Human Interaction Management

Today's greatest business challenge is to offer total experiences that delight your customers, experiences that exceed their expectations. It's no longer viable to offer commodities, or just the best products or services. Companies must now open a two-way dialog with their customers in order to meet their needs throughout the consumption process, for they don't want your products and services in and of themselves, they want solutions to their needs. In today's fiercely competitive business environment, you must provide the complete experience that delights each and every customer. If you don't do that, you won't be able to compete for the future. If you do do that, you will need the support of the Human Interaction Management System, the breakthrough that changes the rules of business, the breakthrough that changes your relationships with both almighty customers, and the trading partners you must band together with to meet the needs of your present and future customers.
Peter Fingar, co-author of "Business Process Management - The Third Wave", in the foreword to "Human Interactions"

There are two classes of processes – task-driven and human-driven.  Task-driven processes define and/or how tasks get done, often by IT systems and resources, while human-driven processes define and/or describe how people do things. Both are essential to successful business operations. However, they are very different from one another, and cannot be equally effectively addressed by any common set of processes or technologies.
 Michael Dortch, Aberdeen Group

Human Interaction Management (HIM) is the set of principles and patterns for structuring, supporting and controlling human work practices first described by Keith Harrison-Broninski in his 2005 book "Human Interactions".

Current mainstream techniques and tools for work support, whether categorized as Workflow or as Business Process Management (BPM), deal only with "mechanistic" business processes. In such business processes, human involvement is limited to key data entry and decision points. Workflow/BPM techniques and tools deal with only the externally-observable aspects of work - tasks, that are visible from outside.

HIM extends this to include support for "human-driven" processes focused on human creativity and collaboration. To achieve this, HIM deals not only with tasks, but also with those aspects of work visible from inside - information, interaction and innovation.

In HIM, a business process requiring human knowledge, judgement and experience is divided into collaborating Roles, which are then assigned to the appropriate people via a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS).  The HIMS not only co-ordinates work activities but also exchanges messages and documents automatically on behalf of the people involved, with full version control and history.  A HIMS is also used to manage the work and integrate it with organizational strategy/tactics, via separation into "levels of control".  Active processes can be changed on-the-fly as people agree on next steps for the work.

Human Interaction Management has given rise to a top-down business process management methodology that addresses the most pressing needs of the modern enterprise - to acquire the agility necessary for survival in a globalized, wired marketplace, while simultaneously complying with statutory regulations and company policies, all within a safely controlled management hierarchy. This methodology is known as Goal-Oriented Organization Design (GOOD).

The main focus of HIM is currently on the integration of organizational management with human work practices, in order to implement executive objectives, improve human productivity, and fulfil requirements for compliance. HIM is also very useful for integrating business and IT, for instance in areas such as SOA governance.  However, HIM has application beyond the improvement of organizational efficiency, since it provides a rich set of patterns for structuring and managing collaborative work that are also finding application in spheres such as social/political negotiation, law enforcement, crisis management and healthcare.

The benefit from using a HIMS to implement HIM is that it provides workplace software that understands human work patterns, and supports the inherent spontaneity of the human mind.  The way people really work is via interactions, which lead to commitments, which lead in turn to actions.  IT in the 20th century was based on information processing.  The HIMS is a new kind of IT solution for the 21st century, based on commitment processing.

Process-based technology that understands the needs of people and supports the inherent "spontaneity" of the human mind is the next logical step, and we might be tempted to name this potential paradigm shift "Knowledge Intensive Business Processes."
KIBPM falls into two main categories, which will probably merge over time, and the vendor that recognizes that potential will steal a march on the others. At the simplest level we have case management, and secondly, we have Human Interaction Management. I doubt there are many BPM products on the market today which will be able to meet this seismic shift in requirements - certainly those that rely on BPEL and SOA won't; what's more, any that have been in the market for longer than five years will need radical surgery to meet the coming challenge.
 Why Workflow Sucks, Jon Pyke, Chair of the Workflow Management Coalition

A new generation of people-centric collaborative information management tools is set to produce the first fundamental advances in personal productivity since the arrival of the spreadsheet.
 Riding the fourth wave, Information Age


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The Human Interaction Management System

