Understanding business process management / service-oriented architecture from business perspective

Oh, yes, we've all experienced the gap:

Have you ever experienced firsthand the 'business/IT alignment gap' resulting from traditional development approaches? First, business analysts explore and document requirements on their own for months. Once those requirements are frozen, IT develops the application. Many months later, the application is completed, and everyone is surprised that the original requirements have shifted, were misinterpreted, or simply incorrectly analyzed. Let's be honest: it's very hard (even impossible) to get everything right in one iteration. But after 12-18 months, time is running short and unfortunately, the application has been designed with little flexibility for change. Hence, it becomes a liability, not an asset, from Day 1. Soon, a new application will be built from scratch to replace its predecessor in another 'big bang' IT project… Hence, there is another element needed to align with the collaboration of business and IT. The marriage of SOA and BPM development techniques creates an opportunity to end this mess.

The question is whether BPM packages are really the answer, or even part of the answer.

Link: Understanding business process management / service-oriented ...