BPM

Introduction

A Business Process (see 6.) consists of a set of activities that are performed in coordination in an organizational and technical environment. These activities jointly realize a business goal. The interactions of a set of business processes are specified in a process choreography, indicating the absence of a central control. The processes communicate via messages.

Business Process Management includes concepts, methods and techniques to support design, administration, configuration, enactment and analysis of business processes.

A Business Process Management System is a generic software system that is driven by explicit process representations to coordinate the enactment of business processes.

A Workflow as defined by the WfMC 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. A System Workflow consists of activities that are implemented without any user involvement, whereas Human Interaction Workflows in which humans are involved. 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 (sheet Abstract Activity States)

Background

Value Chains were developed by Michael Porter to organize high-level, coarse-grained business functions and to relate them to each other, providing an understanding how a company operates.

Challenges and Benefits of BPM

• Flexibility
  • change and control for the end user
  • continous improvement
• Agility
  • speed of change
• Collaboration
  • Spanning of different business areas
  • Integration of different systems and technologies
• Speed
• Modelling
  • Abstraction Level
    • activity atomic on business process level, but not atomic on technical level (aggregation abstraction)
    • descriptive modeling, analytical modeling and executable modeling
    • 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)
  • Simulation
    • no real time modeling (actual execution in different branches may differ from the impression of the model)
• Efficiency
  • Reduce operational (process) costs
  • Improve productivity
  • reduction of throughput times
  • Improve resource utilization
  • higher process transparency
  • Better quality/services
  • bei guter Umsetzung geringere geistige Rüstzeiten (Einarbeitung in Vorgang)
  • automation of routine tasks
• Control
  • Compliance
  • Impact of change
  • Improve visibility
• Business and IT Alignment
  • machine burden humans
  • no creativity

Metrics

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

Structure and Features of a BPM solution

(WfMC Reference Architecture)

• Analysis
• Graphische Modellierung (detail levels for elements or levels with technical elements, 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
• Service Repository
• Integration
• Reusability
• Data Handling (task data, block data (subprocess), workflow data, environment data, business objects)
• 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

Process Engine Features

• Process State Management
• Human Task Management

Process Definition Features

• Modelling (high level)
• Designing (low level)

Challenges/Obstacles

• massive effects on daily work (early participation of users)
• less human activities rise fear and defense reactions
• 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
  • business reengineering or continous improvement
• Analysis and Design
  • As-Is Analysis (bottom-up or top-down) or use of reference model
  • Modeling/Authoring
  • Validation
  • Simulation
  • Verification
• Configuration
  • Implementation
  • Test
  • Deployment
• Controlling
  • Operation
  • Monitoring
  • Administration
  • Maintenance
• Optimization

Roles

• Chief Process Officer
• Business Process Expert
• Process Participant
• Business Analyst and Designer: designes the process
• System Architect
• Developer

Levels of Abstraction

• Value Chain
• Business Functions (Operations, Marketing and Sales)
• Business Processes (Order Management)
• private (detailed) vs. public processes (only necessary activities to understand the process choreography)
• Activity
• Activity Implementation

As-Is Analysis

• Top Down
  • Level 1 (less & baisc modelling elements, only subprocesses)

• Start
  • How does the process start? (can define if the initiator is a lane or a different pool and can have influence on process KPI like duration, error number or process control?)
  • What event triggers it?
  • Is there more than one possible way it could start?

• Activities
  • What happens if the activity is not completed within a special time?
  • Separation between activities if there is a change of performer, of the processed object or responsibility

• Flow
  • How does the process goes from X to Y?
  • How do you know X is finished?
  • Does X always ends in the same way?
  • How does the processor of Y knows about Y?
  • Are there circumstances that Z follows after X?
  • Are there any exceptional states after X?
  • Are there rules that govern the transition from X to Y?
  • What's the normal flow (happy path)?

• End
  • What determines that the process is complete?
  • Are there different end states signifying successful completion or failed or abandoned attempts?

Modelling/Authoring

• use labels
• make models hierachical
• use black-box pools for external participants
• label white-box pools with the name of the process, label black-box pools with the participant role

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).

