All this Business Process Management talk is getting boring. And clichéd.

Blogs. Forums. Communities. White papers. Analyst calls. Product vendor presentations. Webinars. Analyst events. One-on-one meetings. Gardens. Roof tops.

That’s an indicative list of all the places where it has been said time and again that BPM is first  a (management) concept THEN a technology. Not one, not two, but hundreds of bloggers, analysts and thought leaders, including the self-proclaimed (the tribe is ever increasing)  have said that enough.

And yet, more frequently than you’d like, you come across that situation where a team of ‘stakeholders’ stand around scratching their heads, staring at a BPM application on the floor with its tongue hanging out.

OK, I exaggerate. Maybe the BPM application is really not that down and out and dead. Let’s just say the outcomes – vis-à-vis the original promise it held for them – don’t quite jump out with lively exuberance.

Nonetheless, here they are, trying to take an honest look from all angles, pondering and  wondering how and what could have gone wrong. Why benefits that were originally promised aren’t evident. Why that small change takes months to fix. Why screens are so unfriendly despite that jaw-dropping ‘drag-drop’ ease of design that was demonstrated.

The more they wonder, the more they have to wonder about. Why excel sheets still pass around. Why users still continue minimizing one window and looking at another window to do a simple approval. Why are conversations among the ‘developers’ more in Java than in English?

And if you have not already noticed, all the wondering and pondering is fundamentally about the ‘application’ itself.

But the truth really is, it all has very little to do with the ‘application’. Who cares a squeaking rodents donkey what java has to do with, for example, average call resolution time log when your job is ‘to ‘minimize average call resolution time–or else’?

I would have said we were getting somewhere if all that wondering and pondering was instead around why average call resolution was not getting lower.

In reality it seems to be that the big fuss that was made in the beginning of the project around business benefits can wait. Because where it all falls short seems to be at a more basic level.

Are you with me?

Or is it just me?