I’m not sure there are exactly seven forms of BPM, but Tom Baeyens writes a thoughtful article here that lays out 7 use cases and how they are addressed by JBoss jBPM.

Before we even get to the 7 forms, Tom has an insight that is key to understanding why BPM systems are a bit “different”:

A key capability of BPM systems is that processes steps can be wait
states. For example in the business trip process above, nodes ‘manager
evaluation’ and ‘ticket purchase’ are human tasks. When the execution
of the process arrives in those nodes, the system executing the process
should wait till the assigned user completes the task.

From a software technical point of view that capability is a big deal. As the
alternative is a bunch of methods that are linked by HTTP requests,
Message Driven Beans (MDB), database triggers, task forms, etc. Even
when using the most applicable architectural components available in
Java today, it is still very easy to end up in a bunch of
unmaintainable hooks and eyes. Using an overall business process makes
it a lot easier to see and maintain the overall execution flow, even
from a software technical perspective.

I couldn’t agree more with this, though it is a sort of “under the hood” consideration.  It is part of why well-designed BPMS packages can scale really well with respect to the number of process instances that might be in a resting state (waiting for something to happen).  Any BPMS solution that is holding all these instances in memory is going to be at a distinct disadvantage because for most of the time a process instance is alive, it is in a waiting state, waiting for an activity to execute, for a human to act, etc.  and not actively processing work.

Setting aside scale, its just hard work to write the code that surrounds such wait-states correctly and you don’t want to have to write this code every time you confront such a problem - rather, you want to use a BPMS that seamlessly represents these wait-states in a diagram, giving the developer the ability to focus on the functionality of the process steps or the flow of the process, and not get caught up on the internals.

A couple additional thoughts on the seven forms (use cases) he outlines…

For Use Case 5, Visual Programming, he lists a few benefits:

With visual programming, we will target developers that do not yet have
the full skillset to develop in Java. They can graphically specify the
activities and draw transitions to indicate the control flow. Instead
of typing Java code, just put blocks like ‘perform hql query’,
‘generate pdf’, ’send email’, ‘read file’, ‘parse xml’, ’send msg to
esb’. Instead of writing Java, they will be composing software programs
by linking activity boxes in the diagram and filling in the
configuration details.

While simplifying activities like stringing together queries and PDF generation without writing that code may make this operation more accessible to developers without these Java skills, I would contend a different benefit:  Things that should be easy (or rote) become easy (or rote) and therefore free the mind to focus on the bigger business problem.  This is akin to the value I receive from a BPM system hiding the details of implementation of parallelism from me.  While I may have the skills to write this code, it is tedious to write, and expensive to get it right.  So you don’t want to roll this kind of code in a one-off fashion - you want to write it once and re-use it liberally to get benefits of scale.  To the extent that a visual environment frees the developer to focus on the important abstractions of the process, it is a big win.  (Note: As soon as I read Use Case 6 it precisely points out my thoughts about threaded programming, by pointing out that you can use a BPM system as a thread control language).

What really intrigues me is whether Tom and the JBoss jBPM team can create the necessary interfaces and utilities around jBPM to allow the creation of the Domain Specific Languages that can be implemented in jBPM (e.g. BPMN).  While Tom apparently doesn’t see much value in the use of BPMN for executable models, my experience differs (and, since his technical approach doesn’t preclude BPMN for executable models in the future, the disagreement is more theoretical).  Perhaps we can change Tom’s mind about this!  While I think it is possible (and even useful) to create BPMN models that are not intended for execution, I believe a good technical implementation can still be accomplished with BPMN (plus technical details captured in context of the process).  And this technical implementation can still be understood by the Business.

I think the problem isn’t BPMN… its a lack of imagination about how to capture business and technical details in different layers so that the user of these authoring tools can show or hide the “layers” that are interesting to them.   For clarity, I think “technical layer” could include adding additional BPMN elements to the diagram, not just scripting and code and variable input/output details.  And I think tailoring the visibility of details in the diagram is a key component in making a single model multi-purpose in audience.

I’ll definitely have to keep my eye out for jBPM 4…

A question that asks for the wrong answer, and an Answer that doesn’t address the right Question.

