SAP’s Gravity demo is indicative of what is likely to happen to collaborative activities in process discovery. Not that no one has thought of it before – most every BPM vendor offering a cloud version has already introduced feature elements of social networking.

Lombardi BluePrint for example allows multiple process stakeholders to participate in process discovery and consolidates each change to the process – be it insertion of a comment, change in a workstep attribute, addition of a performer, etc. – and gives it a Facebook-like presentation. So the team of stakeholders of the process gets to see every change made in the process and these automatically also become documented revision history.

SAP has used Google Wave to further this.

Wave is high on the wow effect and though it hasn’t been released yet, I think it promises to be one of the most exciting releases from Google by far. The various applications of collaborative communication and content management that is possible using wave can be endless – only limited, I might add,  by creativity.

Scott makes some interesting points and insights on his recent post. Like he says, most BPM tools can easily replicate these features in no time.

The question really on my mind, which I believe Scott also touched upon, is what are the significant benefits that Wave integration can provide to BPM?

Agreed collaborative features can surely contribute huge to more accurate process discovery, but then what is the additional value we can get out of a Wave Mashup? Will collaborative features like those we already see in products like Blueprint be sufficient or do we need more? And what? And to what extent?

One must also weigh the benefits against inhibiting factors such as security and change issues.

I guess we have to wait for Wave to be launched, but in the end I believe its application is limited only by your ability to get creative.

If you have had a preview of the Wave demo, do you have any thoughts?