QE) by shifting from "shift left" to "start left" and the value of this transformation
- What skills are needed for QE and how people's behaviors need to change, and what this means for teams
- The crucial role of test automation and how to manage the big beast of regression testing
- How AI and ML change test automation
Wings can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wingsliang/
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode28.
Growing your practice is on every leader's mind. The way to do this is to have an eye on the definition and the development of the maturity of your organization.
In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:
- What is maturity and which three areas you should focus on (content, governance, adoption)
- Assessment of capabilities (5 big buckets)
- What to rate the maturity against, e.g., CMMI
- An example of how an assessment can be built and used on a regular basis
- How to grow the maturity over time
- Tips on how to get the full picture on where you are on your journey (individual maturity vs. organizational maturity)
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode27.
One of the biggest problems of architecture groups was (is?) that they are doing good work, but that will not be recognized by others. One of the causes for that is that their repository and artifacts have almost no visibility outside of their group. To mitigate this situation, we are speaking with Laurie Kelly about how to communicate the value of architecture in today's episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast.
Laurie is the Global Director for Demand Generation at Ardoq, an Enterprise Architecture tool vendor. But she comes with a 25 year background in Marketing, where she held leading Marketing positions at PWC and Mega.
She is excited about the new tools for Marketing automation that allow to capture insights and ROI tracking which has not been available before. She uses this knowledge to help companies and organizations modernize their thought leadership and increase customer engagement, whether in-person or across the digital biosphere of web, mobile, email and social media. Further, she uses her passion to make a difference in her local community by engaging in organizations and projects that cultivate innovative learning.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Laurie's background and ambition
- Defining "success" for architecture, why it is important, who it needs to be successful with, and how to do this
- Failures of communicating the value
- How architects can enhance their perceived value - how to communicate, which channels to use, and when to communicate
- How this can support Marketing to create an effective sales/practice tool
- Laurie's immediate four tips to improve talking to non-architects
Laurie can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurienkelly/.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode26.
We're back!
Welcome to Season 3 of the What’s Your Baseline podcast. A big thank you for more than 7500 downloads… so far!
That’s awesome, and I am so excited for this new season of incredible content!
My name is Roland Woldt.
And I am J-M Erlendson. This season we’re continuing our deep dive into three areas relevant to architecture and process management professionals (and casual fans!). The first area is “content” - we will explore various topics, including Open Source, QA Best Practices, and Security Architecture.
The second area is how to run a practice. We will cover topics like assessing and growing maturity, or communicating the value the practice
And lastly, we have a look at the discipline and our industry, talking about things like business agility or diversity and representation in the process and architecture field.
So join us again on this bi-weekly journey with the What’s Your Baseline podcast. Season 3 kicks off on July 25!
And we’ll see you in the next one!
We made it - 25 long form episodes of the podcast (and 7 "Shorts" as well).
By popular demand - and because our statistics shows it - we are having "(Another) Ten Things I've Learned" episode. This time we are talking about three major areas:
How to measure your architecture and improvement programs
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Architecture / BPM is not about the topics at hand (apps, processes, etc.) it is about people and how people interact with each other
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When measuring architecture, make things SMART
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Process Mining is the “next hot thing”, but it is not all and other, older process improvement methods still have their place
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Process and Task Mining can’t shotgun a Solution
How to get your arms around (some of) the people aspects
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There is a new interest in “Process” while “EA” is still stuck in technology
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We have a responsibility to enable the next generation of BPM and EA
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Enablement must include “why”
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Internal communications cannot come with expectations of attention
How the "new reality" in which we work for two years by now will affect us practitioners
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We need to rethink the role of “The Office”
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Podcasts and videos are the new way to communicate the topics
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode25.
People.
For better or worse a lot of the topics in EA and BPM center around people. These are the reasons why we do things (customers who pay for our goods and services), who does the work (employees and partners), or why processes and architectures even exist in the first place.
In this What's Your Baseline Shorts, we are talking about process empathy:
- What does it take to facilitate the development of a human-centric process model?
- What kinds of things should you think about, and when in the process?
- What does it mean to have people-focused processes?
- What are Customer Journeys?