OASIS

Die Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) ist eine internationale, nicht-gewinnorientierte Organisation, die sich mit der Weiterentwicklung von E-Business und Web-Service Standards beschäftigt. Bekannte Standards sind OpenDocument und DocBook.

WfMC

Die Workflow-Management Coalition (WfMC) wurde 1993 gegründet und ist ein Verbund von mehr als 300 Herstellern, Nutzern, Beratern und Wissenschaftlern im Bereich des Workflow-Managements.

Certificates

OCEB

Certificates

OMG Certified Expert in Business Process Management: Fundatmental

Business Process Definitions

Rummler and Brache:

A Business Process is a sequence of steps to create a product or service. If the result connects to the customer it is a primary process, otherwise it is a support process.

Martyn Ould:

A Business Process is a coherent set of activities performed by a organisation to reach a target.

Smith and Fingar (The third wave):

• primary planning units
• lifecycle
• Software make efficient
• properties:
  • complex
  • dynamic
  • boundaries (orgs, companies, systems, countries)
  • (partly) automated
  • IT supported
  • human intelligence
  • difficult to detect

Chang:

• continous improvement
• customer oriented
• flexibel and adaptable
• assets
• consistent value by measurement, monitoring, controlling and analysis
• IT is enabler

Import properties are:

• sequence of actions/steps/activities
• often hitting organizational units
• point to a goal
• the result is a value for internal or external customer

The explicit process is defined by its topology, that is by its steps and relations. A diagramm shows the topology in its horizontal layer, vertical it is called the process hierachy.

Attributes of business process are:

• process owner
• objectives
• customer
• stakeholder (delivers informations for the process)
• short description

The step attributes are:

• role
• ressources
• in and out data
• duration
• business rules
• short description
• subject matter expert

The objective can be steady-state goal (Dauerzustand) or single state.

Business process analysis

Business process analyis (process discovery) describes the making of processes explicit to detect weakness and enable as-is/to-becomparison. Roles at process identification are:

• sponsor
• subject matter expert
• analyst

There are three approaches:

• central vs. distributed
• top-down vs. bottom-up
• structured vs unstructured

Process Descriptions

• as-is for:
  • explicit making
  • cost calculation
  • base for optimization

• to-be for:
  • optimization
  • extension
  • new

• descriptive (only positive case, only pools, lanes, tasks, subprocesses, sequences)
• analytical (error handling, events, requirement for IT, simulation)
• executable

• private (internal)
• abstract (public)
• collaborative

Business Process Management

Tasks are:

• process definition and goals
• implementation
• measurement
• improvement
• announcement of process owners

Based on TQM (Deming):

• management by process
• analyse discrepancy
• QM projects should be based on process data
• continous improvement process

Techniques of TQM are:

• determine customer requirements
• fair relations to supplier
• cross-function working groups

and based on Business Process Reengineering (BPR, Davenport & Hammer):

• assumptions
  • IT is key technology
  • process improvement is guided by objectives
• methotology
  • define vision and process objectives
  • identify reworked processes
  • identity process support by IT
  • analyse processes and KPIs
  • implement new prototypes

Chang defines four guidelines:

• processes are assets
• processes have to be managed
• processes have to continously improved
• IT is essential

and eight tools:

• process-oriented organisation
• define process owner
• improvement comes bottom-up, top management supports
• establish IT-systems (BPMS)
• use partner for cross-organisation processes
• educate the staff
• reward process improvements
• use step-by-step (Six Sigma) and radical improvements (BPR)

Modelling of Companies

The Business Motivation Model (BMM), a standard of the OMG, can be used to describe and to develop a business plan. It offers a abstract syntax and the semantic of the elements. There is no standard notation. The top areas are:

• end
  • vision (vision of the future perhaps unreachable state of the company, not of something else)
  • desired result
    • goal (strategisches Ziele)
    • objective (operatives Ziele, measurable, has time schedule and amount)
• means (to reach the end)
  • mission (what does the company to reach the vision, makes operative)
  • course of action (Vorgehensweise)
    • strategy (strategy channels efforts towards goals)
    • tactic
  • directive (Vorgabe)
    • Business Policy (Unternehmensgrundsätze)
    • Business Rule (Geschäftsregel)
• influencer
  • external influencer (belong to categories e.g. customer, environment, ...)
  • internal influencer
• assessment (Bewertung) of the influences, connect the influences to means and ends
• external information (described by other standards)
  • organization unit (OSM, organization structure metamodel)
  • business process (BPDM, Business Process Definition Metamodel)
  • business rule (SBVR, Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules)

The independence of the means from the end is called seperation of concerns (means can change by identical end).

