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What is the Difference between PPM and BPM?
By Jim Sinur | April 18, 2008
PPM stands for program and portfolio management, but that alone is not clear enough. It’s much clearer to say that PPM is about managing projects and aggregations of projects generally leveraging a project management office (PMO). Basically PPM is all about projects, but more mature organizations extend beyond IT to business projects and manage application and project portfolios as well.
There is confusion because projects leverage processes in creating project deliverables, thus attaining project milestones. Some would go so far as to say that a project is a process. Others would still consider a process an asset that would fit in a portfolio that could be managed like projects. After all, don’t processes have dashboards similar to those found in a mature PMO?
Some say that the process center of excellence (PCE) views that process portfolio management is much different than project management, because projects are temporary and processes are institutional for supporting business on an ongoing basis. Still others would say that the management techniques for processes are very different than those for projects. BPM is all about business processes.
The PPM View: There is Process in my Projects
PPM practitioners believe that project management is a discipline aimed at meeting deadlines and budgets allocated to project efforts, and that it is performed more consistently in IT than in the business; but a few project managers see the applicability of BPM to projects. It is clear to them that PM is crucial to BPM efforts.
Processes can really help PPM in recognizing best practices in creating deliverables and making these best practices a repeatable process that is leveraged in many future projects that need to create the same deliverable.
In fact, there are a number of BPM-minded folks that believe a project can be imported into a BPM engine an executed like any other process.
The BPM View: Project Management is Just another Business Process
Some BPM folks would view project management as just another enterprise process that can be managed and tracked like other business outcomes, but business processes are more predictable and repeatable, whereas projects are more flexible by nature. There is, however, a stream of best practice processes that can be leveraged in producing project deliverables.
Project management can help BPM during the process building phase by leveraging scaled down project methods that are iterative in nature. These methods are likely to include the following:
- Common terminology for projects
- Project charter template
- Schedule template
- Formal client feedback procedure
- Defined project meeting formats
- Scope statement templates
Project management stops once the process is built and another set of improvement techniques take hold. I like to use the analogy of the manufacturing line. PM can be used to build the manufacturing line, yet managing the running manufacturing line is not a project, but an ongoing effort. BPM provides for process measurement and improvement for correct and consistent products done in a timely fashion for the cheapest cost while leveraging resource utilization like a manufacturing line.
Bottom Line:
Both projects and processes need governance, and though there is common ground around building processes with great project management and running a good project with repeatable processes that are best practice towards accomplishing deliverables, the deliverables and skills are quite different. In the future, I expect that processes will become more nimble as they learn to leverage process snippets dynamically to support knowledge workers, but most busines processes are quite repeatable today. As this evolves, the commonality between BPM & PPM will grow, but PPM is about projects and BPM is about processes.
Topics: BPM |
April 18th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Excellent read, clear, precise and easy to understand. Great job!
April 18th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
There is confusion because projects leverage processes in creating project deliverables, thus attaining project milestones. Some would go so far as to say that a project is a process. Others would still consider a process an asset that would fit in a portfolio that could be managed like projects. After all, don’t processes have dashboards similar to those found in a mature PMO?
Some say that the process center of excellence (PCE) views that process portfolio management is much different than project management, because projects are temporary and processes are institutional for supporting business on an ongoing basis. Still others would say that the management techniques for processes are very different than those for projects. BPM is all about business processes.
This is very interesting overall. For me using a PM system (http://www.vertabase.com) in our marketing company has showed me what are the processes that get repeated and blend into the fabric of the business. I am increasingly paying attention to the migration of project to process to improve my business.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Hmmm. . . . So Program and Portfolio Management is all about projects and Business Process Management is all about processes, but both have processes. Is that your summary?
Sorry, Jim, I think I’ve missed something fundamental in this post, like “Why write it?”
Is there really a body of people out there who do not understand that - to use your analogy - “PM can be used to build the manufacturing line, yet managing the running manufacturing line is not a project, but an ongoing effort”? I’m not sure that’s my experience here in the UK
I understand that your perspective on this will change depending on whether you are working in a PMO or a PCE, but I don’t think this fundamentally means that you don’t see them as different disciplines.
Or have a misunderstood your post?
April 21st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
The reason for the post is that I have had several questions about the difference between PPM and BPM.
There is a difference between them, in that, projects are generally short term efforts(not much beyond several years and recently time boxed to months where possible)nor repeat themselves the same way over and over(except in rare cases).
Processes are about managing business events on an ongoing basis and major proceses exists for decades in some cases (like underwriting or claims).
It is not to say that they do not overlap, in that, there are projects to improve processes and that projects sometimes create best practices for producing deliverables that may end up being a small process. Not all projects result in or act on processes.
For process focused organizations, I could even see the convergence of the PMO into the PCE, but for the most part, they are separate.