Comments on: Almost Live from Process World http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/ Bruce Silver's blog on business process management Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:43:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: BPMS Watch » More on Model Autogeneration http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-463 BPMS Watch » More on Model Autogeneration Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:32:15 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-463 [...] The coolest thing I saw at Process World was definitely ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM), specifically its ability to autogenerate the as-is model from instrumenting the backend systems that perform its activities.  IDS CTO Wolfram Jost mentioned this in his keynote, and there were a number of comments about it in my Almost Live… post on Thursday.  If you missed the thread, Marlon Dumas pointed me to an excellent academic paper on this technology, called “process mining,” by Wil van der Aalst and colleagues.  Others commented that it couldn’t do magic, and Kiran Garimella did a strange riff on it as well.  I obviously didn’t explain it very well, because at that time I hadn’t seen it.  But now I have.  It’s not magic at all, and still I think very cool.  And something Kiran might actually want to take a second look at for webMethods. [...] [...] The coolest thing I saw at Process World was definitely ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM), specifically its ability to autogenerate the as-is model from instrumenting the backend systems that perform its activities.  IDS CTO Wolfram Jost mentioned this in his keynote, and there were a number of comments about it in my Almost Live… post on Thursday.  If you missed the thread, Marlon Dumas pointed me to an excellent academic paper on this technology, called “process mining,” by Wil van der Aalst and colleagues.  Others commented that it couldn’t do magic, and Kiran Garimella did a strange riff on it as well.  I obviously didn’t explain it very well, because at that time I hadn’t seen it.  But now I have.  It’s not magic at all, and still I think very cool.  And something Kiran might actually want to take a second look at for webMethods. [...]

]]> By: BPMS Watch » Almost Dead from Process World http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-462 BPMS Watch » Almost Dead from Process World Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:22:42 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-462 [...] This simple control flow aspect was what led me to ask Dr Jost yesterday if he could envision merging BPMN and EPC someday (he couldn’t).  The difference seems to be not so much in the events as in all the other stuff - the who, what, which, why - hanging off of each activity in the EPC.  The organizational responsibilities, the business objects, the products and services, the applications… most of that “stuff” is absent from BPMN, and most BPMN advocates would say “good” to that.  That’s because BPMN is about detailed modeling of processes one at a time, simulating their performance, and possibly driving an executable implementation.  Not what ARIS is trying to do at all. [...] [...] This simple control flow aspect was what led me to ask Dr Jost yesterday if he could envision merging BPMN and EPC someday (he couldn’t).  The difference seems to be not so much in the events as in all the other stuff - the who, what, which, why - hanging off of each activity in the EPC.  The organizational responsibilities, the business objects, the products and services, the applications… most of that “stuff” is absent from BPMN, and most BPMN advocates would say “good” to that.  That’s because BPMN is about detailed modeling of processes one at a time, simulating their performance, and possibly driving an executable implementation.  Not what ARIS is trying to do at all. [...]

]]> By: BPM Enterprise.com Blogosphere http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-461 BPM Enterprise.com Blogosphere Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:14:19 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-461 <strong>Lizard tails and autogeneration...</strong> I grew up in a part of the planet where lizards are kept as pets in homes (more accurately, the homeowners really have no choice). Occasionally, a cat would pounce on one. Then, something magical happened: the lizard would detach its ...... Lizard tails and autogeneration…

I grew up in a part of the planet where lizards are kept as pets in homes (more accurately, the homeowners really have no choice). Occasionally, a cat would pounce on one. Then, something magical happened: the lizard would detach its ……

]]> By: Kiran Garimella http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-460 Kiran Garimella Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:55:25 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-460 Bruce, Good 'cutting-edge' observations on autogeneration of process models. When I was on the buy side evaluating BPM vendors, some of them provided the capability to import Visio models. Their rationale was that most companies have significant (time) investment locked up in their Visio diagrams, so an automated import would be beneficial. I think that argument is sound. However, one thought leader advised against it (at least, hesaid you should revalidate the imported models). The problem is that many of the Visio diagrams are very information poor or they may not follow a consistent diagramming standards. This can cause problems within the BPM platforms. This isn't a knock against Visio; it just wasn't designed from the ground up to capture rich process information. This brings me to another point. When my team and I did process modeling workouts, all participants felt that they were coming away with a shared understanding of the business. As you suggest, no one should be modeling for six months. With the right tools and methodology, though, modeling of complex processes need only take a couple of days to one week (this assumes that all subject matter experts are fully dedicated and available). My fear is that with autogeneration of models, these valuable insights would be lost. After all, it is not just documentation of these models, but analyzing them and coming up with process improvement ideas that is so important. I've written more on my post at http://www.bpmenterprise.com/blog/archive/lizard_tails_and_autogeneration.html. I'd love to hear thoughts from you and your readers. Bruce,

Good ‘cutting-edge’ observations on autogeneration of process models.

