I find that saying "BPM stands for Business Process Management" results in blank stares from most of my fellow programmers, so coming up with a better explanation has been on my mind, and I am beginning to think that a new acronym might be called for... Just look what the sexy acronym AJAX did for the not-so-sexy XMLHttpRequest ;-)
So my proposal is SOW, for Service Oriented Workflow.
Workflow is a pretty simple concept for programmers to grok. Write software that controls the flow of work through an organization. "Service Oriented" indicates that all of the tasks should be packaged as independent services (some of which are fully automated, and some of which are human powered).
The biggest problem with the SOW acronym is one meaning of the word in English:
sow
Pronunciation: 'sau
Function: noun
Etymology:
Middle English sowe, from Old English sugu; akin to Old English
& Old High German su sow, Latin sus pig, swine, hog, Greek hys
1 : an adult female swine; also :
the adult female of various other animals (as a bear)
Other refrences are even worse "A female pig that has produced a litter of piglets." Yeah... That's exactly the image I want in customers minds ;-)
Fortunately, if you pronounce SOW as "so" there is a completely different meaning:
Certainly a better mental image... but let's be real... how many folks would pronounce SOW as "so"?sow
v. sowed, sown (sn) or sowed, sow·ing, sows
1. To scatter (seed) over the ground for growing.
2. To impregnate (a growing medium) with seed.
3. To propagate; disseminate: sow rumors.
4. To strew or cover with something; spread thickly.
v.intr. To scatter seed for growing.
I guess I could encourage folks to sound out the letters S, O, W... but then everyone will think of "Statement Of Work".
Oh well, I guess that BPM isn't such a bad acronym after all ;-)
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