Amazon Outstanding Book on BPM, January 3, 2003
Reviewer: Ray Ross from West Chester, PA United States

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.

Amazon I love this book and I love BPM, July 2, 2003
Reviewer: Deborah Handler from Wyoming

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.

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. For me it was an epiphany.

Amazon BPM at its best. Ignore the rest and read this., December 17, 2002
Reviewer: Steve Towers (see more about me) from United Kingdom

This is from your writers and the BPMG perspective the biggest thing to hit the process scene since 1993. If you have a vested interest in your organisations success you need to read and understand this work. I promise you that you will never look at processes in the same way again.

Relating to the business managers and practitioners this book demonstrates that BPM design and deployment go hand in hand. There is not the great gulf in bridging the 'IT divide' which caused so many failures as reengineered processes fell into the chasm. Put simply the divide itself disappears by moving the process development to the process owners.

This simple and glaringly obvious evolutionary step is now achievable as the technology is finally mature and accessible enough to integrate it as part of the process. The technology is now no longer something you do to the process after it has been designed. Should you buy? Absolutely.

Amazon Controversial yes, but BPM's "third wave" rocks, January 30, 2003 Reviewer: vincebecker from Detroit

I first came across this book as an excerpt in Darwin Magazine. It immediately hit home. Business Process Management - the third wave" is not only aimed at experienced business leaders scouting the economic horizon, its for everyone as its themes are universal--in business and in IT. The book is certainly not buzzword heavy, in fact the authors go to extreme lengths to make sure they dont talk down to non-technical readers. As they say, managing the processes of a company is about business and technology (period). Smith and Fingar have made it UNDERSTANDABLE to BUSINESS PEOPLE for the first time (imho) WHY their IT systems often let them down and what they can do about it. Appendices are provided for people who want to geek out. But how Celia can say the book is abrasive beats me. It is so friendly, but at the same time focussed and inspirational. (Peter and Howard - I love the Zen stuff). Yes, they talk about "technology gods" and "cast in concrete" data stovepipes, but that's REALITY guys, that's WHY there is a business-IT divide today and why the third wave BPM could move us all forward, whether we are on the business side of the house or the IT side. I'm an obsessive process architect. These guys have hit the nail on the head.

Its true that Smith and Fingar lament the disruptive and "painful reengineering second wave advocated by their former colleague, James Champy." (Champy was CSC, Smith is CSC, for those who dont know). Well, as I said in my comments at Darwin, it looks like the industry is finally moving on and I am simply AMAZED at the clarity of the analysis in the Reengineering Chapter as to how modern BPM systems can now DO what the reengineering guys said they wanted to but gave no solution, other than to employ expensive consultants. Its just plain SILLY for Celia to say that what Smith and Fingar hope to achieve is to "cut IT entirely out of the business change loop". That's not what they say at all. They show how IT can provide BPM capabilities so that business people are EMPOWERED to manage their own affairs. The only thing that Celia says that IS correct is that "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." As I said at Darwin, its refreshing to see processes coming back center stage, but this time with TEETH. The books controversial elements may be missed by some readers, but will be understood by those that have REALLY worked at the intersection of business and IT. Clue, read the Epilog. --- Yours truly, a frustrated (with data) business process analyst just starting to get some understanding of the potential of the third wave.

Amazon It's not going to happen...it is happening! Field Notes, January 22, 2003
Reviewer: Steven D. Olson from Madison, WI United States

Fingar and Smith are both pragmatic and prophetic in their analysis... Bottom line: this book is a great resource to understand the BPM space. Just so you all know, technology people end up loving BPM once understood and implemented -- and are more empowered than ever to impact the organizations where they work because they can focus on VALUE ADDED tasks. "Obliterating the IT/Business Divide" is not overstating it at all... If you are an IT professional, it is critical you read and understand what is being said in this book so you can proactively manage your career to be that value-added player with job security in the future. If you are coming at this from the business side...dramatic and sustainable competitive advantage is available to you as a result of BPM if you can grasp it and learn to drive it...

Amazon Excellent BPM primer, December 21, 2002
Reviewer: roymassie from Birmingham, AL United States

This is a well-written and useful book about leading edge enterprise business technology. I work in workflow systems development and I think this book provides a thorough yet practical vision of the next generation of business process systems. This book will likely launch a thousand ships with many winners among them. You do not have to be highly technical to get a lot from this book. In fact, it is written for business managers who have some sense of enterprise IT and its impact, both good and bad, in corporations. The authors rightly emphasize some of the current failings in IT and stress that much of the problem is the inflexibility of systems to adapt in the rapidly changing climate of business. Managers need to have control of the overall business processes to adjust quickly, but cannot because business processes are often "baked" into existing IT applications. The authors point to many examples in business history and in current pioneering efforts to show that managing business processes is a determinative factor of success. While this may sound obvious, the solution offered is potentially profound. Business Process Management Systems, or BPMS, are already being sold and deployed in real life environments and yielding benefits. While the authors admit that their full vision will only be realized in the decades to come, there is much that can begin today. Since the book is not highly technical, the authors do not address some of the hairier issues in systems integration (entity ontology for example) but they do outline their key assumptions such as the requirement for legacy integration (one time per system) and the pressing need for business process engineering/analysts. They also assume widespread adoption of a single process definition language. This will of course happen but probably not until after the various players try to sway the market towards their own standards. There are very good appendixes for the technical person and business manager alike. I love the book and recommend it highly. This book is short, insightful and packed with information from a variety of disciplines that are woven together to support the authors' primary assertions about IT for the coming decade(s). What is exotic today could well become a necessity tomorrow.

Amazon Missed being at the lead of the last revolution? 2nd chance!, December 19, 2002
Reviewer: Barbara J. Belon from Norwalk, CT USA

Remember reading about Codd and Date's RDB theory and wishing you had been there at the start? Most of us just read about innovations after they've occurred. Rarely do we get to take an active role. This book provides all the ingredients for those who want to get involved in what could be an extraordinary new phase of business development. Read this one now!

Other reader reactions

Move over Hammer and Champy. Thank the lord! I've just read this book and it finally comes clean about reengineering .. and re-invents it utterly. Do you guys know this book is from Computer Sciences Corporation? Hammer and Champy wrote Reengineering the Corporation while at CSC in 1993. Looks like this may be CSC's brand new 2003 process Agenda (sorry Michael, but "The Agenda" was a rehash of old style reengineering). If this third wave is real, this is going to be fun. Yours truly, a process analyst desperately seeking new things to do.

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Your book instantly hit home - I loved the bit on obliterating the gap between IT and business and every bit of the rest of it. Almost all organizations are running the impossible racing of keeping pace. Unless they have the 3rd wave capability it is not possible.

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I have just read, with great interest, an excerpt from "BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT - THE THIRD WAVE" ... To say that
I was both intellectually stimulated and personally vindicated by your work would be an absurd understatement at best.

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What I’m hearing from this fascinating book excerpt, is that we’ve finally reached the stage where the massive ERP systems that companies have painfully and expensively installed over the past ten years need to be ripped out and replaced by processes that are more organic i.e. flexible and responsive to external stimuli. That’s a prospect that should strike fear into the hearts of even the most profitable and cash-laden corporation.

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.

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