Comments on: Not Quite Live from Gartner BPM - Day 1 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/27/not-quite-live-from-gartner-bpm-day-1/ Bruce Silver's blog on business process management Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:54:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: process simulation http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/27/not-quite-live-from-gartner-bpm-day-1/#comment-2045 process simulation Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:11:14 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/27/not-quite-live-from-gartner-bpm-day-1/#comment-2045 <strong>process simulation...</strong> Hi. Very nice blog. I\'ve been reading your other entries all day long..lol.... process simulation…

Hi. Very nice blog. I\’ve been reading your other entries all day long..lol….

]]> By: marlon_dumas http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/27/not-quite-live-from-gartner-bpm-day-1/#comment-505 marlon_dumas Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:27:37 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2007/02/27/not-quite-live-from-gartner-bpm-day-1/#comment-505 I would like to follow up on your comment regarding simulation. Here down under, we've been working with organisations using BPMN that have ended up buying Systems Architect for their BPM projects. One of the arguments for this buy is that they wanted to do simulation. But once they got the tool, they realised that the crux of simulation is not so much the tool, but rather the methodology. As you mention, one problem is that people don't know how to exploit the output of the simulation. They typically stop at measuring top-level indicatiors such as average execution time. But another major issue is that people pay little attention to setting the simulation parameters based on real data. It's a shame, because many of these organisations have a lot of data dispersed across their systems (e.g. CRM, ERP, job tracking tools, web logs), that could be used to set these simulation parameters. They just need to dig into their systems' tables, logs, reports, etc. and they would find a mine of data that they could use to tune up their simulation parameters, if only they knew where to look for. After all, it's not that their processes do not exist. They exist and they are run every day. This is to say that what we need is to have comprehensive business process simulation methodologies. Tools should be designed (and bought) to support these methodologies, rather than the other way around (meaning: we buy the tool, then we ask ourselves how will we use it). Also, as surprising as it may seem to us, some people still confuse simulation with "animation" (i.e. watching little bubbles go from one task to the next in the model interactively or in batch). But this is another story... marlon I would like to follow up on your comment regarding simulation. Here down under, we’ve been working with organisations using BPMN that have ended up buying Systems Architect for their BPM projects. One of the arguments for this buy is that they wanted to do simulation. But once they got the tool, they realised that the crux of simulation is not so much the tool, but rather the methodology. As you mention, one problem is that people don’t know how to exploit the output of the simulation. They typically stop at measuring top-level indicatiors such as average execution time. But another major issue is that people pay little attention to setting the simulation parameters based on real data. It’s a shame, because many of these organisations have a lot of data dispersed across their systems (e.g. CRM, ERP, job tracking tools, web logs), that could be used to set these simulation parameters. They just need to dig into their systems’ tables, logs, reports, etc. and they would find a mine of data that they could use to tune up their simulation parameters, if only they knew where to look for. After all, it’s not that their processes do not exist. They exist and they are run every day.
This is to say that what we need is to have comprehensive business process simulation methodologies. Tools should be designed (and bought) to support these methodologies, rather than the other way around (meaning: we buy the tool, then we ask ourselves how will we use it).
Also, as surprising as it may seem to us, some people still confuse simulation with “animation” (i.e. watching little bubbles go from one task to the next in the model interactively or in batch). But this is another story…

marlon

]]>