With real-time capability, analytics can actually drive process flow. Analytics can be used to automatically initiate performance-based events and dynamically manage the flow of enterprise processes

Real value comes when the BPM software extends to support actual business data managed by the system

Real-time analytics achieve their true potential and are especially powerful when coupled with an integrated rules engine.

I say no. Most data is "at rest". Streaming typically corresponds to frequent state changes of the thing the data represents and of course, someone/thing cares to know about the data (thing) as it looks right now

You can find my twitter posts at twitter.com/jamet123 and Brenda's at twitter.com/bmichelson

• You must take action for intelligence to be useful
• You must track and analyze outcomes to understand what worked
• Your results must influence the next actions you take so that you can learn

To participate please go to: surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=sZ1_2fndMD1QnCLgWQfR_2bsBw_3d_3d

The goal of the survey is to give an overview of the kind of methods and tools actually used for the development of rule-based systems (with a focus on verification and validation). It also tries to identify some of the challenges facing rule-base development. The results of the survey will be publicly available. Drop him a note or enter your email address at the end of the survey to have them sent to you. The results will also be accessible on the website vzach.de/blog/ and I will likely blog about them too.

<Apologies for cross-posting to all 3 blogs>

Human-centric business process management (BPM) has become the product and service differentiator. The topic now captures substantial mindshare and market share in the human-centric BPM space as leading vendors have strengthened their human-centric business processes. The BPM and Workflow Handbook spotlight this year examines challenges in human-driven workflow and its integration across the enterprise.

Download the Digital Edition to read immediately (no shipping charges) or order the Print Edition and download four chapters to start reading immediately. Either way you qualify for 30% pre-launch discount.

Pay only $66.50 with the Pre-Launch 30% discount. Put 2008 in the discount code box on checkout for either the PRINT or DIGITAL Editions.

Contents here: Easy-to-read chapters on Tips and Pitfalls when implementing your first BPM project and Step by Step SOA. Many case studies with important information directly applicable to your own projects.Order the PRINT Edition and get the link to download FOUR important chapters and start reading immediately.

The 2008 BPM and Workflow Handbook, published by Future Strategies Inc., in collaboration with WfMC will be launched April 21st, 2008 at Architecture & Process in Washington DC.

John Rymer of Forrester, one of my favorite analysts, is speaking on dynamic business applications, a really interesting area and there are a number of sessions on detecting, managing and controlling fraud from internal and external threats. The growing array of regulations - Basel II and others - are covered so you can grow through your response to regulation not collapse under its weight and scoring, of course, will get a thorough working over so you won't be confused about the benefits and limitations of scoring.

I will be there blogging and I want to meet you. I am offering a discount for readers - just enter the discount code SFJT when you register and get the unlimited registration for just $1,345. This is a great deal! You can register here and get more information on the event here. I highly recommend the show and I hope to see you there.

The second show is the all-new Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) Summit of which I am a co-chair (with my business partner and co-author, Neil Raden). This show is running October 26-30 alongside the established Business Rules Forum and will be show casing case studies on using decision management for competitive advantage, how to compete with analytic decision-making, how decision services enhance SOA and much more. Registration is not open yet but you can put yourself on the mailing list here. This is the first large-scale conference with a decision management theme and we are assembling a great set of tutorials (SOA, agile, business rules, data mining, decision management and optimization among others) and speakers. Look for me to blog more about this in the coming months but get on that mailing list now.

Their flight management dashboard tracks near real-time events (every minute) and stores them in data warehouse which then drives a dashboard for a hub showing “red zone” flights - more than 15 minute delay. For each flight showed map of flight arrivals, how long the connections had and how many of the people trying to make each flight were profitable customers v less profitable. Delivered to the director of operations so they could do their best to fix things e.g. by providing a cart to make the connection work. Use of information is critical - timeliness - but also had to make people/organizational changes to ACT on the data.

Firstly he shows far fewer iterations based on changes to the rules only than I think it is realistic. Many of the change iterations for an application built this way would be rules-based rather than specification- or process-based. I am sure he did this just to show the various types of iteration but I worry it is misleading. You should get few iterations based on changed specifications, more based on process changes and most based on rules changes. Every scenario I think about works this way - changes in genuine requirements is slowest, process changes slower and rules changes most frequent.

Secondly, as regular readers know, I believe you need to focus on the decisions (the diamonds) within processes and use business rules to manage those rather than simply talking about the rules within a process. I think Jerome believes this too but it does not really come up in his post.

Remember, by the way, that rules are not requirements and that agility is more complex than just making it easy to change a process definition.

When a business user gains insights that flag a business performance problem, some kind of action will typically need to be taken in order to address the problem. Often, the action may involve invoking a business process. If this is difficult to achieve, then there is often less value to the insight.(my emphasis)

To make "BI" mainstream would mean that everyone in an organization - down to the people paid minimum wage at the front line - are making better decisions thanks to the understanding an organization has of its data. Indeed, it should go further and ensure that the machines that deal with customers (ATMs, Kiosks,websites) can also use this insight. Yet visualization, in-memory analytics and search integrated with analytics do not enable this - in fact they just make old-style BI prettier or faster. SOA and SaaS are more interesting as they enable decision services but they are still not enough. To make "BI" mainstream it must change from BI as reporting to something more decision-centric - it must focus analytic insight on the making of decisions in software not just in people's heads. This takes rules, predictive analytics, data mining and decision management not more "BI".