Removing the barriers to the architecture discipline
Have you ever been confused by jargon-y architect language? Things like “TOGAF”, “BPMN”, and “UML” — what do they mean, and why do they matter? Or suffered through a system implementation that had a lot of upfront planning, but ended up with scope creep?
Welcome to the What’s Your Baseline Podcast, where we explore these topics and more. This podcast 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.
So what can you expect here? Each episode, we’ll be diving into a topic that is relevant for you. What it is, why it’s interesting and why you should care. We’ll also share stories from the road – how to implement best practices, and their value.
Join us on this bi-weekly journey with the What’s Your Baseline Podcast and companion blog.


Latest episodes
Ep.116 — Opportunities for the Future: Michael Rosemann
But why? What would happen if we wouldn’t do “As-Is” and rather start …with a fresh perspective when designing new processes?
Scary?
I think it is scarier what our next guest, Dr. Michael Rosemann, pointed out — that you can only optimize so far until nothing is left for you to do. And then what?
Michael is the author/editor of twelve books available in five languages and the author of more than 400 refereed papers. He is globally known for his work in areas such as BPM maturity models, context-aware BPM, process innovation, rapid process redesign, affective process design and process modelling quality. Michael has presented his work at all major global BPM conferences and delivered keynotes in more than 30 countries. His research projects received funding from industry partners such as Accenture, Cisco, Infosys, PwC, Rio Tinto, SAP, and Woolworths.
In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:
– From efficiency to opportunity. After decades of classic BPM work (maturity models, rapid redesign, reference models), Michael pivoted away from pure cost-cutting toward “crafting desirable futures” — a shift sparked partly by his father asking if making companies more efficient was really the legacy he wanted to leave.
– Three reasons change happens: urgency (a burning platform), curiosity (wanting to test the unknown), or ambition (a clear, desired destination). Leaders who fall into none of these tend to 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 across the organization, using process mining to find and scale what’s already working.
– The seven types of opportunity (a counterpart to Lean’s seven wastes), including concepts like “first data advantage” — looking at what data your process starts with and asking 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 of the seven opportunity types, illustrated through 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 amount of design thinking, could replicate them (e.g., QUT’s concept of an “upgradeable degree”).
– Opportunity appetite statements. Just as organizations have risk appetite statements, Michael argues they need the opposite — a deliberate, structured statement of what opportunities they’re willing to pursue, modeled in part on NASA’s approach to balancing risk and ambition.
– Make the future tangible. Examples include a six-minute video imagining a trauma patient’s full recovery journey in 2033, used to rally internal and external stakeholders around a shared vision rather than incremental process fixes.
– RX, EX, TX — Revenue Design, Emotional Experience, and Trust Experience. A framework for evaluating opportunities beyond pure transactions, including the idea of “transactional benevolence” (e.g., Netflix pausing billing for inactive subscribers, or a retailer refunding a price drop you didn’t even know about).
– Reframing the business case. To get leadership buy-in for trust- or future-focused initiatives, Michael suggests shifting the conversation 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 simple framework for understanding 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.
Michael can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrosemann/
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.
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Meet your hosts
This podcast is hosted by Roland Woldt and J-M Erlendson, two experienced consultants with decades of experience in large consulting firms and tool vendors.
About Roland

Roland is the main author of this site and the podcast host.
He is a well-rounded executive with 25+ years of Business / Digital Transformation consulting and software development / system implementation experience, in addition to leadership positions within the German Armed Forces (11 years).
He has worked as a Team Lead, Engagement / Program Manager, and Enterprise / Solution Architect on many projects. Within these projects, he was responsible for the full project life cycle, from shaping a solution and selling it, to setting up a methodological approach through design, implementation, and testing, up to the roll-out of solutions.
About J-M

J-M is the co-host of the podcast, and is a Business Process Architect, Methodology Specialist, Conference Speaker, and Transformation Engineering Lead with over 15 years of experience in Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Architecture, Supply Chain Management, and Project Management. He helps clients develop and implement business process frameworks, hone process-centric strategies, and execute process improvement and architecture modernization projects.
He is a leader in business, founding and running multiple highly successful independent arts companies and charities.

Meet our interview guests
Here are the guest on our show so far. Click on an image to open the episode in a new tab.

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