The end describes:

• vision
  • vision has many goals
  • a goal belongs to (amplifies) one vision
  • vision has many missions
  • one mission belongs to (makes operative) one vision
• desired result
  • a desired result has many course of actions
  • a course of actions support one desired result
  • a goal has many objectives
  • an objective has (quantifies) many goals

The means describe:

• mission (mission statement consist of action, product/service, custumer/market)
  • a vision has many missions
  • a mission has (makes operative) one vision
• course of action (what to do)
  • a tactic implements many strategy
  • a strategy has many tactics
• directives (how to do)
  • a directive governs many course of actions
  • a directive supports many desired results
  • a business rule has an enforcement level (Verbindlichkeitsgrad) strict or guideline

=Meanings=

• regulation (Rechtsvorschrift durch Gesetzgeber, Strafe)
• self-regulatory rule (contractual standards given by organizations itself, like credit card companies with Card Industry Security Standard, Strafe)
• principle (Richtlinie, allgemein anerkannte Regel, keine Strafe)
• guideline
• standard
• control model (e.g. COBIT)
• best practise
• organizational control (Organisationsregelung)
• organizational policy (Organisationsgrundsatz)
• organizational procedure (Arbeitsanweisung)
• safe harbor (Sicherer Hafen)
• coperate governance (Unternehmensknigge, Menge der Prozesse und Vorgaben)

==APQC==

American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) is a gemeinnützig organization, which offers assessments and best practises for business processes. The base is the Process Classification Framework (PCF):

• operating processes
  • develop vision and strategy
  • develop and manage products and services
  • market and sell products and services
  • deliver product and services
  • manage customer service
• management and support processes
  • develop and manage human capital
  • manage IT
  • manage financial resources
  • aquire, construct and manage property
  • manage environmental health and safety
  • manage external relationsships
  • manage knowledge, improvement and change

==SCOR==

The Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) stems from the Supply Chain Council (SCC). It is hierachical and contains:

• business processes
• dependencies between processes
• metrics
• best practises

On the highest level there are 5 management processes:

• plan
• source
• make
• deliver
• return

==VRM==

The Value Reference Model (VRM) comes from the Value Chain Group. It has 3 process levels:

• strategic processes (categories: plan, govern, execute)
• tatical processes (e.g. outsourcing)
• operational processes (no details about activities and actions)

==Quality Models==

Quality means to fulfill the requirements of the customer. Quality can be visualized by:

• run charts
• heat maps

==BPMM==

The Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) describes 5 maturity levels:

• initial (there are processes, but only adhoc with no predictable result)
• managed (kontrolliert, can be reproduced in work units, but no over-work unit identity)
• standardized
• predictable
• innovative (improvement measures are performed)

The maturity grade is assest by an appraisal team:

• starter appraisal
• progress appraisal
• supplier appraisal
• confirmatory appraisal

==Six Sigma==

Developed by Motorala. Roles are:

• Programm Manager
• Champions
• Master Black-Belt
• Black-Belt
• Green-Belt
• Yellow-Belt
• project memb

The core processes of the process improvements are:

• define the improvement goal
• measure the current process
• analyze the process
• improve the process
• control the changed process

A quality feature is called CTX (critical to X), eg. CTC Critical to Customer. For CTXes there are Upper and Lower Control Limet (UCL, LCL). The unit of quality is Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO).

TPS

Toyota Production System or also named Just-In-Time Production.

=COBIT=

Best Practises for IT Management and Controlling.

=BSC=

Balanced Score Card were developed by kaplan & Norton. There are 4 perspectives:

• financial
• customer
• internal processes
• innovation perspective

The phases are:

• define and communicate vision and strategy
• combine strategy with KPS and communicate
• plan strategic initiatives, set goals
• feedback and learn

=KPI=

For Critical Success Factor (CSF, Goal Achievements) there can be multiple KPIs.