• A Question:  “Is this project a good fit for BPM?”
• An Answer:  “This isn’t a good fit for BPM.”

First, let’s talk about the question, and let’s think about it in terms of process rather than project.  BPM is good for processes.  Not just some processes, but processes generally.  The real question that should be answered is “What is the process?” Define the process in terms of what it does for the business.  Don’t define the process in terms of what it does with an incoming system event, or in terms of what a single user community does with some data.  Define the process in terms of how you:

• service your customers
• fulfill your demand
• respond to exceptions or challenges
• meet service level agreements
• create delighted customers and renewable business
• recognize revenue

(These are just a few ideas… )

If you can re-orient your thinking from the “project” or the “application” to really thinking about the process, you won’t question whether it is a good fit for BPM, that will be obvious.  BPM is a good fit for processes, and if you want to manage your processes, you need some BPM!

The answer/statement: “This isn’t a good fit for BPM.”  When I hear someone say that, the following ideas run through my head:

1. They haven’t found the process that their project is intended to serve, or
2. The BPMS they have doesn’t lend itself to a clean representation and implementation of their process, or
3. They just shined the light on their process and discovered all the ugly parts that were hidden in the boiler room.  Now they are feeling like it is barely a process at all, just a jumbled pile of exceptions connected by spaghetti.

To the first point:  Find your process.   Broaden your scope if you must, to consider what happens before your “project” starts (almost every project has inputs - follow the inputs - where do they come from? how did they get created?  who / what is responsible for that?  how do they impact my project/process?), and consider what happens after (who receives my outputs, where do they go and what impacts do my outputs have on their project/process/applications/users).

To the second point:  Just because your BPMS doesn’t represent the problem well doesn’t make it not a process, or not a good fit for BPM.  Let’s distinguish between a software package’s shortcomings and a shortcoming of the concepts embodied by BPM.  The software part is still evolving and improving.  In the meantime, there are going to be gaps.  These can be resolved or patched without abandoning the benefits of BPM.

To the third point:  If you haven’t been managing your projects and applications as key processes that support your business, of course there is a scary boiler room down there in the basement.  Take the time to extract process out of that mess, or else find a way to leverage the boiler room as a black box, with a nice tidy interface (think, electrical wall sockets) that let’s you design higher level process around this one area.  Come back and clean up the boiler room when you can show that by having a better result out of that black box will yield benefits (after all, with BPM, you’ll be able to measure the inputs and measurable outputs and timing and count data… and infer what could be improved without even knowing the inner workings)…

So, when I hear these things, I know we have a chance to help our customers realize an opportunity to look at their problem or project differently and yield the benefits of a BPM approach.  We’ve seen lots of data entry applications that lose sight of the fact that they are interacting with and altering the state of a real process with customer value.  Its really gratifying to see the value we can extract out of this change in perspective, and our CEO, Lance Gibbs, is one of the best in the business at this kind of out-of-the-box thinking (I’ve had the good fortune to be in the room with him on several occasions when such eureka moments have happened).  If you’re using BPM and you think you’ve got a bum deal on your process, take a step back and see if you can’t find the process there, the real process, which your project is meant to service…

Sandy has posted a pretty good presentation on mixing rules and process, which pretty well captures how I feel about the subject.  I’ve never understood why the rules-vendors out there try to model the process using rules.  On the flip side, pure BPMS vendors sometimes fall into the trap of feeling they have to claim to have rules engines because the rules folks will try to claim that they have BPM.  I think customers who are interested in both BPM and BR functionality could do themselves a favor by telling vendors up front that they are using separate packages for this functionality - they’re likely to get more candid answers from the sales folks from both companies, as it allows the vendors to play to their respective strengths.

I’ve deployed several projects that integrated a BPM platform with a rules product, and its just easy to do via webservices or an API call in all but the most extreme cases.  Anyway, enough from me, here’s a link to Sandy’s post.

