Rating: 
Summary: Revenge of the non-technical business manager
Review: "Business Process Management - the third wave" is aimed at experienced business leaders scouting the economic horizon. The book is buzzword heavy and assumes a great deal of prior knowledge. Terms like lambda calculus, process calculi, PKI, six sigma and BPML are scattered throughout and not generally explained. The authors make a rather poor attempt at explaining Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), which lies at the heart of BPM (BPML is similar in format to XML and generates flowcharts), but otherwise you're on your own.The overall tone of the book is abrasive. Smith and Fingar rail against "technology gods" and "cast in concrete" data stovepipes. They lament the disruptive and "painful reengineering" second wave advocated by their former colleague, James Champy. They see the main differentiator of BPM as being its ability to connect outwards to partner businesses. What Smith and Fingar hope to achieve with business process engineering is to cut IT entirely out of the business change loop. They envisage being able to completely describe all business processes in BPML diagrams - down to the "Coke" machine's inputs (coins) and outputs (cans of soda). This way, business managers need never deal with IT folk again, and they can outsource entire processes by exposing the relevant sections of BPML to subcontractors. It's truly hard to tell from the book how much of this is blue sky and how much is part of the trend already underway. Either way it behooves anyone who might be in a position to benefit from BPM -- or to get trampled by the BPM steamroller -- to familiarize themselves with the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Corp 3000 Idea Starter
Review: ... Aimed at university students, those in business and industry, as well as consulting firms, 'Business Process Management' (BPM) provides answers to achieving operations excellence based upon the best from engineering, computer science and executive management/consulting/practice. The entertaining and confidently written, content-rich, adequately illustrated, balanced (business: IT) chapters span:
>The next 50 years- forecasting and inevitable uptake of business process management;
>A walk over the hill- taking a helicopter view of functional IT stovepipes shackling business;
>Enterprise business processes- current status, many processes, collaboration, excellence, user-led demand;
>Business process management- lessons learned, from modeling to management;
>Reegineering reengineering- critique of the past (including Davenport, Hammer/Champy);
>Business process outsourcing- new ways to outsource;
>Management theory, ROI and beyond- six sigma, change as a process;
>Tomorrows interview in BPM3.0 magazine- converting the jargon into digestible meaningful chunks; and
>An appendix containing- the language of process; BPM systems; theoretical foundations of BPM; lessons learned from early adopters; and a new MBA curriculum. Book Strengths:
>condensed review/viewpoint of literally 100s of major transformation approaches over last 2 decades
>endorsed by credible organizations including BPML.org and WfMC
>harsh yet (often) justified criticism of IT industry, and the usefulness of their products in enabling competitive advantage
>BPM based upon main open standards approaches (BPML, UML, SCOR, XML, webservices etc.);
>synergetic (overall enterprise) optimization rather than functional silos
>vision of massively scaleable, fault tolerant, data transaction processing platform linking 'fuzzy-boundary' enterprise with suppliers and customer Book Weaknesses :
>little supporting evidence to base (any) project upon beyond 29 outline paragraphs of 'lessons from early adopters' in appendices
>reads somewhat like a literature-research thesis based upon analysts and general business press (or with a different perspective) a sales brochure for new consulting services Overall: a very worthwhile addition as a strategic corporate workshop discussion starter; or supplemental materials for graduate students.
Rating:
Summary: Corp 3000 Idea Starter
Review: ... Aimed at university students, those in business and industry, as well as consulting firms, �Business Process Management� (BPM) provides answers to achieving operations excellence based upon the best from engineering, computer science and executive management/consulting/practice. The entertaining and confidently written, content-rich, adequately illustrated, balanced (business: IT) chapters span:
>The next 50 years- forecasting and inevitable uptake of business process management;
>A walk over the hill- taking a helicopter view of functional IT stovepipes shackling business;
>Enterprise business processes- current status, many processes, collaboration, excellence, user-led demand;
>Business process management- lessons learned, from modeling to management;
>Reegineering reengineering- critique of the past (including Davenport, Hammer/Champy);
>Business process outsourcing- new ways to outsource;
>Management theory, ROI and beyond- six sigma, change as a process;
>Tomorrows interview in BPM3.0 magazine- converting the jargon into digestible meaningful chunks; and
>An appendix containing- the language of process; BPM systems; theoretical foundations of BPM; lessons learned from early adopters; and a new MBA curriculum. Book Strengths:
>condensed review/viewpoint of literally 100s of major transformation approaches over last 2 decades
>endorsed by credible organizations including BPML.org and WfMC
>harsh yet (often) justified criticism of IT industry, and the usefulness of their products in enabling competitive advantage
>BPM based upon main open standards approaches (BPML, UML, SCOR, XML, webservices etc.);
>synergetic (overall enterprise) optimization rather than functional silos
>vision of massively scaleable, fault tolerant, data transaction processing platform linking �fuzzy-boundary� enterprise with suppliers and customer Book Weaknesses :
>little supporting evidence to base (any) project upon beyond 29 outline paragraphs of �lessons from early adopters� in appendices
>reads somewhat like a literature-research thesis based upon analysts and general business press (or with a different perspective) a sales brochure for new consulting services Overall: a very worthwhile addition as a strategic corporate workshop discussion starter; or supplemental materials for graduate students.
