In many minds, legacy is “everything that works”. And even if that is not always true, many organizations look at their legacy systems and get a headache. How do you replace or update a set of systems that have served you so well over years or decades?

That is why we are speaking with our guest Kastin Deal about legacy modernization in this episode.

With over 8 years at Hitachi Rail, Kastin's expertise lies in spearheading IT strategy and digital transformation, aligning with the company's mission towards sustainable technological advancement. At Hitachi, the role involves balancing application, infrastructure, and data project investments and ensuring their alignment with our overarching IT strategy. Kastin's commitment to innovation and process excellence contributes to evolving business models and driving success within a global framework.

Most recently, as the Global Business Architect Lead, Kastin designed and executed the digital revamp of Hitachi Rail Group's business management system. This initiative encompassed strategy execution, process excellence, and enterprise architecture, harmonizing 50 global processes. The responsibilities also extended to product rationalization and the integration of sustainable IT practices, which have been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency across multinational IT services and lines of business.

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Kastin's background
• Definition of “legacy”
• Benefits of legacy modernization
• Alignment of Enterprise Architecture, Business Architecture, and Solution Architecture as key players
• How to get to the desired outcomes in legacy project and what architects contribute to this
• Different views needed when defining the legacy replacement solution
• Use of ArchiMate as notation for solution design

You can reach Kastin via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kastin-deal-1b22b4203/ and email at kastindeal@gmail.com.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: ⁠https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/⁠.

Having the “Oracle of BPM” on the show? Yes, please.
Even though our guest, Zbigniew Misiak, denies that, the role he is playing is an important one for our little industry. He is one of the few who bring together the different ideas and trends that are hot every year. We were genuinely interested in speaking with him about what he learned over the years and where he sees the ship sailing. And on top of it, he turned around the roles and interviewed us for parts of the show …

Zbigniew is a BPM consultant at the BOC Group, where he also takes care of the community of their free Business Process Analysis tool (the “Community Edition”). As a part of his job, he is also working with other BPM vendors in BPMN Model Interchange Working Group. You can learn more about that effort in the “Making BPMN a true lingua franca” article on BPTrends.

Zbigniew has the privilege of working with a team of great BPM experts creating a new version of the OMG Certified Expert in BPM exam and participating in BPMN, CMMN and DMN task forces. From time to time, he also runs BPM courses at various universities in Poland. I also offer courses on Udemy such as BPMN for business analysts.

And since he doesn't have other things to do in his spare time, he is also currently co-authoring a book about BPM, which will come out later this year.

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Zbigniew's background
• The history of the BPM Skills questionnaire since 2016
• Some topics from this year's version
• The “state of BPM” — trends and patterns
• Involvement of people and staging of ideas
• The example of a logistics company / InPost (also in the “additional information” section)

You can find Zbigniew's blog at bpmtips.com and reach him from there.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.

We have spoken about Task Mining in the podcast before (see the “Additional information” section in the full show notes), but I haven't seen a lot of adoption of this technology in organizations — for multiple reasons that we will discuss.

However, when we got into contact with Tuhin Chakraborty from Mimica, we could not say “no” to speaking with him about their AI-driven approach to Task Mining.

Tuhin grew up in the Bay Area, which means he was exposed to technology and the changes that we all see today his whole life. This led to positions at Pandora and LinkedIn, before he started Mimica Automation in 2017. Since then, he has perfected the AI technology behind this Task Mining tool to make it a “process improvement tool, not a performance measurement tool” (I love this attitude :-).

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Tuhin's background
• What is Task Mining?
• How does Task Mining work?
• How Mimica captures the data and processes it
• How is Task Mining deployed?
• Using Task Mining to support changes in systems and monitoring the changes
• The data management/surveillance problem with Task Mining (that creates trust problems if not handled correctly)
• An outlook on the use of mining technology in the future
• Case studies and how can a customer prepare for their first project

You can reach Tuhin and take a look at the tool over at mimica.ai.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.