- How can we use the methodology of Customer Journey Mapping to make more human-sustainable processes?
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Task Mining and RPA are things that are often overlooked when looking at Process Mining. This can leave a big hole in the discovered process and therefore create an incomplete analysis result.
In today's podcast we are speaking with Kevin Scully and Ziv Ilan from Nintex Kryon about Task Mining, what results you can expect from it, and how those can be used to automate processes using Robotics Task Automation.
Kevin has 35+ years' experience leading and supporting GTM strategy for SMB enterprises. He's a hands-on, team player who excels at defining value propositions, building customer success stories, and increasing revenue. Kevin's main focus is supporting both software and hardware manufacturers who provide advanced technology solutions that help their clients streamline operations, improve customer experience, and reduce costs.
Ziv is Kryon's Head of Professional Services and Alliances, based in Paris. He has a military background and 11 years of experience in consulting. Today he focusses on improving processes by discovering what users really do using task mining, and then automating these processes using Robotics Process Automation.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Kevin’s and Ziv’s background
- What are RPA and RPD (Task Mining) and what are the outputs from Task Mining
- The process/steps of a Task Mining project
- RPA projects and what can be included - End-to-End from Process Discovery to RPA
- Common questions about RPD/RPA
- Where do you see this technology evolve?
- How to get started with RPD/RPA?
Both of our guests can be found on LinkedIn - Kevin Scully, Ziv Ilan. You can also have a look at Kryon's website to learn more about RPD and RPA, as well as reaching out to them via that channel.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode24.
Everyone wants to consume and understand large amounts of data. But how do you plan, design, and implement a good dashboard?
In this What's Your Baseline Shorts, J-M and Roland walk you through the process and the considerations at each step, so that the next time you create a dashboard (for example as part of your Process Mining analysis) it will be stakeholder-oriented with a clear visual hierarchy that will make your users understand your message easily and quickly.
In this episode we are talking about:
- Identify your stakeholders and information needs
- Define KPI and measures
- Create a solution design
- Build the dashboards
- Identify data stories
- Roll-out dashboards
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Today's topic is about creating a formal business case as part of the change process.
Creating a business case document can be a challenge for someone who has not done that before, and one might think that this is a single-person activity. Nothing could be further from the truth - in our experience, a good business case document is the result of collaboration between multiple people in your organization (and vendors) that happens in multiple iterations until every stakeholder gives the "green light".
In detail we are talking about:
- Why the need for a business case?
- Where does business case creation fit into the change lifecycle?
- High-level steps to create a business case
- What information do you need to create a business case?
- Who should be involved in making the case?
- Example business case in the context of a value proposition
- Tips & tricks to make an effective business case
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode23.
Process Mining is THE hot technology in our industry these days. But how do you get involved in it, and which skills do you need to bring to the table?
In this Shorts we are talking about:
- What is Process Mining?
- How is a Process Mining project different from a "regular BPM project"?
- What skills and knowledge do you need?
- Where to go next?
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Selecting the right team members is not an easy situation - especially when you are a small or medium-sized organization that cannot hire as freely as they might want. In today's episode we are talking about how to plan for staffing and select the right people for your architecture/transformation teams with our guest, Ansgar Bittermann.
Our topic this week touches on subjects that may be sensitive to our listeners, particularly around individual evaluation and potential. The research, research applications, and business applications of that research may be controversial, but we have decided to publish and share the discussion in the spirit of open discussion of difficult topics. We would like to invite you to contact us at hello@whatsyourbaseline.com if you have other thoughts or positions on the content within, and we would be happy to publish an op-ed or compilation of community input on these subjects.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Ansgar's background (he's well traveled)
- The process for selecting team members - especially as a small organization (up to 1000 people)
- Assessment Center vs. Testing, and other misconceptions
- Misuse of tests in the past and how to remove bias from tests
- Areas to look at for architecture/transformation teams: skills, cognition, attention span, personality, sociability, openness to new things
- Fitting tests to roles
- How Ansgar prepares his clients to read the tests (as non-psychologists) and does testing remotely
- How to lead people with higher awareness of the different type of persons
Ansgar can be found on LinkedIn here: linkedin.com/in/bittermann.His podcast can be found at pocketguide.ai and his testing services at personio-partner.com.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode22.
