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 What’s Your Baseline Podcast we talk about:

• Mergers & Acquisitions (and why they won’t stop in 2025)
• The use cases that we’ve seen the most
• Professional lessons learned
• Personal lessons learned
• Content creation in general, and What’s Your Baseline? specifically
• Other projects, like J-M’s BPM Walks or Roland’s The Digital Formula podcast
• Our outlook on 2025 for the industry and our podcast
• Roland’s “big announcement” and the request for people who like to help

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Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 is it done, what are the outcomes that one can align to, etc. In the second episode, which will be out on the Strateg-ish channel soon, we discuss the opposite side of this: what can strategists expect and what do they have to know when they are doing their work and expect it to be implemented.

Both, Dan and Craig, have a background in strategy and worked in various consulting organizations and are now working in this field at Google.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:

• Dan's and Craig's backgrounds
• What is "strategy" anyway (definition)
• How can it be developed in rapid-pace organizations?
• The process of strategy development
• The kind of artifacts that one can expect as an outcome of the development
• The typical timeframe of a strategy development project

Craig and Dan can be found on LinkedIn (of course) and their "Strategish" podcast can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3h5l2eefFGb9YtPvUVnsDn?si=f8c690a4b197408a.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 Michael Schank (again) who has worked in that space in the financial industry for years.

Michael is a distinguished thought leader and executive, specializing in addressing Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence challenges through his innovative, process-based framework. With over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services industry, he has primarily served as a management consultant, empowering clients with forward-thinking solutions in technology, process, and risk and spearheading large-scale business and digital transformations. Michael brings a powerful combination of superior sales and delivery skills, having personally sold and delivered over $100M in consulting services.
He is the author of the book, ‘Digital Transformation Success,’ in which he introduces his groundbreaking Process Inventory framework. This promises to be a transformative approach to achieving success in the digital era, unlocking unprecedented levels of operational efficiency and strategic alignment.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:

• Michael’s background
• Three lines of defense in risk management
• Integrated, business-oriented risk management
• How to create the foundation for this and integrate with performance data
• Involved teams and roles
• Why risk programs fail and teams struggle
• How to set up a program for success
• How AI and Digital Twins can help with the leg work

Michael can be found on LinkedIn (of course) and on his website at https://www.processinventory.com/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 step back in the maturity of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture. And given the fact that the maturity was never high to start with, this is not a good development.
To help a bit in this situation J-M and I talk about EA use cases to give you some direction what you can do when you decide that this is a capability that you want to implement in your organization.

In this episode of the What's Your Baseline Podcast we talk about:

• Short (-ish) review of Episode 70 "BPM Use Cases"
• Recap of Episode 70 to set the context
• App/IT portfolio mgmt / rationalization
• Roadmapping
• Project portfolio mgmt / rationalization (looking at capabilities)
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Operational resilience and disaster recovery
• Strategy
• Roles of architects

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 & Acquisitions and not only talk about the current example, but also more generally about ownership models, how M&A comes together, and what that means for the involved organizations.

Our first guest doesn't need an introduction since he has been on the show already: Luca de Risi. Luca is Mega’s Chief Executive Officer and he held various leadership positions at the firm before that, like, being the country manager for the APAC business while being located in Singapore, or as Business Development Executive in the United States. He started his career as an internal auditor for a major French car maker before joining Mega.

Our second guest is Nick Reed, the Chief Strategy Officer of BizzDesign. He is a senior software and services leader with a successful track record of building and leading teams in high growth software technology companies. Strategy development and execution, M&A, value proposition development, strategic partnerships and analyst relations. Nick builds long term relationships with customers, with a relentless focus on business value and customer success and is a strong cross-functional team player, connecting the dots across sales, marketing, product, services and customer success for strategic initiatives.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:

• Luca’s and Nick’s backgrounds
• Forms of ownership and the impact on an organization’s strategy
• What are the reasons (and timing) to acquire another organization
• Criteria to check if you are a match
• Impact of a merger on customers and products
• What is the process of mergers and acquisitions
• What is the impact on the organization(s)?
• How is the product strategy affected?

Luca and Nick can be reached on LinkedIn. More detailed information about the merger is available here: https://bizzdesign.com/bizzdesign-merger-enterprise-transformation/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 him, he is not only working in the BPM space for decades but is also the co-host of the BPM360 Podcast, being recognized as a Top 50 voice in operational excellence by the PEX / Process Excellence Network in 2023, and he writes a newsletter on LinkedIn.

Our second guest is Russell Gomersall, who is the other co-host of the BPM360 Podcast and is a Senior Partner at bpExperts GmbH. His expertise lies in developing and applying the BusinessFlows-MetamodeI, bpExperts proprietary method for process-centric business transformations, and leading the TechLab, their competence center for technology-driven process optimization. Russell also act as the Chief Cheerleader and Value Owner of Passion, one of his core values, and fosters a culture of enthusiasm, engagement, and collaboration among bpExpert's team and customers.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about (and I am not sure if we used all of the misconceptions below, but so be it):

• Russell's and Caspar's backgrounds
• Architecture Usage
• Projects
• What is all the fuzz about this stuff?
• How to use the tools / the discipline
• Skills

Caspar is easy to reach on LinkedIn and also has a website that contains his writings (and his newsletter "Process Extraordinaire Weekly" on LinkedIn here). Russel can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellgomersall/.

You can find their podcast BPM360 wherever you get your podcasts or on their website: https://www.bpm360podcast.com/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 business analysis, project management, and process improvement. He is a Senior Product Manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), one of the world's leading cancer research and treatment centers.

Mike has earned multiple certifications in Business Benefits Realization, Change Management, Business & Enterprise Architecture, and Financial Literacy, and is a proficient thought leader in areas of strategy development and cross functional leadership.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:

• Mike's background
• Business Architecture - how the BA Guild defines it and how it relates to other frameworks and concepts
• Business architecture artifacts as the value contribution to make the connection to the strategy/business model
• How Mike applied BA to a new product in his day job at MSKCC
• How BA provides the context when defining new projects or programs (for products, but also otherwise)
• How to keep structures up-to-date when everything is a project

To reach out to Mike via LinkedIn have a look here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-decamp-cba%C2%AE-02bb6b2/

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

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 with Olaf Geyer about this topic. Olaf is a very experienced BPM consultant and held multiple leadership roles in the past, such as Consulting Director, Customer Success Director, or leading the Consulting Team for the Americas at one BPM software vendor.

These days he is working in the professional services organization at Software AG and is focussing on Process Mining and the consulting methodology that his team uses when working with clients. The Process Mining Readiness Assessment is one of the “products” that came out of that work.

In this episode of the podcast we are talking about:

• Olaf’s background (and the long history we are sharing at two employers)
• Why doing a Process Mining Readiness activity – what are the experiences that Olaf has made in the past that led to the development of the offering?
• Criteria for picking the right process as the first Process Mining project
• Objectives for the first project and how it fits into the “bigger picture”
• Data readiness as critical factor supporting a goal-oriented Process Mining
• What is goal-based / hypothesis-based Process Mining?
• What is the result of the Process Mining Readiness Assessment and what do you do with it?

Olaf can be reached on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ogeyer/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.