business-process-management

And I'm not meaning Bits Per Minute, but Business Process Management. At first though BPM was overestimated, because the technology is somehow easy to address, but I've learned the value of BPM suites is in involving the non-technical, the business experts into the software design. I know, the user is always with us during analysis, but the artifacts we use are always very unfamiliar to them. No matter how friendly the UML diagram looks like, or how many Agile iterations we go into, there is always a gap between the final user and the final developer ( usually covered by the user manager and

My customer is looking for a Business Process Management (BPM) solution. What they need is simple document routing and an approval system. What are the drivers for implementing a BPM system? What is the threshold where a developer should suggest implementing a BPM solution vs. a workflow tool or custom development? When does jBPM fit? When does a state machine built into an app fit? What problems should exist that determine that you need to go with a solution similar to jBPM? I am looking for some real world examples of "we tried to build the solution ourselves, but ended up going with

I'd like to know about specific problems you - the SO reader - have solved using Workflow Engines and what libraries/frameworks you used if you didn't roll your own. I'd also like to know when a Workflow Engine wasn't the best choice and if/how you chose something simpler, like a TaskList/WorkList/Task-Management type application using state machines. Questions: What problems have you used workflow engines to solve? What libraries/frameworks did you use? When did a simpler State Machine/Task Management like system suffice? Bonus: How did/do you make the distinction between Task Management and