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Contents

1 Process Varieties

2 Example Processes

3 Some HIM Patterns For Work

4 Some HIM Patterns For Managing Work

5 The Human Interaction Management System (HIMS)

Before HIM
Communication today
A mess with implied collaboration		 After HIM
Explicit collaboration via a HIMS
A HIMS in relation to legacy IT and Web 2.0 (Work 1.0 and Work 2.0):
A HIMS puts IT in its proper place rather than surrounding us all in the background

Definition of a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS), from "Human Interactions: The Heart and Soul of Business Process Management" (2005):

A process modeling and enactment system that provides native support for the six Role Activity Theory object types (Role, Entity, Activity, User, State and Interaction), uses a state-based approach to Activity enablement and validation, permits Interactions to be composed of multiple asynchronous channels, and supports management of process change by allowing any process component to be created and configured as a natural part of process execution—not just objects of the six fundamental types, but also the user interfaces by which they are presented (screens, for example) and the means by which they interact with other systems (Web service calls, for example).

A HIMS must conform to this specification in order to support the 5 basic principles of HIM:

  1. Connection visibility - to work with people, you need to know who they are, what they can do, and what their responsibilities are as opposed to yours.
    You need Role and User objects, both instances and types, each with its own properties and responsibilities.

  2. Structured messaging - if people are to manage their interactions with others better, their communications must be structured and goal-directed.
    You need Interaction objects in which there are multiple asynchronous channels, each for a different purpose.

  3. Support for mental work - organizations must learn to manage the time and mental effort their staff invest in researching, comparing, considering, deciding, and generally turning information into knowledge and ideas.
    You need Entity objects that can be created, versioned and shared in a structured way.

  4. Supportive rather than prescriptive activity management - humans may not sequence their activities in the manner of a software program, but there is always structure to human work, which must be understood and institutionalized so that it can be managed and improved.
    You need State objects that can both enable and validate Activity objects, along with the Roles that contain them.

  5. Processes change processes - human activities are concerned often with solving problems, or making something happen. Such activities routinely start in the same fashion - by establishing a way of proceeding. Before you can design your new widget, or develop your marketing plan, you need to work out how you are going to do so - which methodology to use, which tools are required, which people should be consulted, and so on. In other words, process definition is an intrinsic part of the process itself. Further, this is not a one-time thing - it happens continually throughout the life of the process.
    You must be able to manipulate not only objects but also user interfaces and integration mechanisms via the process that contains them.

In practice, since a HIMS must be able to support collaboration that spans various forms of organizational boundary, the software cannot depend on a server component. Though a HIMS may be able to run on a server if necessary (for instance, to support audit trail recording), it is typically intended for desktop use. A HIMS communicates peer-to-peer both with other instances of itself and with standard communication programs such as email clients in order to synchronize, monitor and support the work of the people involved.

To the average end user, a HIMS appears as a lightweight layer on top of their existing computing resources - other desktop programs, network files, enterprise applications, and Web 2.0 tools of various kinds. The HIMS is effectively a more intelligent desktop interface, enhancing the benefit of every kind of computing resource from emails to databases, by providing a rich process context via which such resources are accessed.

The reference implementation of a HIMS is HumanEdj.

6 Methodology

Human Interaction Management has given rise to a top-down business process management methodology that addresses the most pressing needs of the modern enterprise - to acquire the agility necessary for survival in a globalized, wired marketplace, while simultaneously complying with statutory regulations and company policies, all within a safely controlled management hierarchy. This methodology goes by the name of Goal-Oriented Organization Design, aka GOOD.

Here is the GOOD methodology in outline:

  1. First draw up a process architecture, to unite business goals with business processes. This is a sine qua non - unless you start here, you will be building a house on sand.  Goals are the true and only foundation of business activities - profit is simply an enabler.
     
  2. Assess the processes in your architecture to see which are strategic, which are tactical and which are operational.
     
  3. On this basis, refine the architecture to reflect your organization's long-, medium- and short-term goals.
     
  4. Use Human Interaction Management "levels of control" to assign strategic, executive and management responsibility for processes, and gain commitment from the right people.
     
  5. Assess the interactions between processes in the new architecture to decide which processes can and should be outsourced.
     
