BPM

From Wiki RB4

Introduction

A business process consists of a set of activities that are performed in coordination in an organizational and technical environment. These activities jointly realize a business goal. Each business process is enacted by a single organization. Business process management includes concepts, methods and techniques to support design, administration, configuration, enactment and analysis of business processes. The interactions of a set of business processes are specified in a process choreography, indicating the absence of a central control. A Workflow is the automation of (a part of) a business process, during which documents, information or tasks are passed, acording to a set of procedural rules. You should differentiate between a workflow management system from a workflow component e.g. SAP business workflow.

To define business processes you use basic building blocks:

  • business objects e.g. invoice
  • activities
  • resources/participants e.g. humans
  • triggers/events
  • systems
  • information

Activities

  • atomic
  • system activities, human interaction activities, manual activities
  • ,

Challenges of BPM

  • Abstraction Level
    • activity atomic on business process level, but not atomic on technical level (aggregation abstraction)
    • details confusing on business process level, but neccessary on technical level
    • process instances -> process model -> meta model (notation e.g. BPMN, Petri) (horizontal abstraction)
    • vertical abstraction (information modelling, organization modelling, IT Landscape modelling, function modelling)
  • Spanning of different business areas
  • Integration of different systems and technologies
  • no real time modeling (actual execution in different branches may differ from the impression of the model)

Benefits

  • Efficiency
    • Reduce operational costs
    • Improve productivity
    • Improve resource utilization
    • Better quality/services
  • Control
    • Compliance
    • Impact of change
    • Improve visibility
  • Agility
    • speed of change
    • improve sharing

Metrics

  • for efficiency
    • Utilization, Capacity
    • Throughput, Speed
    • Quality, Exceptions
  • for control
    • organizational
    • financial
    • SLA failure rate
    • rate-of-non-compliance
  • for agility
    • speed

Challenges of Implementations

  • massive effects on daily work (early participation of users)
  • no creativity for the users
  • complete modelling, otherwise no acceptance and workarounds
  • translation high-level business processes to workflow model, that are executable IT representations

Procedures

  • Strategy
  • Design and Analysis (Modeling, Validation, Simulation, Verification)
  • Configuration (Implementation, Test, Deployment)
  • Controlling (Operation, Monitoring, Maintenance)

Roles

  • Chief Process Officer
  • Business Process Expert
  • Process Participant
  • Business Analyst and Designer
  • System Architect
  • Developer

Levels of Abstraction

  • Value Chain
  • Business Functions (Operations, Marketing and Sales)
  • Business Processes (Order Management)
  • Activity
  • Activity Implementation

Organizations

BPMI

In June of 2005, the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) and the Object Management Group™ (OMG™) announced the merger of their Business Process Management (BPM) activities to provide thought leadership and industry standards for this vital and growing industry. The combined group has named itself the Business Modeling & Integration (BMI) Domain Task Force (DTF).

Standards

see http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/07/20/businessprocessmodeling.html

Notations

Standard Elements

  • Sequence
  • Parallel split
  • Synchronization
  • Exclusive choice
  • Simple merger (OR-join)
  • Multiple choice
  • Multiple merge
  • Discriminator
  • N out of M join
  • Synchronizing merge
  • Arbitrary circles
  • ...

BPMN

EPK

  • C:\Uwes\Documents\Software_Development\Modeling\Business Process Modeling\Scheer_Thomas_2005_WISU_EPK.pdf
  • C:\Uwes\Documents\Software_Development\Modeling\Business Process Modeling\EPK.vsd

XPDL

XML Process Definition Language is a format standardized by the Workflow Management Coalition to interchange Business Process Definitions between different workflow products like modeling tools or workflow engines.

Patterns

Features of a BPM solution

  • Analysis
  • Graphische Modellierung (tasks, roles, decisions, escalations, control flow, rules, forms, events, business objects, ...)
  • engineering and re-engineering between model and physical implementation
  • Organizational modelling (user, position, roles, organizations, business rules (e.g. seperation of duties), substitute)
  • Scalability
  • Optimization
  • Flexibility/Adaptability (handling of process changes, versioning, documentation)
  • Autonomous/Embedded
  • Integration
  • Reusability
  • Data Handling (task data, block data (subprocess), workflow data, environment data)
  • Escalation strategies
  • Exception Handling
  • Transaction Management
  • Connectivity/System Integration (vordefinierte Adapter, ...)
  • Security Handling
  • Monitoring, reporting, analysis notifications
  • Simulation
  • Life-cycle management (Versioning, process repository)
  • Support