One part of the buying process is a POC/POV (Proof of Concept/Proof of Value). If done right, those require a significant effort from both parties - buyers and sellers - so you want to make the best out of this situation and not waste everybody's time.
In this Shorts we are talking about:
- What is a POC/POV and where does it fit into the buying cycle?
- Have a clear objective for the POC
- What is the typical structure of a POC?
- Communicate clearly
- Make it easy for the client to choose you
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The topic "Process" seems to have a renaissance these days. A lot of younger folks are deciding to work in this industry, and a not so small part of this might be caused by the exciting new technology of Process Mining, which seems to be natural for people who grew up with technology in all areas of their life.
In today's podcast we are speaking with Jakub Dvořák, who fits right into this profile, and is working at a Process Mining consulting firm in Europe that is currently expanding into the United States.
Jakub is a data scientist during the day, and financial blogger at night. As part of his work, he is running the "Mining Your Business" podcast (in English) and also the Rozbité prasátko -"Break the piggy bank" - podcast (in Czech).
We are talking about the following topics:
- Jakub’s background and interests (hint: he’s running two podcasts, and writes a book!)
- Process&, the company he works in, and their services for process mining
- How clients use process mining
- Jakub’s podcast “Mining Your Business” and the renaissance of Business Process Management - data science as the new thing that is interesting for (young) people
- How do process mining projects work
- Process mining analysis - what to look for
- What should you prepare before you start a process mining project?
- Lessons learned and how to get into process mining
You can find Jakub's profile on LinkedIn here, and also his and Patrick's podcast on LinkedIn (give them a follow, you will enjoy their conversations and guests).
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode21.
The topic of this What's Your Baseline Shorts podcast is Process Simulation and why you should not have this in your Process Mining tool, but rather as part of your design platform.
We speak about these topics:
- Why simulation?
- What do you need for simulation
- What are the outcomes of a simulation
- What are the different types of simulation?
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
Sometimes things in business kill the best podcast publishing schedule.
Today's guest, James Dening, the CEO of Minit, has sold the firm to Microsoft on March 31. Nevertheless this interview with him is very insightful regarding his way to becoming the CEO, process mining as a discipline, as well as the process mining market compared to the last "hot thing" Robotics Process Automation.
James is a former geek, now a commercial leader, with a passion for combining how you use data effectively and how you nurture and develop people superbly to create amazing kick-ass organizations. He has have held senior positions at Amazon, Google EMEA, XLN Telecom, Red Gate Software, and most recently in the RPA space with Automation Anywhere, as GM EMEA and our first Chief Evangelist, growing revenue from zero to tens of millions per year and building a team of over 250 people across Europe.
Today he works at Minit Process Mining, as CEO, in one of the most exciting and fastest growing spaces in software, shining a light on how processes are actually performing, and enabling companies to target their automation and process improvement efforts accurately.
When James is not working, you can either find him with his family, or out with his spaniels, or possibly taking his boat to the pub.
We are talking about the following topics:
- James’ background from a software engineer, through sales person, to general manager and what cross-knowledge he gained and still values
- The situation of process mining and why it is a significant change in how doing BPM
- Qualities needed and lessons learned on the way to becoming CEO
- How to select and nurture the right people (and keeping seats open)
- How to grow personally when you reached his career step
- Advice for aspiring junior folks
- Minit as young company/challenger in the industry; James’ outlook on the market development and M&A activities
You can find James on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdening/ and reach out to him directly via email at james.dening@minit.io.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode20.
The topic of this second "Shorts" podcast episode is "Capabilities". We spoke about this in Episode 2 "Why EA and BPM?", but received some feedback that we should dig deeper into this topic. So here it is :-)
The high-level topics of this episode are:
- What is the difference between a capability and a process?
- How do capabilities fit into architecture?
- A real-life example of how capabilities can be used in a program for planning purposes
- Business vs. IT capabilities
- Where should capabilities be used, and how?
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/shorts2.
Analysts are the mystical wizards of the tech industry. Their reports and analysis results shape markets and sometimes also the fates of organizations that play in that market. Therefore, many organizations want to control access to analysts and a lot of questions are unanswered, leaving behind confused people.