Disclaimer:  I used to work for a company that did a lot of work in the configuration space, which has a pretty big overlap with rules.  We did heuristic search, constraint satisfaction, resource allocation and pooling, spatial constraints, containment, and we even did massive rule systems that were super fast.  Intellectually it was a very interesting field because you take really hard problems (in some cases, problems that you could demonstrate were NP Hard problems) and finding “reasonably optimal” solutions in a very finite amount of time.  As I said, intellectually very stimulating.  In other cases, it was coming up with very creative ways to use simple rule-based systems to compute very user-friendly user-interfaces in millisecond time against very large rule bases.  But one thing I learned for sure: thinking about the world as a set of configuration logic or rules is a different way of thinking, and it just isn’t intended for the average Bear.  This is why I don’t see representing “everything as rules” as being a terribly useful way of approaching the world when it comes to involving your organization in the process of business process management or improvement.  I consider myself a reformed rules guy, and now, tongue-in-cheek, I see everything as a process!

Update: On a (somewhat) related note, a somewhat humorous post from Jim Sinur on how rules might have initiated the real-estate meltdown.

There has been a flurry of discussion around compliance for BPMN specifications, particularly on Bruce Silver’s blog, and with additional commentary from Ismael’s blog.

Bruce makes some great points about why BPMN is catching on in the marketplace.  It is (relatively) intuitive, it represents most of the really important ideas that need to be expressed in the Business Processes, and I’ll add another thought:  you can actually draw it on the whiteboard pretty accurately.  Some people think that is silly, but I think it matters that you can sketch it out pretty faithfully on a whiteboard or piece of paper as well as in software.  A great many people still think most freely on whiteboard/paper rather than on a computer screen.

Bruce also makes a great point about BPMN to BPEL mappings:

“A key reason for that is it is graph-oriented like a flowchart, not block-oriented like a structured program, or more to the point, like BPEL.  For example, you can loop back to some previous step with a BPMN gateway, but BPEL places severe restrictions on that.  What that means is you can draw BPMN diagrams that cannot be mapped to BPEL, or at least to “roundtrippable” BPEL that preserves the BPMN view after even minimal tweaking in the BPEL environment.”

Personally, I don’t even want “roundtrippable” I want “native” - meaning, a representation specifically designed to store BPMN.  Whether it is “custom” XML or “standards-based” XML, I want it to be targeted so that roundtripping simply isn’t an issue - the diagram is the xml/data and the xml/data is the diagram.  Otherwise, how can the business ever be sure that they’re BPMN diagram is being accurately executed?  If the representation isn’t roundtrippable or native, then it undermines faith that the process works as designed.  One of the key problems with all the previous software systems I’ve used and built prior to BPM is the separation between requirements and the finished solution (or, put another way, between the business and IT delivery).

Ismael of Intalio gives this response in his blog:

“Do not worry about round-tripping between BPMN and BPEL
Round-tripping is a futile and wasteful exercise when attempted between two languages or notations that have a significant semantic gap between them, and so is the case for BPMN and any process execution language optimized for computers (like BPEL). The same is true between UML and Java by the way. Round-tripping should be set as a goal only between two languages or notations that are essentially representing the same thing, such as BPMN and its future serialization format for example. What this means is that there must exist a way to fully serialize BPMN diagrams on one hand, and a way to graphically display serialized BPMN on the other. And all this should work in a deterministic and predictable way, uniformly across tools.”

I find the assertion that round-tripping is irrelevant to be a bit startling.  The problem is, if the translation from BPMN to BPEL representation is wrong, we’ll have a hard time detecting that.  And then how would it help with compliance? I can’t take the BPEL representation and load it in another BPMN tool and see the model… so we haven’t achieved the interchange that Bruce Silver is looking for, nor proven compliance…

Personally, I’d start with the following:

1. can i MODEL the specification model (ie, can i draw it in this tooling with standard components).  By this definition of compliance, a visio stencil may do the trick…
2. can the target environment EXECUTE the model.  the compliance model can describe the expected behavior of the model especially illuminating areas that might be up for debate (presently) but which should be standard (near future) interpretation.  Execution should be separated from modeling - from a compliance perspective - because BPMN does not exist solely for execution purposes.

Next, additional models could be provided that describe “illegal” models. If you model these in a compliant environment, it should, in some fashion, warn you that the model is not correct (either by throwing an informative error when you run/test the model, or by showing validation errors at design time).

Granted, testing compliance gets easier once BPMN 2 style storage spec gets released, but til then, there’s no reason we can’t have a representative model - it will just be harder to confirm compliance because we’ll have to actually do the work to model something.

