Like business process management itself, this book was born of
necessity and grew in the telling. The third wave of business process management was conceived in response to the chaos companies find around them as their position themselves for 21st-century competition.
This is primarily a book for business people, but we do not shy away from technology topics. Anyone will tell you that attempting to address a business and technical audience in the same book is a tough challenge. But because the management of a company's business processes is inseparably about both business and technology, we took on the challenge. Although it has become commonplace to blame the "Business-IT Divide" for the ills of failed projects that depend upon complex technology, this book sets out an alternative theory and a pragmatic approach to business innovation and change.

A message that we emphasize throughout is that the last decade's reengineering mantra--"Don't automate, obliterate"--has given way to a deep respect for, and an effective means of, leveraging existing busi-ness and technology assets. This opportunity arises only now because it is only recently that methods and technology have become available to fully enable process management in the sense defined here. If the success of data management as the foundation for the vast majority of business software in use today is anything to go by, then, with the third wave of business process management, we are in for the ride of our lives.

Many trends have converged on the third wave of business process management, workflow management, business process modeling, quality management, business reengineering, change management and distributed computing, to name but a few. But there was a vital and missing ingredient. This book explains the nature of that ingredient and what it portends for all companies and the IT industry. We are confident that you and your company will profit from the ideas and information we present. Read it in conjunction with other "management" books, for while they offer business advice, we offer the means to implement both their suggestions and your business instincts.

We gratefully acknowledge many colleagues who influenced, shaped, supported and otherwise contributed to this book, particularly those at Computer Sciences Corporation, the Business Process Man-agement Initiative (BPMI.org) and the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC):

Adrian Apthorp, Assaf Arkin, Jeanne Baker, Colin Brayton, Ron Brown, David Butler, Lynette Ferrara, Layna Fischer, Ismaël Ghalimi, Nigel Green, John Hamilton, Francis Hayden, Phil Heywood, David Hollingsworth, Scottie Jacob, Bill Koff, Lem Lasher, Stan Lepeak, Brian Maizlish, Mike Marin, Doug Neal, Bob Olivier, Charles Plesums, Matthew Pryor, Jon Pyke, Robert Reti, Joe Rosenbaum, Malcolm Rudrum, Jerry Scott, Chrysogon Smith, Gillian Taylor, Simon Torrance, Stephen White and Gary Williams.

The BPMI.org and the WfMC develop mission-critical methodology and standards for business process representation and manipulation. Members represent industry leaders in the fields of business process reengineering, workflow and process management, enterprise and application integration, business collaboration and transactions, process discovery and modeling, process analysis and simulation, process outsourcing, programming using processes, business rules management and Web services.

Howard Smith
Peter Fingar
September 2002

Excerpts from Business Process Management: The Third Wave, Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, ISBN 0-929652-33-9 Off-press November 2002, Meghan-Kiffer Press