When I was on the buy side evaluating BPM vendors, some of them provided the capability to import Visio models. Their rationale was that most companies have significant (time) investment locked up in their Visio diagrams, so an automated import would be beneficial. I think that argument is sound. However, one thought leader advised against it (at least, hesaid you should revalidate the imported models).

The problem is that many of the Visio diagrams are very information poor or they may not follow a consistent diagramming standards. This can cause problems within the BPM platforms. This isn’t a knock against Visio; it just wasn’t designed from the ground up to capture rich process information.

This brings me to another point. When my team and I did process modeling workouts, all participants felt that they were coming away with a shared understanding of the business. As you suggest, no one should be modeling for six months. With the right tools and methodology, though, modeling of complex processes need only take a couple of days to one week (this assumes that all subject matter experts are fully dedicated and available).

My fear is that with autogeneration of models, these valuable insights would be lost. After all, it is not just documentation of these models, but analyzing them and coming up with process improvement ideas that is so important.

I’ve written more on my post at http://www.bpmenterprise.com/blog/archive/lizard_tails_and_autogeneration.html.

I’d love to hear thoughts from you and your readers.

]]> By: carlosk2 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-459 carlosk2 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:46:27 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-459 Hi Bruce, Recently we have been testing thoroughly the IDS products. They are positioned on the old ERPs, they does not handle BPEL and they do not do SOA . They use the look and feel of BPMN on his owner EPC to deceive the rash ones. Definitely, IDS/ARIS is NOTHING about BPMN. Hi Bruce,

Recently we have been testing thoroughly the IDS products. They are positioned on the old ERPs, they does not handle BPEL and they do not do SOA . They use the look and feel of BPMN on his owner EPC to deceive the rash ones. Definitely, IDS/ARIS is NOTHING about BPMN.

]]> By: bruce http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-458 bruce Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:43:42 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-458 Re the BPEL4People remark... Perhaps I overstated Devesh's remark. He described what Oracle was doing and commented they had submitted or possibly would be submitting this as part of the BPEL4People proposal. He did not say OASIS, but I just assumed that's where, since that's where the original white paper came from. I don't doubt that no spec yet exists, but let's get real... these things don't pop up out of thin air. A lot of discussion among the vendors takes place before such things are unleashed on the public. Sorry for the confusion (if there really was any). As to Marlon's comment on this, I agree human workflow should have been taken up in BPEL 1.1 and shame on IBM for not doing so. But -- again reading between the lines -- what Oracle is doing, using a task management service in conjunction with standard BPEL Invoke -- seems to me far better than IBM/SAP's suggested new People activity, which would break ALL standard BPEL 1.1 or 2.0 engines. Standardizing the task management service is what I advocated all along, so I wish Oracle success in whatever negotiations they have going with IBM and SAP over this. Re the BPEL4People remark… Perhaps I overstated Devesh’s remark. He described what Oracle was doing and commented they had submitted or possibly would be submitting this as part of the BPEL4People proposal. He did not say OASIS, but I just assumed that’s where, since that’s where the original white paper came from. I don’t doubt that no spec yet exists, but let’s get real… these things don’t pop up out of thin air. A lot of discussion among the vendors takes place before such things are unleashed on the public. Sorry for the confusion (if there really was any).

As to Marlon’s comment on this, I agree human workflow should have been taken up in BPEL 1.1 and shame on IBM for not doing so. But — again reading between the lines — what Oracle is doing, using a task management service in conjunction with standard BPEL Invoke — seems to me far better than IBM/SAP’s suggested new People activity, which would break ALL standard BPEL 1.1 or 2.0 engines. Standardizing the task management service is what I advocated all along, so I wish Oracle success in whatever negotiations they have going with IBM and SAP over this.

