Archive for February, 2007
Long-time readers of BPMS Watch know I’ve learned the hard way that to most people who self-identify with an interest in BPM, the big leap is not executing the process and rules but simply documenting it, writing it down. Now that I’m waist-deep in that world myself with the new BPMN training, I decided to trek over to IDS Scheer’s user conference in Florida. It’s been an eye-opener for sure.
I missed Day 1 (see Sandy for details), and for me Day 2 has been mostly about the technology - keynote on BPM and SOA by IDS Scheer CTO Dr Wolfram Jost, Devesh Sharma on how ARIS (I mean Oracle BPA Suite) enables business-IT collaboration, a one-on-one with Dr Jost, and to provide a little balance, a user case study, in this case a Coca Cola bottler. The case study essentially confirmed my biases going in: “We documented our processes, made the documentation available online, and this saved us half a million dollars.” Not, “we did detailed modeling and simulation analysis”, and certainly not “we automated execution of the process and business rules.” Just “we documented how the current process works.” I didn’t go to any other case studies, but I think Sandy hints at this with the business about “we’re just getting started in BPM” etc.
So my one on one with Dr Jost was pretty interesting. Like, why couldn’t these users just write it down in Microsoft Word instead of ARIS, and save half a million dollars just as well? Essentially it comes down to consistency - through the enterprise repository, structure of the notation and metamodel, the ARIS Value Engineering methodology, etc. I’m sure that helps, but basically it’s about writing it down so that people can start the conversation about how messed up things really are.
In his keynote this morning, Dr Jost mentioned a piece of the ARIS platform that does something pretty amazing. You instrument the systems that perform pieces of the process, e.g. SAP, and the software not only measures the KPIs but automatically generates the model! Jost said something interesting in the keynote: Does it make sense to take 6 months to model your processes? No, they have changed by then. Autogenerate them instead.
Wow. webMethods and Lombardi talk about instrumenting the process activities and measuring KPIs before creating a model, but ARIS actually creates the model for you. I gotta see this. They’ve had it for 3 years, but nobody seems to know about it. Least of all their customers (who have taken 6 months to model their processes).
SOA is a big theme this year. Since IDS Scheer’s execution-level partners are guys like SAP, Oracle, Tibco, Fujitsu, and Microsoft, SOA is generally equated with the process execution layer, which is not what ARIS does. But there is a big gap between “business BPM” and process execution in SOA - essentially modeling the business services - that ARIS is moving to fill. To IDS Scheer, business BPM is “the process of business process” - I don’t know, maybe it gets lost in translation - essentially tying together process strategy with process design, implementation, and “controlling” (management), and ARIS is the platform that supports the process of process management. What they don’t do is “technical BPM”, i.e. process execution. That role is filled by their partners, i.e. middleware and enterprise app vendors, and to an extent, BPMS vendors.
The gap in between is the domain of the “business service”, which they define as an API accessed over the network to perform a business activity. The definition was carefully crafted to indicate business services require collaboration by business and IT. What is the right scope of a business service? Too coarse-grained and you lose flexibility, too fine-grained and you lose manageability. I agree, but not clear yet how ARIS provides the answer.
ARIS is entering the SOA domain by extending its modeling down into that gap. Below the business model, enterprise model, and business process model is the “EA/Business Service model” and below that the “pre-executable process model” using BPEL. That’s as far as ARIS goes. The next layer down, executable processes (in BPEL), is partner-specific. The new ARIS SOA Designer supports business service definition and design. It sounds more enterprise architect-oriented than business-oriented, but Jost insists it’s intended to encourage collaboration between business and IT.
Oracle’s Devesh Sharma plowed similar turf in his talk. We’ve written about this before, but now they’re almost ready to ship the product. Oracle’s BPA Suite is ARIS plus some Oracle SOA extensions that flesh out the mapping to the executable BPEL process - human tasks, business rules, stuff that BPEL leaves out. The thing they used to call Outliner is now called Oracle Business Process Blueprint. From what I could see in the demo, it’s really two things: 1) extensions to BPEL to hold info from the process model that standard BPEL doesn’t provide, what Oracle calls “shared metadata”; and 2) a new graphical notation to display/enter that metadata, which is essentially ARIS Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) with the shapes changed to look like BPMN shapes and the overall look similar to Oracle’s BPEL Process Designer. (EPC and BPMN are not all that different semantically, but a little.) Is adding a hybrid notation moving the ball forward? Not sure. I asked Dr Jost if they could envision supporting a future version of BPMN that merged it with EPC. The answer, very polite and diplomatic, was basically no.
