Investments in formalized BPM training your business staff can yield higher returns than investing in additional formal training for your IT staff. Why? Two reasons:
1. Formal learning methods have a negative or inverse relationship to competence:*
While IT staffers generally understand technology principles well enough to absorb new developments into their repertoire without formal training, business staffers rarely have the background necessary to quickly and informally grasp the full implications of a new technology development such as Business Process Management.
2. Understanding of the SDLC process is asymmetric:
Most IT staffers have a strong understanding of the software development lifecycle as employed in the enterprise—they live within the ecosystem defined by that lifecycle. On the other hand, operations staff is only rarely exposed to the SDLC process—their daily lives being dictated by the ebb and flow of the operational processes not by the processes of IT solution creation. With BPM and BRE technologies transforming both the pace of change and the roles and responsibilities of solution deployment, a well-informed business partner is more important than ever in squeezing value from IT investment. By training business stakeholders to better fulfill their expanding roles in the SDLC process, organizations create a stronger partnership between IT providers and Business consumers. The improved partnership creates a virtuous cycle which reduces uncertainty in projects and increases the translation fidelity between business need and IT solution.
Making business leaders and subject matter experts more fully conversant in the power of BPM, businesses can harness their creativity and experience to create more effective requirements—requirements that improve operations, reduce costs, and expand the business.
*Source: Altus Learning Systems, presentation to Learning Economics Group Nov. 17, 2004
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