What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

Roland Woldt / J-M Erlendson

This show is about Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management, and how you can set up your practice to get the most out of it. It is for newbies who just get started with these topics, organizations who want to improve their EA/BPM groups (and the value that they get from it), as well as practitioners who want to get a different perspective and care about the discipline. Learn more about the show and read articles about EA and BPM on www.whatsyourbaseline.com.

  1. Ep. 116 - Opportunities for the Future: Michael Rosemann

    22 Jun

    Ep. 116 - Opportunities for the Future: Michael Rosemann

    Process and architecture folks excel at analyzing the as-is and optimizing it. But why? What if we skipped "As-Is" entirely and designed new processes from a fresh perspective? Scary? Our guest, Dr. Michael Rosemann, argues it's scarier to keep optimizing — because eventually you run out of things to optimize. Then what? Michael is the author/editor of twelve books in five languages and over 400 refereed papers. He's globally known for his work on BPM maturity models, context-aware BPM, process innovation, rapid process redesign, affective process design, and process modelling quality. He's presented at major global BPM conferences and delivered keynotes in 30+ countries, with research funded by Accenture, Cisco, Infosys, PwC, Rio Tinto, SAP, and Woolworths. In this episode, we cover: From efficiency to opportunity. After decades of classic BPM work, Michael pivoted from cost-cutting toward "crafting desirable futures" — partly sparked by his father asking if making companies more efficient was really the legacy he wanted. Three drivers of change: urgency (a burning platform), curiosity (testing the unknown), or ambition (a clear destination). Leaders without any of these stay "big, fat and happy" — and stuck.Root cause analysis of success, not failure. Instead of diagnosing what's broken, Michael's team studies "positive deviants" — top performers — and replicates their hidden practices org-wide using process mining.The seven types of opportunity (a counterpart to Lean's seven wastes), including "first data advantage" — examining what data your process already generates and who else might value it (e.g., an airline offering pet-sitting because it already knows who's traveling with pets).Process expansion, attention, and generalization — three opportunity types illustrated by Domino's "pizza tracker" (monetizing attention) and Uber's expansion from people to pizza, patients, and produce."Lot size of one." The goal isn't catching up to best practice — it's building processes so unique that no competitor, and no design thinking exercise, could replicate them (e.g., QUT's "upgradeable degree" concept).Opportunity appetite statements. Just as organizations have risk appetite statements, Michael argues they need the opposite — a deliberate statement of which opportunities they're willing to pursue, partly modeled on NASA's approach to balancing risk and ambition.Make the future tangible. Example: a six-minute video imagining a trauma patient's full recovery journey in 2033, used to rally stakeholders around a shared vision instead of incremental fixes.RX, EX, TX — Revenue Design, Emotional Experience, and Trust Experience. A framework for evaluating opportunities beyond pure transactions, including "transactional benevolence" (e.g., Netflix pausing billing for inactive subscribers, or a retailer refunding a price drop you didn't know about).Reframing the business case. To win leadership buy-in for trust- or future-focused initiatives, Michael suggests shifting from short-term cost to long-term opportunity cost — the price of not acting.AI as a thinking partner, not just a tool. Michael previews a prototype built with SAP Signavio that uses AI to proactively surface opportunities from an uploaded process model — "reverse prompting," where the tool greets you with an idea instead of waiting for a problem.The Future's Triangle. A framework for organizational inertia: the weight of the past, the distraction of the present, and the pull of the future — and why most companies only operate on the first two. Find Michael on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michaelrosemann/ Reach us at hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com. Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline.