Other notes of interest:
- the metadata Oracle uses to describe human workflow in Blueprint will be submitted for inclusion in the BPEL4People spec from OASIS.
- the business rule infrastructure supports any business rule engine and repository - Oracle, ILOG, Blaze, or Corticon. The tooling allows you to introspect the rule repository to map rules to model activities.
- Oracle is busy building reference models for Fusion apps, including business objects and high-level processes, detailed activity flows, and the activities themselves. Right now about 3 industry models, 22 high-level process models, and 200 detailed process models.
February 8th, 2007
I’ve been talking about it for a while, laboring over it for even longer. Now I’m announcing it: Process Modeling with BPMN, a comprehensive course on how to use the standard both correctly (per the OMG spec) and effectively - with a supplied best-practice top-down methodology - to model and analyze business processes.
The course is a joint production of Bruce Silver Associates and itp commerce ltd. I developed and own the training content; my partner provides the Process Modeler for Visio tool (see here for why I picked it) as well as the license key infrastructure, translation into German and French (and maybe others). We’re scrambling to launch in time for the Gartner BPM event later this month. (You can get a 1.5-hour mini-version of it for “free” if you’re attending the conference. I’m on the afternoon of the last day. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere…)
The training will be offered 2 ways: online/on-demand and classroom. The online/on-demand totals 7.5 hours of Flash video, split into 15 parts, plus time to complete quizzes and exercises. The standard classroom offering is a 2-day course. We will also customize the classroom version (minimum 10 students) to focus on your specific process issues. Also, the classroom version is licensable to consultants and corporate training departments.
One of the really useful pieces of feedback I got from the beta was not to force every process modeler to have to learn the intricacies of intermediate events, compensation, and the other advanced parts of BPMN. It’s true, most of what you need to capture and document as-is processes, even to analyze their shortcomings and model improved to-be processes, can be done with a limited subset of BPMN elements and without intermediate events at all.
So we’ve broken up the training into 3 sections. The first one, BPMN Essentials, covers the basics - essentially all the elements except intermediate events and exception handling - along with a proven best-practice top-down methodology for how to translate process knowledge into the diagram. If you’re curious, it’s really Sharp and McDermott’s methodology from their 2001 book, Workflow Modeling, translated into BPMN.
The second section, BPMN Deep Dive, goes heavy into events and exceptions, transactions and compensation, useful diagram patterns for various situations, again with best-practice suggestions thrown in. It’s designed for business analysts and architects, not developers. Both BPMN Essentials and Deep Dive include a mix of “theory” and hands-on with the Process Modeler tool.
The training includes quizzes and exercises to test comprehension. Solutions to some of the exercises are presented in the training. Others must be completed in the tool and emailed to me for grading. Students completing the course successfully will be recognized by a certificate, and we will publish a list of certified BPMN professionals on the website. Certification will be offered at both the BPMN Essentials and BPMN Deep Dive levels.
The third section, Simulation Analysis with BPMN, shows how to do practical performance analysis using BPMN in combination with the modeling tool’s simulation engine. Simulation isn’t standardized by BPMN, so this part is somewhat tool-dependent, although the principles behind it are not. We walk through three specific use cases, which I have discussed previously: cycle time improvement from eliminating handoff delays and other inefficiencies, optimizing resource configuration and utilization, and activity-based costing. We show you how to use various diagram patterns, how to set up the simulation parameters, and how to customize the simulation output to give meaningful results.