Bruce points out that without the data storage spec, he’s not satisfied with the results - and I can’t blame him - but I think defining what would be a representative model to exercise the specification for a given tool is something that has to be done regardless of the storage medium.  And in the meantime, even the visual representation of such a model could help customers and consultants evaluate BPMN tooling appropriately for compliance.  Currently there’s just too much distance between here and there if we have to have a portable data schema before we can have a model (or set of models) that exhibits all the features of compliance.

Recently there has been quite an interesting discussion around Pi Calculus vs. Petri-Nets, and between BPEL and other implementations of BPMN.  The real discussion thread (consolidated place to read) is here.  The start of this discussion appears to be Ismael’s post on BPEL/Pi-Calculus vs. BPMN engines that use Petri-Nets.  This is pretty esoteric stuff to the average person, but it has sparked quite the debate.

You can find Ismael’s original post here.

If you’re technical, and you’re curious about what’s going on inside the black box BPMS you’re using, this is a great debate to read through.  The basic point made by Arthur and others is that BPEL is an implementation detail, and that BPMN is the most important standard because it represents the process, and as we all should know, representation affects how we think about process.  Arthur’s basic point is not that BPEL is deficient, but merely that it is like arguing about whether we should compile to Java bytecode or C-sharp byte code.  Or native machine code… do we really care as long as the code runs well on our target platform? :)

The victim in the debate is often “petri-nets” as compared to “pi-calculus”. Ismael makes the argument that BPEL is superior to the other approaches out there, partly because it is standards-based, and partly because it employs pi-calculus and that that is superior to petri nets for parallel processes. A great debate over whether BPEL really implements pi-calculus ensues, missing that the key point Arthur was making is that either a pi-calculus model or a petri-net model could represent parallel processing of BPMN models well. My personal experience reflects this as well, as I’ve participated in projects that leveraged both technologies and they both work… moreover, they don’t appear to be entirely mutually exclusive.

Lost in all of this debate is the B in BPMN:  The Business.  The Business doesn’t care as much about the specific technical differences of these approaches under the hood, so long as they execute the process faithfully.  Personally I just want to use the best tool for the job.  I’m going to “write” processes in BPMN.  I’m going to execute them and deal with differences in interpretation of the spec when BPMN is married up to execution engines, regardless of whether they are BPEL or other technologies (and the fact that it goes to BPEL doesn’t get me away from interpretation issues, because the issue is how is BPMN “interpreted” into BPEL just as much as it is an issue of interpreting BPMN into some other exeuction form).

Thanks to Sandy’s blog post, I’ve once again been pointed to an interesting post in a blog I didn’t have in my Google reader (I’ve now added it!  thanks again Sandy!), in which Ismael Ghalimi gives unsolicited advice to the BPMS competition out there.  I can sum it up as:  “Use our BPEL engine!”

I want to discuss this theme in three parts:  The Case for Change, The Proposed Solution, The Proposed Benefits.

The Case For Change. The economy is hurting, and logically software vendors selling perpetual licenses will be commensurately hurt by reduced purchasing plans.  It isn’t a bad premise, though I will point out a couple of things.  During a slowdown in the early 90’s, software that had good ROI sold at accelerated rates, while software without large ROI stagnated or didn’t sell at all.  Products that extracted cost from expensive operations enjoyed great success.  On the other hand, during the 2001-2003 slowdown, I saw something else happen.  Instead of buying software to make complex processes and operations more efficient, I saw companies dramatically simplify their processes or products to eliminate the need for software (for example, PC and Server configurations became dramatically simpler, and fewer configurations were offered.  The same thing happened in telecommunications.  Complicated sales processes got streamlined).  I can’t say whether the current economic environment will spur more software sales in BPM or less… I have visibility to the deployment side, and companies that already own BPM are looking to get more ROI out of that software $.  But for those without BPM software, I’m not sure that they can effect the same kinds of rapid ROI that BPM platforms provide, and therefore I’m not sure how many of them will back off of plans to acquire BPMS packages.  Ismael asserts that many of their purchase plans will change.  I’m not so sure. If I look to 2003 and 2004 as examples, IT departments dramatically cut spending in the 4th quarter to preserve earnings for the current year (and yet, it didn’t stop BPMS vendors from selling in those quarters).  In the new year, however, priorities were reassessed and projects that were deemed to have a large probability of a large ROI were started. I can’t say for sure how this year will play out yet for BPMS vendors.