]]> By: VaclavSynacek http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-457 VaclavSynacek Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:30:16 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-457 Hi Bruce, when I first saw the presentation of ARIS Process Performance Manager, the tool that is supposed to automagicaly draw the processes, I got very exited too. On a second look it still is a very good a powerful product, but it can't do magic. It can generate the diagrams of every single one instance of a process executed in the company, like for example: Show me how the order fulfilment process ran with this particular order! However it can generate these processes only after it knows how the individual activities are implemented in information systems. And this is the price one has to pay to get all the automagic functionality: bind ARIS PPM to every event that is related to the generated processes. So instead of designing the processes from scratch and in a top-down way, you design the process fragments bottom-up and bind it to the implementation in IS. It is an interesting option to top-down modelling. Doing this for the whole company might be much harder (read more expensive) that the standard way. Doing it for a few critical processes, can be much faster than modelling with top-down approach and bring huge savings relatively fast. DISCLAIMER: My opinion is based on presentation and papers, I don't use PPM. Hi Bruce,
when I first saw the presentation of ARIS Process Performance Manager, the tool that is supposed to automagicaly draw the processes, I got very exited too. On a second look it still is a very good a powerful product, but it can’t do magic. It can generate the diagrams of every single one instance of a process executed in the company, like for example: Show me how the order fulfilment process ran with this particular order! However it can generate these processes only after it knows how the individual activities are implemented in information systems. And this is the price one has to pay to get all the automagic functionality: bind ARIS PPM to every event that is related to the generated processes. So instead of designing the processes from scratch and in a top-down way, you design the process fragments bottom-up and bind it to the implementation in IS.
It is an interesting option to top-down modelling. Doing this for the whole company might be much harder (read more expensive) that the standard way. Doing it for a few critical processes, can be much faster than modelling with top-down approach and bring huge savings relatively fast.
DISCLAIMER: My opinion is based on presentation and papers, I don’t use PPM.

]]> By: marlon_dumas http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-456 marlon_dumas Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:44:24 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-456 Let us forgive Bruce for this lapsus linguae. On the other hand, this raises once again the question: Why on earth is someone standardising a language for defining so-called "business processes" that can not be used by people? Somehow, the standardization of task management should have occurred in parallel with that of BPEL rather than after the fact. Unavoidably, vendors have already defined their own task management interfaces and standardisation in this space now risks to be a long and painful process... Let us forgive Bruce for this lapsus linguae.
On the other hand, this raises once again the question: Why on earth is someone standardising a language for defining so-called “business processes” that can not be used by people? Somehow, the standardization of task management should have occurred in parallel with that of BPEL rather than after the fact. Unavoidably, vendors have already defined their own task management interfaces and standardisation in this space now risks to be a long and painful process…

]]> By: flinz http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-455 flinz Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:39:43 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-455 Hi Bruce, Have I missed something? You wrote: "BPEL4People spec from OASIS" Since when is BPEL4People an OASIS spec or even an official proposal? Nice article! fabian Hi Bruce,

Have I missed something? You wrote: “BPEL4People spec from OASIS” Since when is BPEL4People an OASIS spec or even an official proposal?

Nice article!

fabian

]]> By: marlon_dumas http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-454 marlon_dumas Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:17:40 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/almost-live-from-process-world/#comment-454 Hi Bruce, It's indeed suprising that the BPM industry is not yet very much aware of "business process mining". Business process mining is a technology that allows one to automatically generate process models and other organizational models from event logs (e.g. SAP logs). If you wish to know more about this technology and how it can be applied to real-life scenarios, I very much recommend the following paper: http://is.tm.tue.nl/staff/wvdaalst/publications/z7.pdf IDS Scheer is one of the first vendors that has integrated this technology into its offering, but as we speak, there are other vendors following up this trail. marlon Hi Bruce,
It’s indeed suprising that the BPM industry is not yet very much aware of “business process mining”. Business process mining is a technology that allows one to automatically generate process models and other organizational models from event logs (e.g. SAP logs). If you wish to know more about this technology and how it can be applied to real-life scenarios, I very much recommend the following paper:
http://is.tm.tue.nl/staff/wvdaalst/publications/z7.pdf

IDS Scheer is one of the first vendors that has integrated this technology into its offering, but as we speak, there are other vendors following up this trail.

marlon

]]>