Client Features

  • User Interfaces (Web, Mobile, Mail, ...)
  • input
    • grouping and sorting(task, content, free columns)
    • filter (criteria)
    • overdues
    • errors
    • workitem information (state, creation time, priority, titel, ...)
    • free or customized layouts
    • personal customizations
    • replacement persons
    • searching
    • attachments
    • clipboard
    • deposit
    • drag & drop
  • outbox
    • started workflows
    • executed workitems
    • forwarded workitems
  • reminder

BPM products

SunGard's Infinity (formely CARNOT)

  • process modeling in Eclipse
  • Shared modeling for business analysts and IT development staff
  • reporting for real-time business data
  • models are stored in XPDL
  • models can be imported from ARIS and Income Process Designer by Get Process AG

The Infinity Process Platform Consists of

  • the Infinity Process Workbench, the graphical modeler for designing business process models
  • the Infinity Process Workbench Analyst Edition the graphical modeler for analysts to design business process models with generic objects
  • the Infinity Process Portal, the end-user application for process enactment
  • the administrative environment comprising the Infinity Administration Portal and a set of Command Line Tools.
  • the Business Control Center,
  • the Infinity Process Engine in a deployable archive (carnot.ear)
  • the Infinity installation is shipped with several add-ons, like the Infinity Agent Framework, the Hibernate Data Type Integration, Hibernate Data Type Integration, the Business Analysis and Reporting Component, Business Analysis and Reporting Component, the Simulation Feature Simulation Feature and the Infinity Spring Integration. Infinity Spring Integration.
  • Additionally, there are different examples in the range of authentication, authorization and synchronization. Please refer to the Infinity Authentication and Authorization chapter in the Operation Guide.

A model

  • represents all the organizational and operational context of the business processes
  • includes process definitions
  • enables multi-user modeling
  • contains versioning information
  • is stored in a xml model file

A process definition includes

  • n process diagrams
  • ...

A process diagram contains

  • activities (atomic piece of work)
  • transitions
  • diagram information
  • an unique ID

Infinity stores all workflow data defined in the model in a so-called symbol table.

Features

Versions

  • 1.x 2001
  • 2.x 2002
    • Web Services

Trial Version

  • installation of carnot-process-workbench.exe, the Infinity Process Workbench 4.5.1
  • carnot.exe, the Infity Process Platform 4.5.1

Adjustments made to (s.[file:///C:/Uwes/Programme/InfinityProcessPlatform_4_5_1/docs/carnot/ag.carnot.docs.deployment_4.5.1.4/html/audittraildatabasesetup/mysql.html])

  • C:\Uwes\xampp\mysql\bin\my.cnf transaction-isolation = READ-COMMITTED
  • copy C:\Uwes\eclipse\workspace\uweheuer\lib_tomcat\mysql-connector-java-5.1.5-bin.jar to %CARNOT_WORK%/default/lib
  • in MySQL create database carnot
  • C:\Uwes\Programme\InfinityProcessPlatform_4_5_1\bin>sysconsole -v -r com.mysql.jdbc.Driver -dbtype MYSQL -bschema carnot -l jdbc:mysql://localhost/carnot -d root -s "" createschema
  • adjust C:\Uwes\Programme\InfinityProcessPlatform_4_5_1\work\default\etc\carnot.properties
  • in Infinity Process Platform File->New->Other->Server, select C:\Uwes\Programme\InfinityProcessPlatform_4_5_1\apache-tomcat\apache-tomcat-5.5.23
  • in Infinity Process Platform Window->Show View->Other->Server

Documentation

  • Infinity Process Platform Online Documentation
    • Business Analyst Handbooks
    • ...
    • Analyst Modeling Guide
      • Workflow Basics
      • The Infinity Process Workbench
      • ...
    • Developer Handbooks
    • Installation and Getting Started
    • Tutorial

Weakness

  • graphical features (overlapping guard conditions, direction of transistions, overview, scrolling)

Questions

  • What's the difference between Infinity Process Workbench and Infinity Process Workbench Analyst Edition? Perhaps because there are two different perspectives.

Sources

SAP Business Workflow

Operational Experiences

  • actual business blueprint, functional and technical specification
  • missing tests (extrem value, massiv load, test coverage, exception handling, timing)
  • missing test scenarios for repeated tests
  • lack of automated tests
  • compliance with the development and documentation guidelines
  • exception handling (failure of system interfaces or downtimes, missing or incorrect data, missing participants, locked data)
  • restart enabling
  • consequence of system changes (data, interfaces, organizations, authorization) vs. integration technologies
  • error monitoring (error, waiting, ...)
  • load by unneccesary workflows
  • reorganization

Development Guidelines

  • namen convention
  • number range
  • uml for modelling
  • development test, integration tests
  • mapping of business activity to technical activity
  • implementation pattern (mail, restriction for web activities)
  • sub workflows (encapsulation, reuse, ...)
  • event queues
  • logging
  • event throwing and matching documentation

Resources

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