The online course syllabus, with Flash video playing times (exclusive of quizzes and exercises) is shown below:
BPMN Essentials
1. Introduction and Overview (35 minutes)
2. Process Concepts (19 minutes)
3. Diving Right In (35 minutes)
4. Subprocesses and Top-Down Modeling (34 minutes)
5. The Complete Notation (30 minutes)
6. Gateways (43 minutes)
BPMN Deep Dive
7. Events (56 minutes)
8. Modeling Exceptions (15 minutes)
9. Modeling Business Transactions (22 minutes)
10. What’s Wrong With This Picture? (20 minutes)
Simulation Analysis with BPMN
11. Simulation Overview (24 minutes)
12. Simulation Parameters and Outputs (27 minutes)
13. Simulation Use Case 1: Cycle Time Improvement (34 minutes)
14. Simulation Use Case 2: Optimizing Resource Utilization (20 minutes)
15. Simulation Use Case 3: Activity Based Costing (24 minutes)
The online training will cost $695, which includes the Flash video, student notes, certification, and a 30-day license to the Process Modeler tool. This effectively means the student has 30 days after activation to complete the training. Students may upgrade to a permanent license for $440, a discount of $250 from the standard price of the software. Because the Process Modeler tool is an add-in to Visio, that software is effectively a prerequisite. (We are trying to get a trial version of Visio 2007 bundled, but that is not available at this time.)
The classroom version will be offered by Bruce Silver Associates, itp commerce (in Europe), and licensees. Trainers must be individually licensed and authorized by successful completion of teacher training and exercises. The standard classroom version I will offer is a 2-day course for $1295, but each licensee has some freedom to customize the content (and price) of the training. Certification procedures for students of third party licensees have not yet been worked out. Contact me if you are interested in licensing the training.
All students of the classroom training must use the official student materials ($250), which include the student notes in PDF, 30-day license to the Process Modeler tool (with same upgrade pricing as described above) and exercise submission for certification.
February 6th, 2007
I had a briefing recently with Global 360’s CEO Michael Crosno, and it’s interesting to see how far that organization has come since the management buyout last year.
Although G360 is one of the largest BPM vendors from a total software revenue perspective - Gartner/DQ had them #2 to DST in 2005, but… well, let’s let Gartner defend their own numbers - they don’t get a lot of respect, or even recognition, outside of their base of 1900+ customers. The reason for that is understandable, since the original idea of G360’s founder, Sonny Oates, was simply to roll up mature imaging/workflow vendors, like Eastman Software and Viewstart/Mosaix, keep the customers happy, and harvest the maintenance stream. But not invest in unnecessary frills, like R&D or marketing.
That only takes you so far, and Crosno - brought in in 2004 to sell the company - found he had a better opportunity to invest in it and grow the business. So last year, along with a private equity team led by TA Associates, Crosno and other key managers bought out the company and set to aggressively building it up. They had a very strong 2006 and now have put in the engineering, marketing, and financial teams needed to compete at the top tier in the BPM market.
Crosno’s approach to the market is a bit different than others. In his view, it’s companies who have invested heavily in information management technology over the past decade - content management, knowledge management, collaboration - that are now looking to add process management. That’s one industry dynamic driving BPM. Crosno admits that much of G360’s customer base today is really document management and document workflow, not full BPM. Part of the strategy is to process-enable not only their own base of content-oriented customers, but those of FileNet, EMC, and other ECM leaders. (This is in sync with my post yesterday on the intersection of process and content. )
The second industry dynamic is the growing need for process intelligence and optimization, BI with an operational flavor, something he sees as bigger and longer-lived than BPM by itself. To serve that dynamic, G360’s strategic offering is the Business Optimization Server. On the surface it looks like the BAM + process analytics component of any BPMS, but G360 has built it to work with any BPMS, not just their own, or even stand alone. (Again, in sync with my recent column on BPMInstitute.org, “Measure Then Model“. It’s not just webMethods and Lombardi who see the opportunity in performance monitoring independent of modeling and process automation.)
In addition to BOS, G360s product stack going forward features the Process Management Suite, a content-centric production workflow platform that heavily leverages Microsoft architecture and services, and Case Manager, a new collaborative semi-structured case handling offering - see Phil Ayres’ blog to find out more about this one - that is Java-based. Different process platform architectures, different process styles, but both leverage BOS. We’ll be writing it all up in the 2007 BPMS Report series sometime this spring.
February 1st, 2007
SOA analyst Beth Gold-Bernstein of ebizQ posts about her quest for a BPMN tool to support her effort, together with Brenda Michelson. to create a “service design method.”