    53 min
  2. Ep. 115 - Startups: Vidar Hokstad

    8 Jun

    Ep. 115 - Startups: Vidar Hokstad

    When should you start with process and architecture in a startup?That was the question that we've asked ourselves (as if there is a real-life example currently happening :-) and then we thought, “Why not ask someone who is living in this space?” Vidar co-founded his first tech startup at 19 because he didn't know enough to know how hard it would be. 30 years on, he has gone mostly from startup to startup, usually as the first technical hire or a co-founder. He has both bootstrapped and raised VC capital and recently spent 3 years working at a VC fund. He now runs a tech consultancy focusing on the intersection of DevOps and AI while working on his next big thing. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: A startup is defined by pre-revenue or pre-profit status combined with rapid growth ambition — a chip shop is operational from day one, not a startup. Once you're profitable and growing modestly, you're a lifestyle business.Early-stage capital is the most expensive capital you'll ever spend, because you're paying in equity. The earlier you are, the larger the slice of the company you trade away for the same dollar amount.VC investors expect most of their portfolio to fail and are only looking for the 10x–100x outlier. If you can't raise your next round within about 18 months, their interest moves on — so failing fast and validating quickly is the entire game.AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to building a working prototype, letting founders show investors something tangible and compelling much faster than ever before.But the industry is swinging back hard toward upfront specs and documentation, because AI coding agents can't infer your unique business context. Writing a truly good spec turns out to be one of the hardest parts of the entire software development process — and most teams have been skimping on it for 25 years.Your truly proprietary assets are your ideas, processes, use cases, and customer segments. The generated code is a commodity — everyone building on the same AI tools has access to the same output.Lightweight processes pay off quickly once a startup begins to scale. The absence of basic QA, project management, and clearly written tickets is almost always what causes delivery to break down first — not the process itself.A common and costly mistake is over-engineering: developers building for 10 million users when the total addressable market is 10,000. This happens when engineering teams are never told what the product actually is or who it's actually for.Process and architecture function as a communication layer — aligning engineering, sales, and leadership around a shared vision, the customer they're serving, and the strategy connecting the two. It builds buy-in, and buy-in produces better work than a paycheck alone.Vision must be communicated continuously from the hiring process onward, not just stated once and assumed to stick. Developers detach from the "why" quickly when daily work becomes purely tactical.Both one-on-one check-ins and group meetings are essential to a healthy team. People rarely surface real blockers, interpersonal tensions, or technical concerns in group settings — individual conversations build the trust that makes those things visible before they become crises. Vidar can be reached on LinkedIn here and also has a website: hockstadconsultng.com. Reach out by emailing ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.

    53 min
  3. Ep. 114: BPM Operating System

    25 May

    Ep. 114: BPM Operating System

    Roland and J-M go solo to pull back the curtain on something that's been years in the making: BPM OS, a purpose-built, local-first tool stack designed to help small, talented process and architecture teams stand up a real BPM practice — without the vendor dependency, IT overhead, or 12-month procurement nightmare. In this episode of the podcast we talk about: Most BPM programs fail not because of bad content, but because organizations treat it as a pure IT exercise — buy a platform, check the box, and wonder why nothing sticks.The three pillars every BPM capability needs are content, governance, and adoption — yet most organizations only address the first one.Knowledge rented from consultants or SaaS vendors disappears the moment you stop paying; BPM OS is built on the principle that you own it outright, forever.BPM OS targets three groups: small internal teams doing more with less, consulting organizations that want baked-in methodology for client delivery, and vendors looking to bundle a white-labeled practice layer with their platforms.Groundwork is the brainstorming and planning app — dump ideas onto a canvas, sort them into zones, and shift into structured planning mode with priorities and rough timelines.Playbook is a lightweight wiki for capturing structured knowledge, course profiles, stakeholder analyses, and methodology documentation — with templates so you never start from a blank page.Atlas generates visual subway maps of your learning curriculum or capability landscape, complete with time-sensitive station states, deprecation indicators, and links back to Playbook pages.Outline lets you define the detailed content structure of a course or deliverable in a hierarchical, mind-map-style view — moving from “What do we need to teach?” to "Exactly what are the chapters and items?”Course Flow is a Kanban-based project management tool for developing and iterating on courses, complete with a built-in feedback form, an inbox for triage, and a status dashboard across all active projects.Cadence is a personal (and optionally team) task planner organized by day and category — with recurring daily items, carry-forward of incomplete tasks, and a simple velocity metric to spot overload before it becomes a crisis.The entire stack runs on Node.js, saves files as Markdown and JSON (no database required), plays nicely with Google Drive or OneDrive for backup, and optionally connects to GitHub or GitLab for full version history.Apps interoperate through lightweight linking and import/export — cards from Groundwork flow into Atlas, tasks from CourseFlow export into Cadence, and every Playbook page carries a permanent link that works anywhere in the stack. Find out more and download your free personal copy of Cadence at whatsyourbaseline.com/bpm-os—and check the episode show notes for a PDF overview of all six apps. Reach out by emailing ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.

