Business Process Management 3rd Edition

Thanks for the great deals will check back for future school books.

Jeston and Nelis have produced a comprehensive textbook and guide to BPM - now in its third edition - that actually offers a useful combination of theory and practical guidance, along with enough case studies that you can find something to bolster your case to reluctant management.I've worked as an IT consultant for years, sometimes doing large strategy-to-implementation BPM projects (as part of a team) and sometimes just doing the technical stuff that falls in the middle of the framework. I've even taught Information Engineering, the James Martin version of part of BPM.This book, while subject to the usual many-words-for-simple-concepts disease, in fact does stick to what is actually useful and necessary for BPM implementations. It's hard to say much specific about the book, because it covers a huge topic very well. The graphic layout is a bit fussy, with almost every bit of text or diagram set off in a different color or with a different format, or something. Perhaps that helps students find things, but it gets annoying for this old fogey.While the authors offer an execution framework, they accommodate other standard frameworks (Six Sigma, etc). And they include plenty of material about the hard parts - managing change, getting sponsors, not running out of steam, and all those nontechnical aspects that are vital.If you're looking for a particular technique and how to implement it, the table of contents and index help you find it - and there's enough coverage that you can do a reasonable job with it.The BPM INSIGHT paragraphs were annoying - they verged on the obvious. For example: "The most capable people are quite heavily booked, and managers are tempted to place the available, rather than the capable people on projects as Subject Matter Experts. This seriously limits the potential to innovate, especially in transformation projects." Nice to know, on the offchance you didn't know it from your first experience with any such project. No solution is offered, mostly because there isn't one that doesn't involve more political capital than someone reading this book is likely to have. Still, it might be useful to show to some boss, to back up your opinion on the topic and possibly even to get Mr. Timewaster Incomptentus sent back to his department where he can't slow you down too much.In sum: Excellent textbook, useful for practitioners as well. Unless you're taking a graduate class, don't read from cover to cover. And don't drop it on your foot unless you're wearing steel-toed shoes. 600+ pages of heavy slick paper can make quite a dent in your toesies.

This book is physically painful to read. The authors speak in circles, turning common sense into confusing run on sentences. Do yourself a favor...don't read this book OR take this class.

What I have of the book is great, however I expected all pages to be included for the price I paid. The book is missing 15 pages.

As a (technology and strategy) consultant I've worked on the technical aspects of projects that were part of a larger BPM effort. It was helpful to me to read through the book and gain the big picture perspective offered by the authors. Despite the thoroughness of the content, the authors are able to break down the processes into a (particular) framework called 7FE (which I must say is just one of many different models used by BPM and BPMS consultants).The book is illustrated in full color which is both refreshing and makes it easier to find specific content if you are using it as a reference (after reading) to go back and find a particular process.The book is targeted to a wide audience including everyone in any part of any organization undertaking BPM (which is in itself an extremely broad audience with varying perspectives and skill sets), but also includes business students. For example, the book includes exercises geared towards the academic study and practice of these exercises. Perhaps because of this the book is highly repetitive. Excluding notes and references, the book is 631 pages. Of these a huge portion (perhaps 20%) are figures. Of these figures, many are identical (such as the 7FE framework, BPM "house", et. al.). One of the figures (which is about 1/2 page or more) is featured over 20 times (I stopped counting at 20). Likewise the text repeats that same concepts over and over and over and over and over again. I "get" this might be useful for students not paying attention. Perhaps there should be a separate book for that audience ... For brevity in our busy work and world, I believe the book could easily have held the same content and be covered in 400 or less pages. The principal reason I've given 4 stars instead of five is that for the business audience this book is intended for, I believe the authors repeat too much of the content.The book does make recommendations about using outside consultants which strikes me as relatively self-promoting (since the authors are consultants), but there is some balance. It is a minor annoyance, but recurs from place to place throughout the text.I do not know how many business process articles and texts I've read that get recycled (as paper). While there are a number of pages that I'd like to tear out and do exactly that to -- about 2/3 of the book that is substantive has earned its place on a single shelf I keep for business process which includes Kuhn, Moore, Chirstensen, and a few select others. (BTW, i highly recommend Zweig's book "The Invisibles" and Sutton and Rao's book "Scaling Up Excellence" as contemporary reads that will paint a much broader picture than this (Jeston's) book.While this isn't meant to be "casual" reading, it is easy to read and I enjoyed reading 2-4 chapters daily and despite it's size, eagerly carried it with me to read while on the road. If your business is undertaking BPM, if you are leading, or or if you pushing for a bottom up introduction of BPM, this is the text to purchase.While this won't let anyone just GIA (go it alone), I couldn't see engaging in a BPM undertaking without reading this first.