Rating: 
Summary: Sales Brochure
Review: Attention management! If you find any employee reading this book get them into reality training immediately, else they may unintentionally ruin your business. This book converges an amazing number of buzz words into an overly long sales brochure that lacks substance, rationale or proof regarding the benefits of BPM. Dangerously (for you) it ignores the threats of BPM. Similar to BPM's three predecessors COBOL, CIM, and BPR, this "third wave" claims that a higher order of computerized logic is the key to continual adaptation for maximizing customer value. Unfortunately (for you) it does not clarify how value is to be created also for investors, suppliers and employees. Further, in declaring "business is process" it potentially diverts your employees from leveraging your only strategic asset --- employee learning and collaboration. Thirdly, while extolling the benefits of highly malleable processes, it ignores the problem of managing multiple changes while ensuring enterprise integrity --- a critical problem addressed by the industrial process control industry more than three decades ago. The technology of BPM has potential benefit if prudently applied with foreknowledge of its limitations and risks (not everything that can be programmed needs to be). This book does not address prudent application, BPM limitations nor risks of highly malleable processes. BPM may or may not be beneficial for your business. This book is not.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of time
Review: BPM is solution for all problem businesses facing today: from Snow White animation to unknown changes of next 50 years -- that's the description, comments, history reivew and the coclusion from Chapter one to Chapter nine. The "why" and "how" are missed. Too bad.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book on BPM
Review: Business Process Management will have a revolutionary effect on business and computing over the next three to five years. In this well-written book, Howard Smith and Peter Fengar clearly explain why the third wave of Business Process Management is a fundamentally new approach to business management, where we are currently in its evolution, how we got to this point, and what their vision is for the future. Make no mistake; companies that move to a BPM approach will gain agility and efficiency that quickly separates them from the competition. Leading companies are among the early adopters. GE is well along in digitizing their processes, PeopleSoft has moved to the "Real-time Enterprise," and Aventis is moving to the networked enterprise. Business Process Management will greatly facilitate application integration, as well as the development of composite applications. The authors point out how BPM complements Best Practices and Six Sigma. Six Sigma, for example, focuses on increasing profitability by focusing on an entire process. BPM will allow Six Sigma project teams to model the entire process, run simulations, and monitor real-time process data. I highly recommend the book and look forward to more about BPM from the authors.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book on BPM
Review: Business Process Management will have a revolutionary effect on business and computing over the next three to five years. The authors clearly describe why Business Process Management is a fundamentally new approach to business management, how we got to this point, and what the vision is for the future. Make no mistake companies that move to BPM will gain agility and efficiencies that quickly separate them from the competition. BPM will greatly facilitate application integration and the development of composite applications. The authors point out how BPM complements Best Practices and Six Sigma. I highly recommend the book and look forward to more about Business Process Management from the authors.
Rating: 
Summary: A weak book on an important topic
Review: Don't buy this book.
It is exceptionally badly written and contains too much empty hype. It has very little real content except re-warming decade or century old ideas on process engineering.
I am really disappointed with this product.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book and I love BPM
Review: I absolutely love this book. Why? Quite simply, Smith and Fingar have defined business AND IT for the next years. They claim 50y, well, I would say 20, but who cares! This is the THE book that touches all of today's endemic problems in IT and how to resolve them based on what has become the preoccupation by management today, Process Re-Design and Improvement. The authors explain the past, present and future of this topic, and, for the first time in print (to my knowledge - correct me if wrong) a thorough examination of why reengineering failed to deliver and why BPM is now unifying business practice AND IT practice to support a simpler method for aligning business and IT. But this is not the only reason, or even the most important reason, I love the book. It's the colourful way the story is told and the little quotes at the front of each chapter, mostly Zen inspired, which tell their own story (if you know the work of the authors of those quotes, and me being a Systems Thinking Bigot .... well ... I do). I KNOW we'll heard this BPM thing before, but this is the 3rd reason I love the book. It's not theory. It's real. I checked. (been doing BPM ... that's "Business", "Process", "Management" btw ... for years, like many of us I suspect) Final point, I know reviews should help people decide who should read this. Difficult to say in this case. Its a business book, and its about technology. Its about technology (BPM) that business people need to know about, because its technology that supports what they do, but some in business may say, I'm sick of technology, and that's fine .... except when something like this book happens. For me it was an epiphany. One criticism. Hurray up and get the second "third wave" book done. There is mention of this in the covers but I've seen nothing about it around the Web.
Rating:
Summary: Surf's Up!
Review: I enjoyed reading Smith and Fingar's book; it's an easy-to-digest overview of BPM trends. It's helpful for developing a perspective on the processes that are key to your business. In terms of technologies for creating BPM solutions in 2003, the "Third Wave" hasn't quite reached the shore. Tools for orchestrating information and transactions across many complex internal and external systems exist, but are not quick, easy, or inexpensive to integrate and deploy. Nevertheless, the authors correctly point out that growing adoption of standards, web services, portals, XML, BPML, and new software is coming along quickly and will empower business managers, helping them easily manage and tailor processes, and improve business decisions with simulation.
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