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

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    1. Architecture / BPM is not about the topics at hand (apps, processes, etc.) it is about people and how people interact with each other    2. When measuring architecture, make things SMART    3. Process Mining is the “next hot thing”, but it is not all and other, older process improvement methods still have their place    4. Process and Task Mining can’t shotgun a Solution How to get your arms around (some of) the people aspects    5. There is a new interest in “Process” while “EA” is still stuck in technology    6. We have a responsibility to enable the next generation of BPM and EA    7. Enablement must include “why”    8. 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    9. We need to rethink the role of “The Office”    10. 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.