I am super honored to be featured as the first person in Pedro Robledo‘s newsletter “VOCES BPM” and its new segment “People who inspire.”

His newsletter is in Spanish, and I appreciate the opportunity to connect to non-English (or, in my case, also non-German) speakers since we all experience the same questions and issues, and together we can help out each other.

Below you find the post and newsletter text in English, but the original version can be found here: linkedin.com/pulse/roland-woldt-pedro-robledo-bpm-u4xxf. If you speak Spanish (or have a good translation tool), go and subscribe!

Enjoy!

🔧 Why BPM and Enterprise Architecture Should Go Hand in Hand

🎤 Today we share the story of Roland Woldt, a key figure in the field of BPM and Enterprise Architecture. Roland is clear about one thing: to manage change with real impact, we need to integrate processes, technology, and people. His journey began “accidentally” in 1997, in a customer service project for the German railways, and since then, he hasn’t stopped building, connecting, and evolving. Today, through What’s Your Baseline LLC, he combines consulting, publishing, and a podcast that is now in its ninth season.

✍️ VOCES BPM | People Who Inspire

📌 Roland Woldt: Integrating processes and architecture to transform organizations

📘 “Successful Architecture Implementation” and the upcoming “Successful Process Mining Projects” are part of his written legacy. But his greatest contribution is reminding us that processes and architecture are two sides of the same coin.

👉 Read the full interview in the “VOCES BPM” newsletter and explore the reflection From the Perspective of Pedro Robledo BPM.

✍️ VOCES BPM | People Who Inspire

🎓 From the Perspective of Pedro Robledo:

The testimony of Roland Woldt is a powerful narrative of professional evolution and strategic vision in the field of process management and enterprise architecture. His journey, which began “accidentally” with a project for the German railway company in 1997, shows how practical experience combined with intellectual curiosity can turn a professional into a thought leader. We share his strong stance on the natural coexistence and integration between Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Architecture (EA). Roland doesn’t see them as separate disciplines but as two complementary perspectives of the same organizational reality.

He emphasizes that BPM should focus on organizational change adoption, beyond just technology, and highlights how tools like process design, simulation, and process mining are key to building a true digital twin. Roland also underscores the importance of communities of practice and exchanging ideas outside traditional circles, and he raises concerns about market consolidation and the loss of innovation. His forward-looking perspective envisions a future where BPM, EA, and process mining are integrated, and he advocates for the democratization of the discipline through open source.

🗣️ Testimony – Roland Woldt:

🔹 1. What got you interested in Business Process Management (BPM), and how did you get started in the discipline?

Hi, I’m Roland Woldt, and I’m a veteran in the Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Architecture industry. I’ve worked as a consultant and leader at Big 4 consulting firms as well as at the leading vendor in this space for over 25 years. During that time, I built professional teams and defined, sold, and delivered services to many Fortune 500 companies.

I “stumbled” into BPM back in 1997 while working on a greenfield project to implement a customer service center for the German railways. Thereafter, I joined IDS Scheer, which was undeniably the BPM frontrunner at the time. Great times! 🙂

In 2021, I finally brought to life an idea I’d had since 2007 and relaunched this site and blog: What’s Your Baseline. I also started a podcast with my friend and colleague J-M Erlendson. Our mission is to demystify enterprise architecture through the What’s Your Baseline podcast.

That led to writing and publishing my book “Successful Architecture Implementation” and my second book, “Successful Process Mining Projects,” which will launch in September 2025.

In 2021, I also wrote an article called Meet the Maker on the website
(https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/2021/12/meet-the-maker-roland-woldt/) that offers more insights about me.

🔹 2. What learnings or experiences would you highlight as the most transformative in your BPM career?

I think the biggest lesson has been realizing there’s always “the next pig being chased through the village,” as we say in German. I’ve lived through the client/server transition, large ERP implementations, process automation, artificial intelligence, and other supposedly “paradigm-shifting” technologies—and eventually, all of them lose steam and become just another way of doing business.

What doesn’t change is the need to understand how things are connected and to plan changes in a way that people within the organization can adopt them (because organizations aren’t machines—they’re made up of people). Adoption is undoubtedly what I don’t see enough of: implementers often forget about users and affected stakeholders (including customers 😉 Technology isn’t always the answer to a problem—and even when it is, you still need to prepare the organization for that change.

To me, the best way to do this is by establishing a BPM/EA capability that enables you to manage change using data-driven tools to design, predict, and measure transformations. That means process design, simulation, and process mining—the key ingredients of a digital twin.

Another thing I learned—and admittedly implemented rather late—is that we’re all social beings looking for connection. I find it incredibly motivating to see more informal meetups and other opportunities to exchange ideas and experiences outside vendor-sponsored conferences, which are mostly marketing-driven.

🔹 3. What’s your current role, and how do you apply BPM in your day-to-day work?

I’ve just launched What’s Your Baseline LLC, and we’ll see how the business evolves. I’m currently offering consulting services, publishing books, and continuing the podcast, which is already in its ninth season.

As for industries, I’ve worked in several, but defense, finance, telecom, and high tech seem to be my strong suits. What I find interesting is that these are usually highly regulated industries, and yet—especially in finance, where we see massive fines for non-compliance—many organizations still haven’t implemented BPM and therefore don’t have their processes under control.

What I would recommend is document what you do and then apply process mining to it, because the first question an auditor asks is, “What do you do?” — and they expect to see a process diagram. The second question is, “What do you really do?” — and that’s precisely what process mining can answer.

Having design and measurement capabilities would be a considerable step forward for these organizations. Not only will it help them demonstrate compliance, but they’ll also be able to use it for traditional use cases, like process improvement and performance management.

🔹 4. What advice would you give to someone just getting started in BPM or leading their first process improvement initiatives?

Well, obviously—read my books and listen to the What’s Your Baseline? podcast 😉

But seriously, I believe the most important thing is to be curious and try to understand how things work. Learning how to structure and model processes—and getting into automation and process mining—will help you understand the entire lifecycle of a process.

If you also incorporate test design, process simulation, and a basic understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC and CI/CD), you’ll build a strong foundation that will serve you well regardless of what the “next big thing” in organizations turns out to be (as I write this, it’s AI).

🔹 5. What trends do you think will shape the future of BPM and its relationship with digital transformation?

I think we’ll see plenty of changes driven by the implementation of artificial intelligence. This won’t always be positive—some people will lose their jobs or won’t be hired after graduating—but we need to design for the change that this disruptive technology will bring. My hunch is that organizations will speed up what they do, but the fundamentals won’t change: people will still build and sell products, buy things, pay for them, and so on.

I hope we start by eliminating the “dumb jobs” and don’t fall for the illusion that AI will magically solve everything without any effort on our part.

Another trend I see is increasing consolidation in the BPM and EA markets, and I believe these fields—along with process intelligence—will eventually merge. And it makes sense if you think about it: you can’t improve processes without considering technology, and vice versa—they’re two sides of the same coin. Then you need to measure performance and compliance. I hope we see more progress toward Enterprise Mining, not just process mining…

But overall, I don’t think this consolidation is good for anyone: fewer vendors means fewer people, which means fewer ideas—and that leads to less innovation. Monopolies are never good for customers: having options is healthy. I wonder if an open-source project will emerge to disrupt the market… because you can’t compete with a price of zero dollars.

I’m already seeing signs of this. For example, after Camunda announced that version 8 will no longer be open source, at least four projects have forked the version 7 codebase into separate initiatives. If a more comprehensive open-source distribution were to emerge—one that covers all phases of the process lifecycle… if you know of one or would like to collaborate on one, get in touch!