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
• ...

BPEL

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL, WS-BPEL, BPEL4WS) ist eine XML-basierte Sprache zur Beschreibung von Geschäftsprozessen, deren einzelne Aktivitäten durch Webservices implementiert sind. BPEL Prozesse kommunizieren ausschließlich mit Webservices und nicht direkt mit dem Menschen. Der Standard wurd an OASIS zur Standardisierung übergeben. Aktuelles Release ist 2.0.

Historie

Vorgänger waren:

• WSFL by IBM
• XLANG by Microsoft
• BPEL4WS 1.0 by BEA, IBM und Microsoft
• BPEL4WS 1.0 by BEA, IBM, Microsoft, SAP und Siebel
• BPEL4People specification by Microsoft, SAP und andere

Concepts

BPEL is expressed in XML and defined by XML Schema metadata that is closely aligned with SOA standards. BPEL itself uses WSDL at two levels. First, WSDL defined Web Services are used to interact with capabilities required by the process. Second, every BPEL process is itself a Web Service described using WSDL.

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

JPDL

jPDL defined by JBoss and part of JBoss BPM is an extensible XML-based process definition language, and is suitable for a range of problems, from defining web application page flow, to traditional workflow management, all the way up to orchestration of services in a SOA environment.

The jPDL suite is a download that contains all the jBPM components bundled in one easy download. The suite mainly contains:

• the jBPM core library: The core workflow and BPM functionality is packaged as a simple java library. This library includes a service to manage and execute processes in the jPDL database.
• the jPDL process designer: a eclipse plug-in
• jBPM console web application
• jBPM identity component
• jBPM Job Executor

The configuration has the form like the following example:

<pageflow-definition name="numberGuess">
  <start-page name="displayGuess" view-id="/numberGuess.jsp">
     <redirect/>
     <transition name="guess" to="evaluateGuess">
       <action expression="#{numberGuess.guess}" />
     </transition>
  </start-page>
  <decision name="evaluateGuess" expression="#{numberGuess.correctGuess}">
     <transition name="true" to="win"/>
     <transition name="false" to="evaluateRemainingGuesses"/>
  </decision>
  <decision name="evaluateRemainingGuesses" expression="#{numberGuess.lastGuess}">
     <transition name="true" to="lose"/>
     <transition name="false" to="displayGuess"/>
  </decision>
  <page name="win" view-id="/win.jsp">
     <redirect/>
     <end-conversation />
  </page>
  <page name="lose" view-id="/lose.jsp">
     <redirect/>
     <end-conversation />
  </page>
</pageflow-definition>

Resources

• V4 User Guide

Petri Net

Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPNs) is a graphical language for constructing models of concurrent systems and analysing their properties. Petri nets provide the foundation of the graphical notation and the basic primitives for modelling concurrency, communication, and synchronisation. CPN models are used to model and specify the behaviour of concurrent and distributed systems. An interactive simulation provides a way to ‘walk through’ a CPN model, investigating different scenarios in detail and checking whether the model works as expected. Automatic simulation is similar to program execution and the purpose is to execute the CPN model as fast and efficiently as possible, without detailed human interaction and inspection.

XPDL

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

Patterns

• http://www.workflowpatterns.com/
• C:/Uwes/Documents/BPM/WorkflowPatternsBPMActivities.pdf

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
  • data changed beside the workflow
  • 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

• Glossary
• Modeling Standards
• naming convention
  • activities with VERB NOUN e.g. prepare meal
  • events NOUN-VERB IN PAST TENSE e.g. meal prepared
  • pool named like process
• system as lanes
• 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

1. My own diagrams file:///C:\Uwes\Documents\Software_Development\Modeling\BusinessProcessModeling\BPM.vsd saved to C:\Uwes\xampp\htdocs\VisioExports\BPM.htm
2. Good Overview http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/07/20/businessprocessmodeling.html
3. Good overview to standard faults http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3385
4. Visio Shapes for BPMN http://www.workflowresearch.de/Downloads/BPMN/
5. Generelle Seite zu Prozessmodellierung http://kurze-prozesse.de/
6. Mathias Weske: Business Process Management