What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

In many minds, legacy is “everything that works”. And even if that is not always true, many organizations look at their legacy systems and get a headache. How do you replace or update a set of systems that have served you so well over years or decades?

That is why we are speaking with our guest Kastin Deal about legacy modernization in this episode.

With over 8 years at Hitachi Rail, Kastin's expertise lies in spearheadin...

Having the “Oracle of BPM” on the show? Yes, please.
Even though our guest, Zbigniew Misiak, denies that, the role he is playing is an important one for our little industry. He is one of the few who bring together the different ideas and trends that are hot every year. We were genuinely interested in speaking with him about what he learned over the years and where he sees the ship sailing. And on top of it, he turned around the role...

We have spoken about Task Mining in the podcast before (see the “Additional information” section in the full show notes), but I haven't seen a lot of adoption of this technology in organizations — for multiple reasons that we will discuss.

However, when we got into contact with Tuhin Chakraborty from Mimica, we could not say “no” to speaking with him about their AI-driven approach to Task Mining.

Tuhin grew up in the Bay Area, which ...

BPM is important because everything that we do in organizations are processes.
So, why don't we agree on a common nomenclature, and educate people with a standardized curriculum? Oh, it is because the players have a vested interested in coming up with “the next best thing” and selling it to your customers?

But there is the need for a basic training for everyone (?) in an organization about process management, and the guest in this ep...

We are trying something new here at What's Your Baseline? — J-M turns his focus on investigative journalism and starts asking the “hard questions” (and not just the softballs that I get from him at other times) :-)
But in all seriousness — this episode of the podcast is a conversation between the two of us, while I play the guest role and did not cheat and did not look into our Notion outline while recording.
So, what is ...

I was late to the game when I got exposed to the concept of OKRs a few years ago. Before that, I thought that it was just another term for setting objectives, and you can dump a million of those onto your people.
But there is a different approach, a much gentler approach to OKRs, that makes more sense to me now. And because I found that mental change so interesting, I was excited when Ben Lamorte reached out to me and asked if he co...

One misconception that many people have is that EA is just “that IT stuff”. Nothing is more false than that.

If you *really* look at an enterprise, you will see that a full architecture encompasses all layers from strategy through business (processes, risks, orgs, etc.) to data, apps, and technology.
But the real benefit is that you can create a line of sight through all these layers. This will help you not only to identify the a...

Why are so many organizations out there that have not discovered BPM (and in extension “architecture”) as something that can help their business problems, and also set the foundation for future growth?
Some reasons might lie in the niche characteristics (to avoid saying “nerdy”) of BPM and the lack of shared community and branding. That is why we invited our current guest to the podcast.

Hanneke's motto is to “Embrace the C...

Welcome back to a new year and Season 8 of the What's Your Baseline Podcast, and we are starting with an episode that closes the loop with two other episodes (links below): “Process Mining Analysis” and “Lean and Process Mining”.

Today we are talking about Process Analysis in general, and we are thinking of the new business analyst especially, who doesn't know where to start or does not have a Process Mining tool at his/her dispos...

Hey, this is Roland from the What's Your Baseline? Podcast and J.M. was also happy to be here.

Yeah. We're looking forward to our next season, season eight of the What's Your Baseline podcast. Who believes that?

So, J.M. Tell me, what's in stock for season eight?

Well, we've listened to you. You've left us amazing feedback all over the internet, and we're going to make things shorter, snappier, more visual and most importantly fo...

The end is near … no, not what you are thinking.

2024 comes to a close in about two weeks, and we also end Season 7 of the podcast. And a lot has happened — in the industry, with tools, changes in companies and the life of people in our small community.

Tune in to learn about our thoughts about what we’ve seen in the last year and an outlook for 2025. And there is also an interesting announcement in it 😉

In this episode of the Wha...

How do you bridge the gaps between Strategy and Execution, and how do you evolve execution as strategy pivots? That are the questions that are the topic of our podcast this week - the first of two episodes of a collaboration with the "Strateg-ish" podcast, run by our friends Craig Overmars and Dan Marquez, who has been a guest on our show before.

This episode looks at strategy with the perspective that an architect might have - how...

GRC — three letters that scare a lot of people. So much that they like to avoid thinking of risks and compliance at all.
But don’t be afraid (quite the opposite), GRC can not only be an addition to your artifacts to make them better, they can also benefit to your program by “having the ear” of influential people in your organization … who, by coincidence, can generate budget out of nowhere, it seems.

And we are happy to welcome Mich...

I know that this might be a cultural issue, but I don't see a lot of planning when it comes to projects anymore. Everything is "Agile" and I don't see that things are seen through that often.
Which is bad, because one of the promises of EA (and BPM) is that someone understands how things are wired up and what to change, so that you accomplish your objective - which should always be business-driven FWIW.
From my perspective this is a ...

There was a big splash in the Enterprise Architecture tool market a few weeks ago - BizzDesign announced that they will merge with Mega and an unnamed third party (which we will learn about in Q4 soon, but cannot name here at this time). But why these two (three) players and why now?

Since we know some people in the industry, I reached out to Luca de Risi from Mega and we quickly came up with the idea of doing a show about Mergers ...

Oh, why do I need a special EA/BPM tool? I am managing my apps in a spreadsheet just fine. That is one of the misconceptions that I have heard over the last twenty-something years of me helping clients to stand up practices and increase their EA/BPM maturity. And there are tons more of those ...

Well, our first guest doesn't need an introduction since he has been on the show already: Caspar Jans. But for those of you who don't know...

Do you need Business Architects when creating a new product? Isn't that a bit redundant when you have highly-paid Product Managers already? Or is there an overlap between the two that will create a better product for the end users, but also for the organization because they can better support it and it is aligned with the underlying process.

Our guest this week is Mike DeCamp, who has over 15 years of professional experience in bus...

A lot of folks who are beginning with Process Mining see this as a technical or academic exercise and just want to know “how things works”.
But what is that worth? You need to be able to implement changes based on your analysis. Otherwise, the exercise has no value IMHO (besides if it is a Proof-of-Concept in a sales situation, but even then you should choose a process that you get some actionable insights from).

We are speaking wit...

Some organizations seem to perform better, create results faster, and the people in those organizations seem to have fun on top if this? But how can that be when you are currently stretched in all directions and don't know how to get stuff done?

In this episode we are talking with Amy Levine, who is an expert in neuroscience and how it impacts high-performance teams and the leaders (and their leadership style). Science to the rescu...