So, I’m not sure I buy the economic argument. But I do buy that replacing proprietary solutions with open source solutions or de facto standard solutions makes sense. Why? well, you focus your engineering efforts on the parts that differentiate you, and you rely on the Open Source community to provide for the plumbing elements.  If you find a bug, you fix it, build it, submit it back to the community, and benefit from gradually increasing quality of the overall solution.  Ismael uses the Database example, but I’d say this analogy isn’t perfect for his purposes, because the “winners” in the database space have been primarily licensed software vendors. A better example for BPMS solutions would be the J2EE stack.  Once upon a time it would have been hard to avoid using Weblogic or Websphere, but JBOSS has become a viable solution, and it doesn’t have additional licensing costs (though, the support contracts are actually quite expensive at present).  And you certainly wouldn’t want to write your own J2EE or LAMP stack for your BPM product - you want to focus on BPM and let someone else solve those interesting platform problems for you.

The Proposed Solution. Ismael proposes embedding (OEMing) Intalio’s BPEL engine in competitor products. In terms of his Blog post, it looks like “BPEL Engine” and process engine are being equated.  However, I think that several of the vendors use something closer tied to the parallel processing notation BPMN, rather than to the XML notation BPEL (there is a brief reference in his post that BPEL’s pi-calculus is better than Petri-nets, but without any supporting data directly in the blog post, since I think that was a bit of a tangent… and certainly doesn’t fit in this post!).  So while they may use a conversion of BPMN to BPEL and then in turn use a BPEL engine, it isn’t necessarily the case (they may, in fact, have a BPMN engine using some other technology).  This introduces some friction for vendors to adopt Intalio’s BPEL engine as a literal replacement for their own processing engines.  Nevertheless, I’m sure some vendors would benefit from getting a BPEL engine embedded even if it isn’t their main processing engine… (and therefore, worth it for Intalio to pursue such agreements where possible)

Looking at his database analogy… This isn’t the same as deciding not to build your own DB and “outsourcing” this technology to Oracle, Sybase, or MySQL… Its actually the equivalent of Oracle deciding to replace their Database Engine with MySQL or PostgreSQL on the grounds that they are cheaper and scalable and times are tough so Oracle could save some money by doing so… but read on for why that may not be their decision…

The Proposed Benefits. No more investment in “stack” technology, pick up a scalable BPEL engine.  The key here is, does the BPEL engine Intalio produces eliminate any competitive advantage or perceived advantage, that the other BPMS vendors have vis-a-vis the competition due to their own respective process engines?  I can’t answer that question for the BPMS vendors, but if we go back to the Oracle analogy, I think Oracle has done quite well (so far) by sticking to their guns and their own DB engine.  There are switching costs that can’t be underestimated too badly - its costly to switch someone from one Database to another… not to mention the monumental task Oracle would have of switching their own software stack to run on an open source database.  Similar friction would exist for the BPMS vendors to switch their process engines out for a BPEL engine.

Conclusion. So, it isn’t that I think this is a bad idea, I just think the bar may be really high, and I’m not (yet) in a position to judge if Intalio passes the bar (or if the other vendor solutions don’t set the bar high enough).  Ismael and Intalio should keep pushing this angle though, with the BPM vendors.  I don’t think any of them will be picking up the phone to call Intalio, as Ismael suggests, but I would suggest he approach them about co-development and OEM agreements.  Having the industry solidify around a common process engine would be a good thing, assuming that process engine is truly superior to all the engines out there today, and might help accelerate adoption of certain standards and innovations.  It would make it easier to expose useful APIs to the developer world (Ismael has some posts about building for developers that are pretty good too), it would make it easier to write solutions that will work across more than one BPMS vendor.  And it would make it easier to push BPMS education down into the college levels at some point.  Still, it looks like a tough hill to climb from here.  Keep fighting the good fight, Ismael.

