Shakespeare wrote so many great metaphors for the software industry; it’s as if he grew up in the dot-com era. One play which comes to mind in the BPM space is A Comedy of Errors. Specifically, this storyline paints a great picture of the confusion which many customers are experiencing as they understand BPM (business process management), BPEL (business process execution language) and SOA (service oriented architecture).
A Comedy of Errors is basically your story of twins mistaken for each other, which causes a general ruckus. It’s a classic story that has been done in other plays, books, and films. BPM, BPEL and SOA are frequently mistaken for each other. Having “process” in two of the three acronyms certainly doesn’t help matters. But at a more fundamental level people confuse the business centric perspective, which BPM is supposed to bring to the enterprise, with the IT centric perspectives which SOA and BPEL embody.
