Monday, September 18, 2006

Revisiting BPM Implementation Challenges

Just after we had started our BPM implementation in December 2005, I had written a blog entry - Challenges of Implementing BPM system - listing all our major challenges. They were:
- Change Management; Change from paper to image based processing
- Managing expectations of the users and top management
- Commitment of resources to the project
- Integration of BPM system with back-office systems
- Image Migration

I thought if we managed these challenges well; we were home. Till about a fortnight back we were on schedule to go-live in the last week of September. And then Murphy's law hit us. First the adapters which had worked fine in UT environment failed to run as expected in our Model Office Testing (MOT) environment and then the MOT environment crashed forcing us to postpone our go-live date by almost a month.

Pondering over this sudden development, I wondered whether could we have avoided this delay. Well, may be yes. Certailnly, we could have done something to prevent this.

The BPM system that we are implementing is the 3rd or 4th implementation globally after the software has been migrated to comply with J2EE & BPM standards such as BPELby the software vendor. The implementation partner although has had a long relationship with the software provider, is implementing the new version of the software for the 1st time.

The lesson: In case you are dealing with new and cutting edge technologies involve very tightly the provider of the software in the project. We now have an experienced consultant from the software vendor working on-site. We are also getting our software architecture, design and implementation configuration vetted by the software vendor.

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