But we are here to change this, by having Amardeep Modi, an experienced analyst on the show who is giving us a "look behind the scenes" of the analyst business.
Amar is a Vice President at Everest Group. He's a seasoned advisor and leader with many years of strategy consulting and business research experience.
He's a seasoned RPA, intelligent automation, and process mining SME, advisor, and leader. At Everest Group Amar leads the Service Optimization Technologies (SOT) research and advisory practice, which includes not only leading a 12-membered team, but also developing and managing client relationships and identifying and leading business development efforts.
We are talking about the following topics:
- How Amar came to the Everest Group and what he’s doing there
- The role of analysts in the marketplace
- Buyers of analyst reports and services
- The main two offerings of Everest Group
- Which type of people become analysts
- The engagement model (and sometimes a pay-to-play scheme in the market)
- How analysts identify trends and topics for their research
- How a major report, such as the Peak Matrix Report, is created
You can find Amar on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amardeepmodi/, and the Evererst Group's website is https://www.everestgrp.com/.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode19.
This is the first episode of the What's Your Baseline Shorts series. We are talking about the topic of process notations, especially if you should choose the BPMN or the EPC notation.
High-level topics include:
- What are EPC and BPMN?
- A bit of history
- Specialties of each notation, and difficulties that might arise
- Data exchange with BPMN
- External standards
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/shorts1.
Welcome to What’s Your Baseline “Shorts”!
In this series, we’re distilling down our usual long-form content from the hour-long What’s Your Baseline podcast into a more concentrated and visual form (that’s right... you get to see our faces! At least on Spotify and on YouTube).
But most importantly, these "Shorts" are brief focused discussions about a key topic in architecture, process, business, change and much more - just enough for you to “get the gist of it”.
Anddon’t worry - we’ll still have our regularly-scheduled biweekly full episodes of the podcast on whatsyourbaseline.com/podcast for a longer conversation.
So get excited for our honest and unscripted opinions, lessons learned and best practices. One topic, one Session, one Take - that’s What’s Your Baseline Shorts.
Stay tuned!
Another episode of the podcast, and we are having a very interesting and entertaining conversation with Jason Jovanis about working with recruiters - either as a candidate, or as an organization who is looking for new talent.
Jason came to his job after 20+ years as a sales leader, who in 2018 had the crazy idea to quit the VP of Sales job and start a recruiting business.
He knows what it's like to need to hire people (lots of people). He's wasted his own time and frustrated others by interviewing people he shouldn’t have, and he knows what it's like to look for a job.
He's been treated like a product by some recruiters, so he decided to start his own company. His firm is a boutique recruitment practice focused on matching talented individuals with progressive organizations and great leaders.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Get to know Jason (and helicopters)
- Value that a recruiter brings to the table and how his approach distinguishes himself from other recruiters
- Tips to step up your LinkedIn game where 95% of all search activities take place
- The recruiting process, including the behind-the-scenes stuff
- Working with a recruiter as the hiring manager
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode18.
Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Today's topic is organizational change management, which is the counterpart to the previous episode of "Management of Change" where we spoke with Caspar Jans. This episode covers the "people side" of changes that are planned in your architecture and implementation projects, and we are covering the why, org design, communication, and enablement topics.
In detail we are talking about:
- Org Change Mgmt vs. Management of Change. OCM is not the "feel good stuff" but a management practice
- Reasons for resistance: fear of loosing authority, security, capability
- Valley of Tears concept
- Three areas of a successful implementation: content, governance, and adoption
- The “why” of change
- Org designDisconnect when creating org designs
- Typically no connection to architecture group or solution designs
- Org design people need to pick up new skills
- OCM is a Management discipline
- Stakeholder identification, Net-Map concept
- OCM strategy and plan
- Communication - Content, frequency, mediums, assessing effectiveness of communication (feedback and measuring behavior)
- Building a change organization
- Get feedback and adapt communication material
- Communication is the long tail of transformation. Don’t stop communicating after go-live
- Celebrate success
- Enablement
- Curriculum
- Stakeholders, strategy and plan
- Develop material, setup infrastructure
- Conduct training - Role of client personnel (train-the-trainer, super users, first level support, etc.)
