What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

Bernd Rücker, a process automation expert, shares insights on using BPMN for orchestration, differences between process automation and orchestration, and automation paradigms for modern architectures. The podcast also covers unconventional career paths, transitioning to value-based fees, and optimizing automation tools for process complexity.

Topics in this podcast include customer mining, processes in the ecosystem, process mining for sustainability, and process mining for ESG. The discussion delves into the integration of customer behavior tracking with process mining, ecosystem analysis, and future applications for ethical business practices.

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.

It is interesting to see how a "fringe idea" became mainstream within just a few years and everyone of us is using the outcome of it in our daily lives (mostly without knowing it - or have you thought what runs your car radio or the datacenter of your preferred search engine?). But another aspect that still has to gain traction of the Open Source movement is the cultural aspect. How do you develop a SW that is used by billions of people in an all volunteer organization? The key ingredient for this is to build a lively community and develop a culture that is a win-win for everyone involved. Something that I don't see in every organization (unfortunately). In this episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast we speak with Avi Ghosh, who has more than a decade of experience from within OpenSource companies. Avi is currently a senior Global leader at MariaDB championing the company’s industry leading database services offering, SkyServices. Prior to his time at MariaDB, Avi was responsible for all commercial Red Hat Consulting in North America's Oil & Gas / Energy Vertical, formerly serving in a similar capacity to the company’s South Central & Upper Midwest strategic customers. Possessing over 17 years of hands-on delivery experience, Avi has lead several Fortune 50 organizations in embracing best-in-class, specialized, innovative solutions across the enterprise with an open source mindset. His passion as a technologist and servant leader has helped him in his mission to support customers with complex transformational problems- all backed by measurable metrics, open source data design and development standards, and AGILE open organization principles. All of Avi’s years of insight and study have lead him towards one definitive outcome: the culture of open source is a sure-fire way to ensure adoption follows any change in an organization. He challenges all technical thought leaders to celebrate the value (and power) of community- and to consider the fundamentally important paradigm shift open source ideals can bring to their organization. We are talking about these topics: What is OpenSource and the freedoms that come with it? Why should organizations care? Who owns co-developed OpenSource software? Why do people contribute to OpenSource projects and how do these projects work? What are the implications of doing things the "OpenSource way"? What is the future of OpenSource? You can find Avi on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avigh0sh/. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode29.

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.