Paul Harmon is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 management consultant, author and analyst, best known for his work in the field of Business process management

Business process management

Business process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...

 (BPM).

Biography

Harmon got his HS degree from Shortridge High School

Shortridge High School

Shortridge High School is a public high school located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Opened in 1864, it is the oldest free, public high school in the state...

 in 1960, and received a BA in biology from Earlham College

Earlham College

Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The president is John David Dawson...

 in 1965. In 1968-69 he studied Psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and Education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

 at the Columbia University in the City of New York for an other year.

He began his career working for Geary Rummler at Praxis Corp. in New York City. Throughout the Seventies he owned his own consulting company and did major process redesign

Business process reengineering

Business process re-engineering is the analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization.According to Davenport a business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome....

 projects with clients like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Security Pacific, Prudential, and Citibank.

In the Eighties and Nineties Harmon was a senior consultant and head of Cutter Consortium

Cutter Consortium

Cutter Consortium, founded by Karen Fine Coburn in 1986 as Cutter Information Corp., is an American information technology research company. In 1990, Cutter purchased the American Programmer journal , and partnered with its founder, Ed Yourdon, to form the Cutter Consortium...

's Distributed Architecture practice. From 1985 to 2000 he wrote Cutter newsletters, including expert system

Expert system

In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...

s strategies, CASE

Computer-aided software engineering

Computer-aided software engineering is the scientific application of a set of tools and methods to a software system which is meant to result in high-quality, defect-free, and maintainable software products...

 strategies, and component development

Component-based software engineering

Component-based software engineering is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns in respect of the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a given software system...

strategies.

Currently Harmon is the Executive Editor of www.BPTrends.com -- a monthly webizine that publishes articles and reports on Business Process topics. (BPTrends was founded in 2003 by Celia Wolf and Paul Harmon) He serves as the senior BPM market analyst at BPTrends. He is also the Senior Methodologist of BPTrends Associates a consulting group that offers training and consulting services, based on the BPTrends BPM Methodology. Harmon is also the author of Business Process Change (2nd Ed) a popular business guide and school textbook for those interested in BPM.

Publications

Paul Harmon published several books and articles. A selection:

• 1972. Accounting essentials. With Neal Margolis in consultation with Joseph Peter Simini.
• 1973. Climbing Routes on Yosemite's Walls.
• 1985. Expert systems : artificial intelligence in business . With David King.
• 1988. Expert systems : tools and applications. With William Morrissey.
• 1990. Creating expert systems for business and industry . With Brian Sawyer.
• 1990. ObjectVision : a graphical programming tool for object-oriented applications. With Brian Sawyer.
• 1991. ObjectCraft : a graphical programming tool for object-oriented applications. With Brian Sawyer.
• 1993. Objects in action : commercial applications of object-oriented technologies. With David A. Taylor and the assistance of William Morrissey
• 1993. Intelligent software systems development : an IS manager's guide. With Curtis Hall.
• 1996. Object technology casebook : lessons from award-winning business applications. With William Morrissey.
• 1998. Understanding UML : the developer's guide : with a Web-based application in Java. With Mark Watson.
• 1999. UML for Visual Basic 6.0 developers : using Visual Modeler and Rational Rose 98. With Brian Sawyer.
• 2001. Developing E-business systems & architectures : a manager's guide. With Michael Rosen and Michael Guttman.
• 2003. Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes.
• 2008. Business Process Change: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professioinals.

External links

• Paul Harmon at bptrends.com