2026 is shaping up to be a defining year for BPM, as AI shifts from isolated pilots to always-on agents that orchestrate how work actually gets done. In the latest “BPM Skills in2026 – Hot or Not” edition of the BPM Skills series, BPM Tips again turns to global experts to explore the trends, skills needed (and not needed), and resources that matter most as processes become more autonomous, data-driven, and AI-augmented.
Infocap CEO Nathaniel Palmer, author of the Amazon #1 bestseller “Gigatrends,”contributes his perspective, offering a pragmatic roadmap for navigating thenext wave of intelligent automation.
Finally (!!) we are witnessing the inescapable yet fundamental shift from process as a static artifact to living, adaptive system.
For decades BPM was defined by documenting workflows, standardizing execution, and incrementally improving efficiency. The notion of adaptable, dynamic defined processed emerged as a first-class citizen within the BPM discipline in the late-2000s with Adaptable and Dynamic Case Management. Yet until now it was cast within the false dichotomy of Adaptability versus Automation, rather than embracing and enabling Adaptable Automation.
Today, AI (notably Agentic AI) turns that notion on its head. Unlike Generative AI tools that provide answers or generate content, the newest wave of AI can act by executing tasks, collaborating with humans, and dynamically adapting to new challenges. “Agentic” or “Agent AI” moves beyond providing information to taking action, enabling processes which are no longer simply executed, but interpreted, optimized, and acted upon dynamically by digital workers operating, either with agency (autonomously) or working in concert with humans co-workers.
This present three significant changes in perspective on how changing how organizations manage and run processes.
First, work is moving from information → action. Generative AI was interesting when it produced answers. It becomes transformational when it executes multi-step workflows autonomously. That turns processes into decision-driven systems, not flowcharts.
Second, organizations are shifting from task automation to end-to-end orchestration. Intelligent automation now spans documents, decisions, integrations, compliance, and human collaboration — collapsing silos that BPM unintentionally reinforced for decades.
Third, trust becomes the limiting factor. Black-box AI fails in regulated, mission-critical environments. The future belongs to glass-box automation: observable, explainable, auditable systems grounded in operational excellence disciplines, not statistical mysticism.
In short, AI doesn’t replace or obviate process management, but rather hastens its need for successful business transformations, especially where AI adoption is deemed a key success factor.
Most of all (and building on the points above) the BPM practitioner of 2026 is no longer a process modeler but rather the designer of human-machine collaboration. This true not just for human facing processes, but in understanding and leading the holistic orchestration of processes (or more apropos, attempting to holistically understand the process and moments of automation within your enterprise).
The new mission of BPM practitioners is make palpable and comprehendible to business stakeholders the re-envisioning the structure of the task to be not a single, discrete unit of work, but business outcomes, and to remove the distinction between what supports a task and the task itself, as well as who performs the work.
This is framed by making the work done by humans more consistent, predictable, and less reliant upon subjective interpretation of policies and rules, while simultaneously expanding the aperture for what is automatable, where digital workers and human workers use the same systems, follow the same rules, as well as are equally observable and accountable. Success requires a new set of critical skills and techniques than previously defined BPM as a discipline. These include:
Behaviors and attitudes that create value:
The practitioners who thrive will be those who can translate ambition into execution, rather than evangelizing a particular methodology or technology. Be a change agent and transformer, not an ideologue.
The driving the learn path behind the modern BPM Practitioner should be learning how to operationalize AI, not how to demo it.
Some hard truths about skills that are no longer relevant or mostly hype:
AI doesn’t diminish the role of BPM; it raises the bar and hastens the need for skill BPM professionals able to apply traditional methods to contemporary system design. The future belongs to practitioners who can design clarity in a world of increasing autonomy.