- Feedback
- Measure behavior changes
- Adapt your strategy
- Support
- Knowledge Management
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode17.
Managing change is hard - either managing organizational change or managing changes in the technology or architecture. In this episode of the podcast we are talking with Caspar Jans from Software AG about the latter and how to implement and operate a program to manage change.
Caspar is a high-energy, fast learning and broad-skilled professional (BPM, Business Transformation, Supply Chain, Logistics, Procurement and IT) with an above average interest in the human connection and functional excellence. He excels in connecting human performance with process thinking and improvement.
His public speaking, facilitation and networking skills provide full support for his external orientation approach (never reinvent the wheel).
We are talking about the following topics:
- Caspar’s background in a manufacturing organization and in consulting
- Management of change versus change management
- Four types of change
- Change request intake and the five roles involved in impact assessment and the ‘rule of ten’ when it comes to effort
- The management of change process
- How to manage the changes (the doing)
- Including governance and [org] change management
- How to manage and document changes in practice, so that you have things always up-to-date
- Process Mining in management of change
- An example of improvements by establishing a management of change process
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode16.
Setting up a strategic process consulting practice or firm in our industry is not easy. On the one hand side you have the large system integrators/Big 4 companies, and on the other side you have the tool vendors helping setting up internal practices and capabilities. Finding your niche in that setup and build a sustainable business is a challenge.
Showing an example of a successful enterprise, we are talking with Zach Bennett, who runs his own firm Visual Enterprise Architecture for over 25 years, in this episode of the podcast.
Zach is a senior executive leader with demonstrated success in delivering transformational solutions and working directly with senior business and IT leadership to achieve strategic goals. He also championed culture of continuous business transformation across entire organizations and established company Centers of Excellence for Business Transformation and Enterprise Architecture and execution of transformational programs and projects.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Zach’s background
- Where a small boutique firm in the process/EA industry can position itself (vs. the Big 4/SIs or tool vendors)
- How external consultants bring in new ideas, but also provide the continuity in an organization when their people move around every few years
- Zach’s perspective on where the market goes and what skills a newbie should develop
- How to grow a consultant team and what to look for when hiring
- Adding products to consulting offers
- Trends and challenges in the future
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode15.
Developing an EA strategy is not done very often, but has many benefits. In this episode we are talking with Carlisle Gunn, an experienced Enterprise Architect, who we've worked with on past projects.
Carlisle has worked in the Enterprise Architecture space for over 8 years with a focus on business and application architecture. He led teams through process discovery into documentation and improvement. Working with team members from a wide array of roles, his background demonstrates experience working with almost every type of functional member within an organization.
Carlisle received a Masters of Professional Studies in Enterprise Architecture in 2016, where his focus was on the establishment of Enterprise Architecture capabilities and usage of modeling languages.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Carlisle’s background (and some rugby geekery)
- EA strategies and that they need to be client-specific
- Stakeholders and the Enterprise Architect view (top-down) vs. the Solution Architect perspective (bottom-up)
- ARB /= implemented EA strategy
- Components of an EA strategy
Start with maturity assessment > identify low-hanging fruit
Communication is part of the “how”; EA strategy is the “what”
EA goals and how to measure EA KPIs
EA capabilities and services
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode14.
Welcome to the first episode of our season 2! Today we are talking about the Solution Lifecycle in architecture - what it is and why it is important to you.
Architecture development and analysis does not happen in a vacuum, but are embedded in a lifecycle. New tools like Process Mining and Task Mining make it sound as if you don’t need other tools and techniques anymore, but quite the opposite is the case - traditional analysis techniques are still needed to support all phases of the solution lifecycle. We are talking about:
- What is a "solution" and what are the layers and phases of the lifecycle (see also graphic below)?
- Give examples of two analysis types and when to use which one best: Simulation and Process Mining
- The value of this iterative approach and the cautions
- The iterative nature of it and the impact on developing your overall architecture approach
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode13.
Thank you so much for supporting and growing this podcast over our first 6 months. In Season 1, we covered foundational topics like how to implement an architecture tool and dipped our toes into interviews with thought leaders in the architecture and process management field.