Appian had their first user/customer forum this week, and so far the best writeups of the sessions I’ve seen are on Sandy Kemsley’s blog.  We’ll have some thoughts to share as well, but for a session-by-session low-down, this is the place to go.

The case for modeling without thought of execution…

I recently came across a blog entry from IDS Scheer on their Aris BPM Blog. Thanks to Sandy Kemsley for pointing me to it from her blog. Upon first read of the article by Sebastian Stein, I was struck by the difference in perspective between those who implement processes and those who model them.

For those who model (Modelers), the Model is the chief output and goal. Having a Model that will survive the test of time is the goal. You can see that bias throughout the post. In fact, the core philosophy is embodied right here:

“A business process model, depicted in one of the popular notations like BPMN or EPC, should not contain any technical details. If the underlying IT infrastructure or implementation technology changes, the business process model should remain stable. Your warning bells should ring if you have to change your business process just because you changed the implementation technology used.”

The two key points:

1. No technical details
2. stable with respect to technology changes

Something Overlooked by a Model-only Perspective…

But there are some problems with this… First, all the BPMN/BPMS tools that I have worked with support layering of processes. This layering allows the user to create a model that reflects Business sensibilities at the top layer, and if needed, several layers down in detail. So, if your need is to model something without “any technical details” you are not prevented from doing so in the BPMN-oriented tools that I’ve used.

Second, when you get to a certain level of detail, the process design should be informed by Technology. How so? It is important to understand if a transition is a manual or an automated one. Is it a non-value-added manual step? Then generally we want to automate it, or ideally remove it. Value-added manual step? Then generally we want to optimize around its constraints, but automation won’t be the goal. However, we may want to use technology to reduce errors, to improve time-to-execute, etc. In the posting, Sebastian doesn’t go into detail as to what he considers a “technical detail”, but it does beg the question: what is too technical? How about input and output data from a step in the process? These are critical process design considerations (if you know that a piece of data is required as an input, but you’re not sure where it comes from, you have a problem to resolve in your process design. And those inputs and outputs help define the “contract” of an activity or subprocess (or even of the entire process).

Third, Modeling tools today make it exceedingly easy to change a Model to adapt to Process changes. While it seems like a good idea to have a Model that is “stable” with respect to technology changes - the fact is, business processes change faster and more often than the technologies and systems that support them. The real problem isn’t keeping the Process consistent across technology changes - the problem is that the underlying technology may not be flexible enough to adapt to the new process model! At the least, the technology layer is often not agile enough to do so at a sufficiently affordable price and on a sufficiently short timeline (unless of course, that process technology layer is a good BPMS).

Fourth, the resilience that one needs, truly, is with respect to performance data. Performance data analysis is what will drive my process improvement activities, or identifying a process operating outside control limits. I need to be able to compare the performance of my process now to the performance of my process next year, to the performance of the process last year… If my process changes dramatically, how do I do that? Note: I’m not saying the technology changed. The process changed. So what I need is a way to track data that will make sense even in the face of relatively substantial changes in my process. BPMS tools can provide this facility, either baked in or via smart modeling practices, by taking snapshots of data at key milestones in the process that are not likely to change, semantically, even while the syntax (specific steps) of the process may change. To this end, even though the order entry portion of the process may change dramatically, you can still track information around the # of orders in, the value of those orders, the time it takes to process them, etc. even though the order entry process may go from highly manual to highly automated to web-self-service (or may yet encompass all three).

How do we Sum it up?

So the argument is that a modeling-only tool buys you a benefit (stability against technical change) that you don’t need, while not providing a benefit (technical agility with respect to business process changes) that you do need… yet still doesn’t address the key stability need -that of the measured process performance data. Moreover, the integration from most modeling tools to an actual functioning BPMS is, for the most part, non-existent from a practical perspective. Even when that integration exists, it is usually lacking process execution sensibilities in the model. There is a difference between drawing a model that represents the business needs and drawing one that can NOT be executed because of ambiguities and inconsistencies. For the best integrations I’ve seen so far, the products and the integration are all written by one vendor. (I’m definitely interested in seeing examples of this kind of tooling and integration and I’d be happy to write up reviews for such)

I’ve actually written an import to a BPMS suite using an Aris model as a starting point - and its hard!  There is a ton of non-relevant data in the export - positioning information, for example - and other information you need is difficult to lay hands on (roles/ownership).  To be fair, this wasn’t a BPMN diagram in Aris, but it WAS a diagram of a process, in a very unstructured environment.  It wasn’t any easier than parsing it out of Visio vdx files.  My recommendation, is that if you are given a process modeled in a modeling only tool - your first instinct should be to redraw that process in your execution modeling environment rather than try to import it (unless the importer ships with your product, in which case, give it a try!).  You’ll be surprised how fast you can recreate the model in your execution environment.

