This article is based on reporting originally published at searchmicroservices.techtarget.com.
There has been a fundamental shift in how organizations apply business process management (BPM) systems over the last several years. Platforms once deployed primarily to improve operational efficiency and lower costs are now increasingly viewed as full application development environments — places where developers and so-called “citizen developers” alike can build applications that automate business processes and decisions.
The Intersection of BPM and DevOps
When BPM systems are treated as application development platforms, their requirements become tightly coupled to modern software development methodologies — particularly DevOps. According to Phil Simpson, senior principal product marketing manager for JBoss Middleware at Red Hat, modern BPM systems must be compatible with the DevOps approach just as much as any other software development platform.
Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, identified natural affinities between the two disciplines. DevOps aims to integrate the traditionally separate efforts of developers and operations professionals. BPM focuses on enhancing business processes and workflows to address specific customer needs or deliver broader organizational benefits. While these orientations differ — DevOps is often inward-focused, while BPM typically looks outward — both can create substantial customer value.
“Many of the core goals of DevOps, including dynamic planning, Lean and Agile techniques, continuous integration and automated testing, can all impact the timing and quality of processes that impact customers. Strong business rules are the tracks that projects run on and are essential to reaching the desired destination.”
— Charles King, Principal Analyst, Pund-IT
Business rules have always been central to BPM because they underpin the automation of business processes. Embedding those rules into DevOps workflows allows teams to deliver process improvements continuously rather than through large, infrequent releases.
Agile and DevOps as Accelerators for BPM
Jim Sinur, vice president and research fellow at Aragon Research, emphasised that combining business professionals with developers in iteration-based approaches has proven highly effective — provided team communication is strong. This mirrors the cross-functional collaboration that sits at the heart of both Agile and DevOps.
Ed Fox, vice president of network services at telecommunications provider MetTel in New York, described how his organisation puts these ideas into practice:
“We have Agile development teams in our labs that help build segments of code in sprints and put them into actual use with customers to generate a real market feedback loop that validates our product-service-solution direction and delivers value to ourselves and customers during the innovation process.”
— Ed Fox, VP of Network Services, MetTel
Fox argued that DevOps intersects with BPM at every point in his organisation. He described BPM as a “living process” that must dynamically evolve to support new capabilities on the fly — a characteristic he said is best delivered through a SaaS model.
BPM in Practice: Digital Transformation at ABN AMRO
Norbert Siegers, head of IT channel solutions at Netherlands-based ABN AMRO, offered a concrete enterprise example. His group deployed BPM as part of a multi-year digital transformation, moving from a monolithic architecture with waterfall-based development to a set of smaller, independently deployable services built on Agile and DevOps processes.
“We are pursuing a more agile model and using the latest techniques for continuous integration and continuous delivery.”
— Norbert Siegers, Head of IT Channel Solutions, ABN AMRO
This shift from monolith to services is a pattern that frequently accompanies BPM modernisation efforts, as organisations look to decouple process logic from legacy systems and deliver changes more frequently.
From BPM to Digital Process Automation
The evolution of BPM platforms is not just technical — it is also terminological. Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester Research analyst specialising in BPM, noted that the space has invested heavily in a continuous delivery mindset. BPM vendors, he argued, are particularly well-positioned to manage tasks across systems, people and data sources.
Significantly, Forrester has moved away from the term “BPM” in favour of digital process automation (DPA). The reasoning: as organisations adopt new best practices and pursue digital transformation, the category has shifted to directly support that broader mission rather than focus narrowly on process efficiency.
Key BPM Best Practices DevOps Teams Should Adopt
Drawing on the themes raised by practitioners and analysts in this space, the following practices represent the strongest points of convergence between BPM and DevOps:
- Codify business rules explicitly. Business rules should be treated as first-class artefacts, version-controlled and tested alongside application code.
- Apply continuous integration to process changes. Process definitions and workflow configurations should move through the same CI/CD pipelines as application code.
- Use cross-functional teams. Combining business analysts, process owners and developers in the same sprint reduces handoff delays and produces more accurate process models.
- Treat processes as living systems. Design BPM implementations to be modifiable without large-scale redeployments, enabling rapid iteration based on real user feedback.
- Decompose monolithic processes. Break large, end-to-end process definitions into smaller, independently deployable units — mirroring the microservices architecture that often accompanies DevOps adoption.
- Instrument and measure. Apply the same observability practices used in production software (metrics, tracing, alerting) to running business processes.
Conclusion
The convergence of BPM and DevOps is not a passing trend. Organisations that treat process automation as a software engineering discipline — applying Agile iterations, continuous delivery, and cross-functional collaboration — are finding they can respond to business change faster and with higher quality than those that keep process management separate from software delivery. Whether the label used is BPM or digital process automation, the underlying message is the same: process and code now travel the same pipeline.