And now, welcome to season 2 of the What's Your Baseline podcast, where we take it to the next level!
My name is Roland Woldt.
And I’m J-M Erlendson. This season, we’re going to cover three areas relevant to architects and driven by best practices. Our first topic expands on the practice itself, crafting an EA strategy and leveraging the solution lifecycle.
The second area is all about growing your practice, personally, and for your organization: for instance, how to work with recruiters or analysts. We’ve lined up fantastic guests from industry-leading companies.
And lastly, we’ll dig deeper into data-driven analysis, decision making, and automation - further connecting process mining, RPA, task mining, and AI with some of our favorite thought leaders’ perspectives mixed in.
Join us on this bi-weekly journey with the What’s Your Baseline podcast.
Here it is - the end (of season 1 ... no worries, we're back in January 2022). In this episode we are mixing up the format a bit and are talking about the 10 things that we learned in 25 years of architecture and process management.
Approach / strategy segment
Let's talk about the bigger picture, the why and larger setup. What are the thoughts that get organizations started?
- Why: You’ll end up paying for it somehow. End of the line in people or risk.
- Don't do a "big effort upfront"
- Develop and create in releases / have a release plan
- Processes and architectures need to be measured
Organizational segment
Architectures win and fail with the people. If they don't want to cooperate or be involved you will fail.
- It's the people, stupid
- Do not separate areas of your architecture into different groups
- Risk & Controls folks are your friends
"How-to" segment
Once you get started the task of developing an architecture seems daunting. This segment has a few tips to make it more manageable.
- Start small but don't settle on the lowest denominator - choose a tool and have a minimum set of artifact requirements
- Have the full lifecycle in mind and don't get distracted by the latest tech
- When developing models do this in multiple iterations (esp. processes)
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode12.
Ahh, "governance" - the topic that is boring to death and had complete EA groups being fired.
Love it or not, setting up the "rules of engagement" is still an important piece in an organization. And you can do it while having some fun when you remember the points that we are talking about in this episode:
- Role of governance in architecture activities and how it was seen in the past
- Archetypes of architects - governance as low/low activity (and hence the popularity of EA groups to focus on this topic)
- Who should be involved when setting up the rules of engagement
- Governance automation and how to implement it
- How to design governance processes - push/pull communication, elements of the implementation, measure gov. KPIs
- Organizational design for governance - three branches of governance (legislation / standards group; jurisdiction / ARB; executives / CoE), centralized / decentralized governance setups
- Additional aspects: enablement, project tracking, workload balancing, content freshness, confirmation management, dashboards / hold participants accountable / workflow routing / visibility
- Two client project examples
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode11.
Have you ever wondered why you should go to conferences or be a speaker (and how to become one)? Our podcast guest today is José Pires, a veteran of 20+ years in the conference business and a leader in helping organizations to improve their execution and innovation excellence.
José serves as Excellence & Innovation (E&I) executive leader and advisor for cross-industry organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 50, where he oversees the global identification, prioritization and execution of high value business improvements and innovations for the companies, business partners, and customers in multiple markets.
He is an advisory board leader, keynote speaker, and chairman for organizations and global conferences on innovation, operational excellence, leadership development, strategy execution, culture, business and digital transformation, customer experience, exponential technologies, and growth acceleration. He is an executive Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt who holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Master in Business Administration focused on Investment Banking and Entrepreneurship from the University of San Diego.
In this episode we spoke about the following topics:
- Jose's background and how he came into the speaking/conference business as an introvert engineer
- The fear of public speaking and how to overcome it
- Getting good at your craft (your purpose?) and learn to communicate about it
- The change in the conference landscape due to the pandemic (disruption vs. dislocation)
- The objectives of participating in a conference or alternatives: learning, inspiration, networking
- Criteria of good conferences (virtual and in-person)
- How to get started to become a speaker
- Conferences as businesses
- What to look for when planning for attending events
- The "Three Rs": relationship, results, and reputation
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode10.
This episode is a "semi follow-up" to the last episode, where we talked about Process Mining - today's topic is Task Mining (aka Robotics Process Discovery).