Our goal is to take a pragmatic business driven approach to incremental (ie – project driven) SOA design and implementation. We plan to use standard modeling techniques and tools where ever feasible. The status of this project is that we have now defined the process and design artifacts, and our next task is to model out a case study and see if it holds water and to find the holes…. I argued that it was time for business and IT to start speaking the same language, and we should start off with BPMN right from the start.
She then describes how she downloaded Tibco’s free BPMN tool and tried - unsuccessfully - to get it to do what she wanted. I had the same problem when I was looking for a hands-on tool for my BPMN training. Tibco, Savvion, various Visio stencils… the free ones just didn’t do what I wanted, either. And my goal was simpler than Beth’s — it was just to explain how to use BPMN!!
The two big gotchas for Beth were also non-starters for me as well: lack of support for intermediate events, and the inability to explode collapsed subprocesses into their full detail in a separate (but linked) diagram. I’ve written at length about the first problem (Step Up to Full BPMN), a not-uncommon omission in BPMN tools from BPMS vendors whose process engine can’t handle intermediate events and transaction compensation.
The second problem is one I discovered as I was trying to adapt a best-practice top-down modeling methodology to BPMN, in which you start with a high-level (’handoff’) diagram, and then drill down to expose more detail. (Beth frames the problem in terms of service reuse, but for me it was a modeling methodology issue.) You want to retain the ability to expose the process diagram at different levels of detail, without redrawing it at each level (as would be required, for example, using BPMN’s inline expanded subprocess notation). Also without the need to have 30 feet of wall space to tape up the diagrams. I wanted to be able to drill down in the tool to see the detail, not walk around a room.
For me there was a third issue, not mentioned by Beth: the ability to do simulation analysis in a practical way. Simulation is not a part of BPMN, but it is a feature of most process modeling tools, even free ones like Tibco and Savvion. It wasn’t until I tried to teach people how to get meaningful analysis out of simulatin that I discovered what you really need to do it, elements missing in most low-end tools.
I found a tool that met my needs — Process Modeler for Visio from itp commerce of Switzerland. At $690, it’s not free, but not prohibitively expensive either. It’s the one I’m using in my BPMN training, now in beta. Here’s why I like it:
1. Full BPMN. Intermediate events, compensation, message flows, standard and user-defined attributes… Sure, there are lots of drawing tools that do this, but a process model is more than a drawing. The tool needs to understand the process semantics behind the shapes and attributes… in order to perform simulation, generate BPEL, and simply produce valid BPMN.
2. Layered on Visio. OK, that’s not free, either. But it’s the de facto diagramming tool standard. It makes the drawings easy to manipulate, and they look great. On balance a plus.
3. Expandable at multiple levels. You can draw a collapsed subprocess at the top level diagram. In one click you can create a new “process level” that takes by default the name of the collapsed subprocess, and lets you diagram that subprocess on another sheet, hyperlinked to the top level. So you can drill down in the diagram to see detail at any level. This is more than a drawing navigation aid. The simulation engine, the BPEL generation, etc all understand the linking, so it really acts as a single process model.
4. Simulation parameters. Every tool supports some notion of task resource assigment and resource costs, task duration, and gateway probabilities. But if you’re going to support events for exception handling, you need things like the probability of an event occuring, and the time it occurs. To do cost analysis, you need to separate a task’s active time (consumes resources and resource cost) from wait time (does not). Process Modeler does these things.
5. Simulation output. Every tool gives you some canned metrics and charts out of the box. What I discovered is these are rarely what you really want. You need the ability to create custom metrics and charts, and for that you need the raw instance data. Process Modeler dumps its simulation output to Excel, along with the usual canned metrics and charts, but also gives you instance data, down to the activity level, and even Excel named ranges that let you customize your performance analysis, and save the metrics and charts in a user-defined Excel template. You need to be somewhat adept at Excel, but just array formulas and stuff like that, not VBA. As I was developing the training, they even agreed to make some of my custom metrics and charts - time and cost histograms, for instance - part of their out-of-the-box Excel template.
6. A team repository for process models. I haven’t needed it yet, but for modeling in a corporate environment, it’s quite valuable.
So even though BPMN is a standard, the tools that support it are not all the same.
February 1st, 2007
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