Now what?  Does an Execution-Oriented Model still make sense?

Okay. Given the arguments Sebastian presents, it seems he is suggesting that if you don’t know what product you will use to implement, you should use Aris to model your process (in fairness, if you don’t know what execution environment you will use, paper, visio, and Aris are all good options). And that, because it is “agnostic” with respect to the implementation tool you use, there is some derived benefit (this is really the point I disagree with). However, if you are going to build your solution in a completely different toolset, and you accept my premise that exports out of Aris (and other modeling tools) into execution BPMS suites leave a great deal to be desired, then you come to an interesting crossroads. Is he suggesting that once given an Aris model we should just write BPEL xml or some Java code to implement the process? or that we should then use a BPMN-oriented modeling suite to re-model and then implement the process?

In our experience, just “writing code” to codify a process in a modeling tool is a mistake. For one, how can the business determine if you have faithfully reproduced the process in your code? Extensive usability / UAT testing might reveal an answer, but it is a very expensive way to find out, and it only happens after all the code is written - and any mistakes will be very expensive to fix at this point because they could be simple mistakes or they could be conception or foundational mistakes. An Agile development process can help, but many organizations have trouble carrying off this approach with traditional software tools. If the technical team uses a BPMN execution environment (a BPMS) to build that process, then the business will be able to see the process in BPMN, a language (drawing) that they can understand, and understand the semantics thereof. By visually inspecting the design, the business can eliminate the greatest proportion of future defects at the earliest part of the design phase. And the technical team will implement each portion of the process in context of the business process at that point. And that is critical for providing useful business context to the technical team at the time they most need it.

Which Model is the Master?

And finally, now that your Process is implemented in an execution-oriented BPMS, as well as modeled in your modeling-only environment… which Model is the “Master”? Of course, you can make either answer work.  But let’s be clear about the choice you make :

Option 1:  The Model as drawn by the business in the modeling tool is the master.  it does NOT reflect what is actually happening in the business, or within IT, but it does show what the business was hoping the process would look like when the project started.  (Optionally, it may have even been revised and updated at the end to reflect some of the changes that implementation and testing revealed needed to be made).

Option 2:  The Model that works as agreed to by IT and the Business, drawn and executed in the BPMS environment.  This is the model that was actually tested by business users in UAT, by Unit Testing in IT, and system testing in IT.  This is the model that is actually running your business process in production, and it reflects reality.

Is it important that your original Model is resilient to technology change in this context?  Is it relevant that your model doesn’t have any technical details in it?

Or does it seem to be more interesting that there is now a BPMN model that represents what actually runs in your business every day, that can be measured and analyzed over time.  Does it matter that this BPMS is resilient to back-end technology changes (activities provide abstraction to what type of integration, and each integration can provide abstraction as to what specific systems are being tapped)?  Does it matter that this BPMS can support relatively rapid changes in process to adapt to your real business?  Does it matter that you can map the data you are tracking to your Model, to generate heat maps and highlight problem areas?

Well, you can guess where our heads are at.  Modeling is important, but Execution makes it relevant to the bottom line, and makes the Model itself more valuable.  If you want help turning your models into reality, we can help.

It’s clear that organizations are recognizing the value of Process Management in their overall strategy. These organizations are researching, investing, and sponsoring projects in growing numbers to understand, model and implement their processes in a BPMS tool. However, I find too often, the momentum stops there. You have analysts and technologists that help install, build and deploy BPM solutions but what then? Who “owns” the process once deployed?