Task Mining will bring clarity into what your users do on a procedure level, and can give insights into what might cause a "spike" in your analysis, or fill the holes that you might have in a discovered / mined process (for example when there are manual steps or steps in a system that does not create a log file).
In this episode we spoke about the following topics:
- What is task mining (vs. process mining)? What is the information that one gets from task mining?
- How to handle procedure-level in models
- The "Big Brother" fear that comes with task mining, and how this is mitigated
- Benefits of task mining
- Steps to a useful application of task mining (how to get to a good analysis)
- Hybridized setup of process and task mining - 5 steps to follow
- Velocity and throughput analysis (frequencies and times) as a way to identify improvement and (RPA) automation opportunities
- What/if analysis in a process/task mining tool vs. (proper) simulation in an architecture tool
- Technical integration of task and process mining tools; benefits of using BPMN in mining scenarios
- Experiences from a client project
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode9.
Another Monday, another interview :-)
Our guest today is Dr. Julian Krumeich, Software AG's product manager for their process mining tool.
In his current role as Director Product Management ARIS at Software AG, Julian helps customers achieve operational excellence by shaping the future of our ARIS Process Mining solution - the ideal tool for integrated process mining with business process management. The close collaboration with key customers, global market analysts and his spirit of innovation enable him to define and implement the right product strategy to ensure customer success and contribute to the profitability of our company.
Before joining Software AG, Julian worked for the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH) as a researcher and project manager on innovative projects that combine AI and BPM. In this area, he had several speaking engagements worldwide, published research papers in high-ranking scientific journals and completed his doctorate (PhD) summa cum laude.
We are talking about the following topics:
- Get to know Julian
- What a product manager does
- What is process mining and how is it different than other process improvement methodologies
- History of process mining tools and how things changed from experts to business users
- Future of process mining tools (omnipresence)
- Key features to look out for when looking for a process mining tool
- Why Software AG’s Process Mining is different than the competition
Julian can be reached via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliankrumeich, and if you like to give us a follow there, we can found at https://www.linkedin.com/company/whatsyourbaseline.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode8.
Welcome to a new episode of your favorite podcast. The topic of today is to capture and import the vast amounts of existing content in your organization, and how to integrate this into your repository.
The import is one of the four major steps of an architecture tool implementation that we discussed in Episode 3.
- Why bringing in existing content?
- Concerns: age of content, correctness, type of storage (project vs. Enterprise Baseline), integration into dev method/SDLC, document naming/versioning
- Size of import: number of models and complexity drive effort
- Content format: how to map the information to models, objects, attributes
- Create catalog of to-be-imported content (> Notion)
- Five phases of import: preparation, initial import, create new model, normalization, quality assurance
- Preparation: catalog, database setup, filter/permission considerations, tool mapping (Visio), tracking and reporting
- Initial import: detailed look at what to import; automatically or manually import, use catalog for tracking, issues when importing
- Create new models: BPMN Collaboration example, merge between different databases
- Normalization: where does content go into structure (subprocesses, catalog models, etc.), object consolidation, adapting models to "correct" layout/standards (such as object naming)
- QA: modeler QA vs. central QA, semantic checks, macros, automated workflows; release and publish, communication
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode7.
In this episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast we are changing up the format a bit - this is the first of many interviews that we will have in the future.
Our guest today is Mike Idengren, who has 20+ years of experience combining EA, BPM, and agile solution development methodologies to unleash cross-functional teams' potential to deliver on digital business transformation expectations. He is a TOGAF-certified SAFe SPC and instructor, applying "agile at scale" -- going beyond theoretical teaching, and delivering results by implementing "just enough" tools, organizational structures, and processes.
We are talking about the following topics:
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Mike's background and how he got into Agile
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(Scaled) Agile as a discipline and its "big goal"
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The layers of Scaled Agile and the roles that architects play in each layer
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The value context: improving product quality, lowering risk together, and improving sustainability.
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How to implement Scaled Agile: leadership, start small, scale
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Doing Agile in a remote environment (vs. traditional "team is in the room" approach); which tools to use and which type of (consulting) resources to bring on board
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Governance and the LACE (Lean Agile Center of Excellence)
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Mike's patent-pending "Lean Agile Blocker Index" concept
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Lean Scaled Architect's offerings
Mike can be reached by sending a note to mike@leanscaledarchitects.com and you can learn more about his firm at www.leanscaledarchitects.com.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode6.
