BPEL4People was recently announced as a step towards narrowing the gap between BPM (Business Process Management) and SOA. As always, we have a lineup of biggies endorsing the new spec. Read this IBM white paper to know more. The justification for the new spec is given as :

Human user interactions are currently not covered by the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL), which is primarily designed to support automated business processes based on Web services. However the spectrum of activities that make up general purpose business processes is broader than this, because people often participate in the execution of business processes. To support a broad range of scenarios involving people within business processes, a BPEL extension is required. 

Makes sense and well intentioned, but begs the question if this is really the area where the focus should be. What is the point in adding a new layer of complexity when adoption is stifled with the complexity on existing layers ?  Just take a look at the number of specs in WS-* and you'll know what I mean. Time and money is better spent on rationalizing this spec spaghetti and thus promote mainstream adoption instead of adding to the mess.