    1hr 3min
  4. Ep. 113 - Customer Success Excellence: Chad Stephen

    11 May

    Ep. 113 - Customer Success Excellence: Chad Stephen

    Once you've sold the licenses you are done. Right? Well, not so fast, young Jedi. While the salesperson happily turns around and goes hunting elsewhere, the customer has high expectations about the treatment they get after the sale. Even today I see organizations who treat Customer Success teams as an afterthought and then wonder why they see churn or nastygrams from their customers. But it doesn't have to be this way. We discuss this topic with Chad Stephen. Chad has led cross-functional teams of 65, scaled Customer Success orgs through 4x ARR growth, cut renewal process complexity by two thirds, and reduced time-to-value by 50% — more than once, at different companies ranging from early-stage to scaled SaaS, across industries from FinTech to HealthTech to Restaurant & Hospitality. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: What is customer success, really? — The most important definition centers on one thing: driving value for clients. Renewals, onboarding, and account management are elements of CS, not the definition of it.The buyer vs. the end user — The person who signs the contract is rarely the one logging in every day. A good CS function speaks to both audiences and translates value into something meaningful for each.CS as a function, not just a job title — Customer success can be owned by a team, a role, or — dangerously — "everyone," which usually means no one. The discipline matters regardless of what you call it.The QBR trap — Quarterly business reviews that run 80 slides and double as sales pitches miss the point entirely. The best QBRs focus on the customer's problems, not the vendor's product roadmap.Proactive vs. reactive CS — Waiting for a customer to come to you with a problem is reactive. True proactive CS means monitoring usage metrics, NPS surveys, and engagement signals before a crisis happens.The relay race handoff — The baton cannot hit the floor between sales, professional services, and customer success. There must always be a clear, singular point of contact at every stage of the journey.When to involve CS in the sales cycle — CS should never be absent from a deal entirely, but timing matters. Bringing them in too early creates confusion; the right moment builds the bridge between "excited to sign" and "ready to succeed."The hunter vs. farmer problem — When account executives are compensated only for net-new deals, they make poor customer success managers. Misaligned incentives produce misaligned behavior.Compensation drives behavior — If you want your CS team to own renewals and upsells, you have to pay them for renewals and upsells. Comp plans and job expectations must align, or you get animosity and dropped balls.Start CS early — even at Series A — Smaller organizations often default to the AE managing the account post-sale. The sooner a dedicated CS function exists, the better. Stickiness in SaaS is decreasing, making the long-term relationship even more critical.Onboarding is the most critical phase — Getting a customer up and running quickly, with a clear understanding of the value they bought, sets the tone for the entire relationship. A poor start rarely fully recovers.Keep it simple — Over-engineered CS motions with 12 segmentation layers and elaborate playbooks often collapse under their own weight. Always ask: How does this actually drive more value for the customer? You can find Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadstephen/. And he has a website at https://www.doublewindconsulting.com/. Reach out by emailing hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.

    1hr 1min
  5. Ep. 112 - Why Compliance Is Your Friend: Christof Layher

    27 Apr

    Ep. 112 - Why Compliance Is Your Friend: Christof Layher

    Everyone says they hate compliance. But what they actually hate is being told the truth at the worst possible moment. The problem is not the regulation. It is the moment you involve the people who understand it. Too late, under pressure, with no room to course-correct. 65 to 95% of digitization projects fail. The answer is not to run them faster. It is to slow down enough to get them right — and that starts with bringing the right people in before the damage is done. So we brought in an expert: Christof Layher. Christof is a digitalization and compliance specialist with over 20 years of experience in pharma and biotech, having worked with organizations including BioNTech. He operates at the intersection of IT, quality assurance, and business operations — precisely where those functions most often work against each other. His focus is structure, decision-making clarity, and clean execution in highly regulated environments. No slide-deck transformations, no tool evangelism — just repeatable, field-tested approaches that hold up in daily operations and under audit. He also hosts the ChaosHacker podcast. In this episode we talk about: Compliance is the messenger, not the cause. Compliance teams surface uncomfortable truths that organizations already sense but choose not to address.Non-compliance is rarely intentional. In roughly 95% of cases, organizations fail compliance through blind spots, ingrained habits, and the bias that “it's been working fine.”The “superhero fixer” problem masks systemic risk. When individuals compensate for broken processes to keep things running, the underlying issue becomes invisible — until it isn't.Compliance is sometimes weaponized to block change. People hide behind regulatory language rather than engaging honestly with initiatives they don't know how to handle.Gold-plating regulations create the real slowdown. Rules often require one signature; companies implement ten. The waste comes from over-interpretation, not the regulation itself.Shift left — bring compliance in early. Involving compliance at the requirements stage costs far less than failing the checklist at the end.Compliance is a competitive advantage. Used as an indicator of where your processes diverge from reality, it becomes a continuous improvement engine.Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Taking time upfront — including for compliance — produces better outcomes than more failed projects delivered faster.Process owners must own compliance. The person who operates a process is responsible for running it compliantly. That shift in ownership changes everything.Trust must be given before it can be earned. Leaders who model psychological safety unlock the early, honest conversations that prevent compliance crises.One bad actor spoils the basket. Building a culture of integrity requires leaders to live it visibly — and to remove those who exploit openness, regardless of their level. Check out Christof's LinkedIn here and his podcast here! Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠. We appreciate you!

