One response I got for my post on Lifecycle Management was the following:

Are you saying that one idea is that an organisation can run its whole development lifecycle by modelling it inside of a BPM tool, using it like a workflow manager?

Yes, exactly. Many people are currently thinking about how they can streamline the approval chains they have around their software development processes. The challenge here is in many cases that the tools (project management, spreadsheets, …) are disconnected from the layer where the actual work happens. And we all know what happens in such a case sooner rather than later…

So the idea is to connect the various layers that have a role here. The top-level of such a process is usually about the “stage” of a software asset (e.g. new application, enhancement, bug fix etc.). What you can then do is manage the transition from one stage to another (e.g. from development to testing) by means of a BPM system. This is the first level of visibility.

To take things a step further would then mean to also connect the stuff that gets you a deeper insight. Those would typically be the technical systems like issue tracking (these have a broader scope than just bug tracking), built systems, results from automated testing etc.

So at the end it all comes back to the idea of end-to-end visibility. And here, once more, the advantage of a universal BPM system (as opposed to something that comes together with a specific application like CRM or ERP) kicks in: You can connect pretty much everything quickly and then model the process you want.

And for management the whole thing comes with reporting and business activity monitoring (BAM) out-of-the-box. So you not only know what’s going on an individual level but also get the complete picture in real-time whenever you want. I would think that this is what many managers are longing for.