I submit that the business unit should own the process in which they operate; but far too often, the line between an IT-implementation and the execution ownership is so blurred that the BPM solution becomes another asset that IT never lets go of. You see, the growing need for a BPM solution is the realization that to innovate, improve, and accelerate my business, I must understand and manage the processes I have. I need to measure my inputs, resources, and performance in order to make decisions on my capability and offerings. At the center of these points of interest lies my process. How can I accurately pivot my data points if my center pivot point (the process) continues to change without my knowledge? By change I mean, unexpected, un-managed change on the business floor. It’s the work-a-rounds, the “shift to old ways”, the manipulation game many workers and managers play to achieve goals that may frankly be out of date and/or no longer valid. As we embark on process improvement (often necessary for growth), we have to measure current performance and understand the impact of changing the inputs, adding more resources or simply improving performance. This computation is has no foundation if the process we think we’re measuring against is not the actual process in action. Our information is flawed and our decisions compromised.

A well defined process is a valuable piece of intellectual property for the organization and when the business decision makers lose site of that process artifact and don’t refer to it when making business decisions, its value drops and the process suffers as a result. Changes may be communicated and enforced without understanding the impact to their process and solutions in place. Metrics become skewed and don’t reflect actuals when process steps are ignored, changed without reflection, or utilized incorrectly.

BPM tools help solve this problem by not only providing the means to model a business process and communicate effectively, but by deploying the model in a run-time, executable environment such that the model not only becomes a communicative device but a managing, orchestrator of the process flow keeping the model itself front and center in the business. However, when this software solution is not coupled with an adequate Business Process discipline, the BPM solution begins to look like another commodity software package managed by IT. This is a path that the business strategists must seek to avoid.

Process-centric business training such as Lean Six Sigma helps keep business analysts and managers focused on change that positively impacts a business process at the lowest cost. When married with a BPM tool that can visibily reflect those process efforts and implement that solution, the competivie advantage can be down right compelling; but continues only if the process remains the focal point of decision making (one might argue the fulcrum to achieve leverage on your strategic assets). Remeber, it’s not just about the software, it’s also about process responsibility and stewardship, in order to achieve maximum benefit.

Like everyone else, I’m reading a lot of press about the economy, and most of it is negative. But in our little bubble of BPM, things are cooking along pretty well. Sure there are ups and downs but the trend-lines are up.

As if to underscore that, we’re starting to see the 1H2008 press releases from BPMS vendors. Lombardi’s is here (not to mention that it was well-covered by Bruce Silver’s blog, Sandy’s Blog, and the BPM in Action blog) and Savvion just released theirs here (if other vendors posted similar announcements I haven’t seen them yet). We’ve also seen some interesting investment news from Appian (a $10M investment round). Lombardi points to some impressive growth, especially regarding the license bookings (85% growth year over year). All indications are that the number could actually accelerate next year since they have seeded a much larger user base with Blueprint (their SaaS process mapping tool)- users that are likely to have positive impressions of the software and that may translate into more buys for the execution software (Teamworks).

Savvion also points out some nice gains- most profitable quarter yet (operating profit). However, in comparison to the Lombardi release it lacks a lot of detail. We don’t know how much profit grew year over year or by how much it exceeds previous profit numbers. And we don’t know how they’re doing on key metrics that might point the path toward growth (license growth, maintenance revenue renewals, consulting $, etc.). Not that either of these companies are required to disclose numbers, as they’re private firms, but the amount of disclosure from Lombardi is clearly greater so far. That speaks volumes about their confidence vis-a-vis the other pure-play vendors which are not putting out the same level of detail. And it puts pressure on the other guys to start putting up the same details. Hopefully with the Metastorm IPO filing, we’ll start getting at least two sets of more complete numbers to look at for trends.

Regardless of the shakeout in BPMS vendors, we believe the BPM segment is growing - the need for Process-oriented services is growing.  And we’re well-equipped to help customers with process-oriented solutions.  However, as an independent consulting firm, we keep our eyes open for this kind of trending data because we want to be playing good defense - we want to be where the ball is likely to go. That’s where the work will be, and that’s where we’ll make our investments. As a consultancy, we’d like to see all of these vendors grow at the kind of rates Lombardi is growing at, but we don’t have the numbers yet to know if Lombardi is typical, or the standout.  I think we have the most experienced Lombardi BPMS implementation team on the planet right now, but that’s another subject, and another post!