    54 min
  6. Ep. 111 - Successful Presales: Max Lüpertz

    13 Apr

    Ep. 111 - Successful Presales: Max Lüpertz

    “Just go and show our tool in the best way possible.” I have heard this sentence wayyyy too often coming from a salesperson, and the solution engineer on the receiving end just died a little bit inside.Of course you want to make a good impression when showing your tools to your customer, but more importantly, you want to start building a relationship and engage with them. For that you have to get them to a point where they open up and tell you what they *really* think—and a “no” is a good indicator that this relationship has formed. And we are happy to have a pro in this field as the guest of this episode: Max Lüpertz. Max is a solution engineer who took over as account executive and grew until he led the whole sales organization of the UK for one of the companies he worked for. Now he helps fast-growing SaaS companies close more deals by making their sales demos (and their general presales) better. He provides hands-on coaching and sets up a simple, repeatable demo process with his firm, PreSales Rockstars. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: Solution engineers are too often treated as “demo monkeys”—pulled in before proper discovery has happened because AEs need to show pipeline progress. There is no solution without a problem: if you don't understand what the customer is trying to solve, any demo you run risks being irrelevant or overwhelming.Once a prospect has seen the functionality and shortlisted vendors, their mindset shifts entirely—from “Can it do this?” to “What happens to me personally if this goes wrong?” Oversharing is one of the most common and costly demo mistakes. Bombarding a prospect with features increases cognitive load, raises perceived risk, and dilutes the message. Max's lesson from an 18-month stalled deal: FOMO caused him to show 50 features when the customer only needed three. The extra complexity made the project feel like a burden, and the prospect concluded they weren't ready. The “shotgun” method—showing everything and hoping something lands—is an AE-driven trap. Effective demos need a curated storyline built around confirmed needs, not a feature parade.Discovery is not a one-time AE activity. SEs need to run a secondary, deeper discovery to uncover the personal risks and motivations of individual stakeholders—not just the organizational problem.How you introduce yourself sets the ceiling on your influence. Being framed as the “technical conscience” boxes you into a narrow role. Instead, position yourself as someone who knows the industry, has seen implementations succeed and fail, and will proactively surface the risks the customer doesn't yet know about—the things they don't know they don't know.SEs act as a “human API” between customers and product management—translating vague feature requests into actionable feedback and pushing back on requests that turn out to be aspirational rather than genuine buying signals. POCs are high-cost investments—often two people for two to four weeks—and should never be offered just because it's “the next step.” Success criteria must be defined upfront, and the SE should use the POC as a “gift and get”.The value conversation must anchor every interaction. If a customer can't explain why they want to model processes beyond “so that we have modeled processes,” they aren't ready to buy. Every conversation needs to come back to outcomes, not features. Max is also on LinkedIn—check out his profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-luepertz/. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline. We appreciate you!

    1hr 1min
  7. What's Your Baseline? in 2026

    30 Mar

    What's Your Baseline? in 2026

    We teased it over the last couple of weeks when Roland posted about how to build products and when we started things like our SubstackNow is the time to give you a look behind the scenes at how your favorite podcast turns the page from a hobby to a real business. And then there is also another welcoming change coming to you … that I guess most of you have missed over the last couple of episodes. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: The Return of J-M: J-M makes his highly anticipated return as co-host after a brief hiatus. The duo also gives a massive, heartfelt shoutout to the guest co-hosts who stepped up to the mic during his absence—Caspar, Matus, and Russell.From Hobby to Business: The episode focuses heavily on the future of the brand in 2026. They discuss transitioning the podcast from a fun passion project into a fully fledged, legal business entity registered in Virginia. Who This Is For: They reflect on their core target audience, which includes current practitioners and practice leaders. They also focus heavily on helping the next generation of professionals who need to learn foundational process knowledge.Hitting the Road: Building relationships through live events remains a top priority. They highlight upcoming speaking engagements at the All About Process Management conference in Germany, as well as upcoming events with ABPMP and the PEX Network.Pillar 1—Packaged Knowledge: The first new business pillar focuses on “Packaged Knowledge.” This includes their published books, J.M.'s upcoming “explain-it-like-I'm-five” mini-series, and highly graphical visual reference guides.Pillar 2—Tools and Templates: The second pillar features “Tools and Templates.” These are specifically designed as gap-closers for software platforms, aiming to save clients from having to purchase expensive, bespoke consulting.Under the Hood with KNIME: As part of this tooling effort, Roland mentions he is building specific data models and workflows. For example, he is currently finalizing a KNIME workflow designed to process spreadsheet data into a more meaningful output. Pillar 3—Skills Building: The third pillar is entirely dedicated to “skills building.” We plan to offer online training courses that cover core concepts, tool mechanics, and contextual governance, all at accessible price points.Pillar 4—Consulting Services: For the fourth pillar, the guys will continue offering targeted “Consulting Services.” This ranges from traditional consulting engagements to tweaking their provided templates to fit a client's specific regulatory or organizational needs.Media Services: A brand new “Media Services” offering will help aspiring creators get their voice out there. They plan to assist authors with publishing under their official imprint, help with end-to-end podcast production, and provide marketing support.Creator Spaces: Community building is expanding through dedicated “Creator Spaces.” They are utilizing platforms like Discord and Patreon to foster synchronous conversations and mutual support among process practitioners.What's Dropping Next: In the coming weeks, audiences can expect an influx of short-form “TLDR” videos. We are also launching a brand-new web shop with integrated learning management. And lastly, please help us shape our offerings by answering three quick questions here: WYB Training Survey. I will leave it open until next weekend and would appreciate it if you would join the more than two dozen people who have already answered. I will share the results with everyone who gave us input then. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline. We appreciate you!