  6. For those processes you have decided to manage internally, apply Human Interaction Management to make best use of the humans in your organization, at all levels of the organization chart - not in order to downsize your people away, but rather in order to leverage the skills you have on board. Only via HIM, optionally accompanied by supporting software tools, can you gain the dual advantages of structure (for efficiency) and agility (for responsiveness).
     
  7. Use BPM/workflow techniques (which does not necessarily mean using BPMS software) to improve your performance of mechanistic work - but be aware that there are no magic bullets to remove real-world complexity! The idea that BPM would make it possible for business people to change mechanistic processes on the fly is a complete myth. The IT department are going to stay involved for the duration, and when you want a new version of a mechanistic process you will need to ask IT people to draw it up, IT people to ensure it complies with regulations, IT people to test it, and IT people to deploy it. Agility is for human-driven processes only - it is the province of HIM, not of BPM/workflow.
     
  8. Now (and only at this point should SOA enter the picture), look at all the processes you have defined - both human-driven and mechanistic - and ask: which of these could make use of services? Then build the services needed by the organization, not those that the IT department would like to construct for its own reasons.
     
  9. To support process and service development and maintenance, put into place governance processes - human-driven processes defined using HIM techniques.
     
  10. Finally, ensure that your processes are continually improved, apply quality techniques drawn from HIM principles - metrics and indicators that measure not just the efficiency of a process but its effectiveness, by tracking how well it makes use of the humans involved.

See here for more information.

7 References

What are Human Processes? - Keith Harrison-Broninski writing for bptrends.com
"In his initial Column for BPTrends, Keith Harrison-Broninski continues his call to consider new and different perspectives on the nature of work involving human beings. We look forward (as Keith would urge) to his many new insights on this important topic in this and future Columns."

Ruling Unruly Rules - Keith Harrison-Broninski writing for bptrends.com
"What is the next major step in enterprise IT? Keith Harrison Broninski has a fascinating perspective. He argues convincingly that there will be a shift in emphasis from server-side automation application to client-side human interaction."

The Greatest Innovation Since BPM  - Peter Fingar writing for bptrends.com
"Three years ago, Howard Smith and Peter Fingar wrote Business Process Management: The Third Wave. Now, Fingar contends that it is time to consider a Fourth Wave — Human Interaction Management Systems."

Taming the Minotaur - Keith Harrison-Broninski discusses how to integrate organizational management with the IT backbone

EDP Audit and Control Redux - Peter Fingar writing for bptrends.com
"Peter Fingar takes a walk down memory lane to explore EDP controls from their beginnings in 1979 to the present. What he finds in his analysis will alarm all who are not already aware of the growing risk of loss exposure, particularly among organizations engaged in global enterprise."

"Why Current Document Collaboration Sucks by Butler Group, a European IT research and advisory organisation

Why Workflow Sucks by Jon Pyke, Chair of the Workflow Management Coalition

Beyond BPM: Knowledge Intensive BPM by Jon Pyke, Chair of the Workflow Management Coalition

BPM: A SystemicPerspective by Janne J. Korhonen, co-steer of the EDS BPM/Workflow Group
Describes evolution of process management from Workflow to Business Process Management to Human Interaction Management
presentation
article (bptrends.com)

All the World is a Project by Peter Fingar, co-author, "Business Process Management - The Third Wave"

The Coming IT Flip Flop: And the Emergence of Human Interaction Management Systems by Peter Fingar, co-author, "Business Process Management - The Third Wave"

Re-schooling the Corporation for BPM by Ronald Aronica, co-author, "The Death of e - and the Birth of the Real New Economy"

Keith Harrison-Broninski. Human Interactions: The Heart and Soul of Business Process Management. ISBN 0-929652-44-4

Peter Fingar et al. Extreme Competition: Innovation And the Great 21st Century Business Reformation. ISBN 0-929652-38-X

Business Process Management Group In Search Of BPM Excellence: Straight From The Thought Leaders. ISBN 0-929652-40-1

8 Other Resources

Human Interaction Management explained
15 minute screencast

A HIM Quick Reference Card
adapted from an initial version by Joe Vandervest of PCGCampbell

SOA Governance via Human Interaction Management
A Balanced Scorecard approach to SOA governance

Free software to support Human Interaction Management

Web forum - Human Interaction Management theory

Web forum - Human Interaction Management System software

Product development partner for HIM applications

Learn more about Human Interaction Management ...