Welcome to episode 5 of the What’s Your Baseline podcast. Today we are talking about:
- Definitions: Frameworks (structures), Methods (processes), Notations (languages), Reference Content (content)
- How to implement these? This is part of the Technical Governance implementation phase; write it down in your EA Strategy document
- Document your standards. When and how to change the standards (too often diminishes trust; org Change Mgmt / socialization is key)
- Have your method and data define/support your standards so they are "fit for purpose"
- Action-focused vs. function-focused notations
- How to run process design workshops in multiple sessions
- Geek-out over various notation examples (BPMN, DMN, EPC, UML, IDEF, ArchiMate) - observations on how they are used in real life
- Use a common structure, such as TOGAF's ADM, to train users and make finding things easier for them in the future
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode5.
Welcome to episode 4 of the What’s Your Baseline podcast. We are talking about:
- Types of architecture tools: drawing tools, implementation front ends, database-driven architecture tools
- How users see things: data-driven visualization vs. visualization-driven data (tables vs diagrams)
- Focus of architecture tools > niche vendors - your stakeholder needs drive the focus
- What to look for when selecting tools:
How do you get started (personal equipment, existing information, etc.)
Selecting the tool - what to look for: modeling, dashboards, wiki, data ingestion + insights
Functionalities of architecture tools
Deployment and cost
People
Non-functional criteria (vendor, community, change readiness, etc.)
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com, or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode4.
Welcome to episode 3 of the What’s Your Baseline podcast.
The topic of this episode is how to implement your architecture tool(s). We are talking about:
- What do people look for when buying an architecture tool?
- What is the end perspective on the architecture tool implementation?
- The importance of personas and the value proposition for them - outside-in perspective
- Four big steps of implementing an architecture tool - inside-out perspective
- Strategy: strategy definition, releases, measure success
- Technology: tool selection, tech setup, technical governance (data model, meta model, configuration, conventions), other systems and integration
- Governance: processes, organizations, org change management
- Import of existing content
- Three legs that need to be balanced: content - governance - adoption
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com, or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode3.
Welcome to episode 2 of the What’s Your Baseline podcast.
In this episode we are covering the topic of “Why BPM and EA?” and why these two topics might not be even different, but rather be the two sides of the same coin.
We are discussing the following topics:
- Terminology
- Four phases of process management
- History of EA as a practice
- How organizations practice these two topics and where the discipline moves towards to
- The merge of Strategy groups, architecture groups, and PMOs
- Capabilities as bridge between strategy and the actual execution
- Risks and benefits of capabilities
- Capability configurations as planning tool
- Case studies of retailer and a military client
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com, or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode2.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast. We're glad that you join us!
In this episode we are talking about us -your hosts Roland Woldt and J-M Erlendson- and our journeys in enterprise architecture and business process management, so that you get familiar with our voices and background.
It also covers the challenges that we've seen when clients want to stand up these capabilities, as well as "being the newbie" on a program - be it as a new employee, a new consultant, or simply just being exposed to these topics for the first time.
Lastly, we also talk about this new podcast - why we started it, what you can expect, when new episodes will be published, and a general overview of season 1.
Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com, or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.
The full show notes, including further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode1.
Have you ever been confused by jargon-y architect language? Things like "TOGAF", "BPMN", and "UML" - what do they mean, and why do they matter? Or suffered through a system implementation that had a lot of upfront planning, but ended up with scope creep?
Welcome to the What's Your Baseline podcast, where we explore these topics and more. Each episode, we’ll be diving into a topic that is relevant for you. What it is, why it’s interesting and why you should care. We’ll also share stories from the road - how to implement best practices, and their value.
Our season 1 focus is on investigating assumptions and principles, and setting yourself and your organization up for success. We'll also bring in fresh perspectives from some of our favorite thought leaders through live interviews! Join us on this bi-weekly journey starting in early August 2021 with the What’s Your Baseline podcast and companion blog at whatsyourbaseline.com.