    1hr 11min
  8. Episode109 - Business Transformation: Meherban Faroogh

    16 Mar

    Episode109 - Business Transformation: Meherban Faroogh

    Business transformation programs rarely fail because of technology. They fail because the organization is not aligned, not clear, and not ready for change. There is an art, science, and emotional intelligence to leading successful business transformations, and our guest, Meherban Faroogh, has been helping clients for decades now to navigate this maze of major changes for organizations. He founded PPS Partners in Toronto and has spent 20 years helping organizations navigate business transformations—with a particular focus on discovery and change management. Drawing on nine years across three major ERP implementations at Enbridge alone, Meherban brings hard-won clarity to why so many transformations fail and what to do instead. In this episode we are talking about: Business transformation failure rates sit stubbornly at 70%+ regardless of which analyst report you pick up—and the root cause is rarely the technology itself.The three reasons organizations fail: lack of strategic alignment on the why of the transformation, insufficient clarity on the current state before signing large contracts, and inadequate change management throughout the journey.Successful transformation requires balancing three distinct dimensions—the science (methods and tools like Lean Six Sigma, BPMN, and TOGAF), the art (knowing when and how to apply those methods given the culture, scale, and politics), and emotional intelligence (building trust from the boardroom to the shop floor).There is no such thing as “digital transformation”—it is always business transformation, because technology is part of the business and should never be the tail that wags the dog. A CIO alone should never be the sole sponsor driving the shots.The Titanic analogy cuts through the noise: business transformation is turning the entire ship, not rearranging the deck chairs. Process improvement is fixing the supply chain for the rocket; transformation is the mission to the moon itself.BPM done well effectively eliminates the need for a lengthy discovery phase—because you are already doing it every single day. One client came back four years after implementing BPM ready to select a vendor, and told the integrator, “Here you go.” That is the value proposition in action.Strategic alignment cannot be assumed—even C-suite leaders are frequently not aligned with each other on the transformation why, and it is the consultant's job to surface and close those gaps through structured one-on-ones before the first workshop even begins.Identifying the right 15 to 25 core end-to-end processes—and assigning single, accountable process owners to each—sounds mundane but is precisely what keeps projects on scope, on time, and on budget.The central decision that gets made a thousand times during any transformation: do you change the organization to fit the tool, or change the tool to fit the organization? Clarity on the current state is the only thing that makes that decision an intelligent one.Trust is built through three things: empathy (genuinely listening, not just waiting to respond), logic (being quick on your feet and connecting the dots), and authenticity (being yourself rather than performing a role). Of the three, empathy is where things most often break down under the pressure of deadlines and cost overruns.Change management is not a workstream bolted on at the end—it is the continuous act of building trust and relationships across the entire organization so that people take ownership of the change rather than enduring it. You can find Meherban on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meherbanfarooq. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠⁠. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠⁠. We appreciate you!

    43 min
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This show is about Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management, and how you can set up your practice to get the most out of it. It is for newbies who just get started with these topics, organizations who want to improve their EA/BPM groups (and the value that they get from it), as well as practitioners who want to get a different perspective and care about the discipline. Learn more about the show and read articles about EA and BPM on www.whatsyourbaseline.com.

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