organizing the business process management …a business process consists of a set of activities...

Organizing the Business Process ManagementSpace

Mathias Weske

EMISA'2007 Keynote | Mathias Weske

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People

Real-World Example

■ FP6 IP on Service composition platform

■ Detailed project plan

■ Sub projects dealing with

□ Architecture

□ Case Studies

□ Processes

□ Semantics

□ Methodologies


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Sub Project Presentation 1


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5



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Observations

■ People tend to centralize own experiences and goals

■ Especially prominent in domains

□ with complex structures

□ broad coverage

□ where disciplines meet

■ … like Business Process Management !

□ Several communities are involved, with different backgrounds and experiences

□ Complex and diverse issued need to be solved, fromorganizational to technological


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Characterizing BPM

■ Background and Motivation

□ Products are provided through activities a company performs

□ Cost effective and rapid improvement of products is a competitive advantage

□ Information Systems play an increasingly important role in fulfilling these activities

■ Sample Business Processes

□ Ordering Processes, e.g., in online shops

□ Claim handling of insurance companies

□ Request for quotation process


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Business Process

■ 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, but it may interact with business processes performed by other organizations.

Res

elle

r


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People Challenge

■ The BPM community consists actually of a set of relatedcommunities, characterized by different

□ Terminology

□ Goals

□ Educational background

■ Common understanding between these communities isimportant


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Strategy and Goals

■ Enterprise level businessstrategy

■ Goals to realize thestrategy

□ Broken down to subgoals, etc.

□ Realize what needs to be realized, not how


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Organizational Business Processes

■ Coarse granularity

■ Described textually

■ Input and output behaviour

■ Responsibilities

■ Organized in Process Landscape


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Process Landscape


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Organizational Business Process

Customer Processes:

Order Management Process, After-Sales Service Process

Process Results:

Integrated and completely tested innovative product with complete documentation

Supplier Processes:Product Planning Process,Innovation Process

Process Inputs: Requirements Document,Project Plan, Budget Plan,Prototypes

Type: Development ProjectFrom: Requirements To: Rollout

Responsible Process Manager: Dr. Myers

Process Name: Product Development Process


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Operational Business Processes

■ Activities and execution constraints between them

■ No information on technicaland organizationalexecution environment

■ Described using graphicalnotations, often semi-formal ones


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Operational Business Process

■ Different approaches are available to realize thisprocess, ranging from manual to automatedinvolving software systems


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From Functions to Processes


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Process Meta ModelProcess Model

Node Edge

Event Model

Activity Model

Gateway Model

Process Instance

Node Instance

1

*

1*

1*

2 1..*

1

1..*

1

2..*

Event

Activity Instance

Gateway Instance

1*

1*

1*


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Sample Process Model

AnalyzeOrder

SimpleCheck

AdvCheck

N1 N2 N3

N4

N5

N6N7

Initial event model

Final event model


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Execution Semantics

■ Activity instances behavior described by state transitiondiagram

■ State transitions represented by events


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Events and States


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Process Instances

e1

Initialization of activity instances and gateway instances

i2 i3 i4 i6 e2 b2 t2 b3 t3 s5 e4 b4 t4 b6 t6 n7

Occurrence of start event

AnalyzeOrder SimpleCheck Occurrence of end event

Skipping AdvCheck(n5)

DecisionGateway

n1


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Implemented Business Processes

■ Contain information on thetechnical and organizational execution environment

□ Realization in silicoby workflow or servicecomposition technology

□ Realization in vivoby policies and procedures


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Implementing Activities


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System Workflows

■ Characterization

□ Process activities realized entirely by softwarefunctionality

□ No user interactions in system workflows

□ System workflows solve the EAI integration problem, at least process integration

□ Explicit process representation provides betterunderstanding of the process integration logic

□ Higher flexibility, since changes to the process modelare immediately used by the process engine

■ Remark

□ Adapters that hide data heterogeneity are required


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System Workflow


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Human Interaction Workflows

■ Characterization

□ User interactions during process enactment

□ System activities also present

□ Organizational information required for assigningknowledge workers to process activities

□ Specific graphical user interfaces for process participantsrequired (work lists)

□ Integration of applications with specific user interfaces


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Human Interaction Workflow


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Conceptual Model

Business Process

Workflow

Human Interaction WorkflowSystem Workflow

System Activity

Activity

User Interaction Activity Manual Activity


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Process Choreographies

■ Enterprises collaborate to achieve their business goals

■ Value chains are high level organization of B2B ormultiparty collaborations

■ These collaborations also need to be embedded in theoverall picture


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■ The term choreography indicates the absence of a central agent that controls the activities in the business processes involved. The interaction is only achieved by sending and receiving messages.

■ This situation is similar to dancers who need to agree on a common choreography before the show starts. During the performance, however, each dancer behaves autonomously but in line with his or her part in the choreography.

Process Choreographies


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Buy

erR

esel

ler

Sample Process Choreography


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Formal aspects in process choreographies

■ Agree on global interactions

■ Create behavioral interfaces for the partners

■ Use these as starting point for process implementations


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Scenario – Behavioral InterfacesBuyerAuctioning ServiceSupplier

!participation_req ?participation_req

!rec_reject!rec_accept

pr

a

r

pr

?reject?accept !accept!reject

?rec_accept?rec_rejectrr

ra

br

ba

!reject!accepta

r?accept?reject

ba

br

ra

rr

!notify ?notifyn n


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ImplementationAlternatives


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ERP System SCM System

Enterprise Application Integration

CRM System

Buy

er Place Order

Receive Invoice

Receive Products

Settle Invoice

Service Layer

EAI Adapter

Data

Enterprise Applications

Enterprise Application Integration

Service Interfaces

System Workflows / Composite

Applications

Human Interaction Workflows

Business-to-Business

Processes

Overall Picture


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Conclusions

■ BPM area is broad, complex and different communitiesare involved

■ Common understanding is required for fruitfulcollaboration

■ Formal analysis requires abstraction from domainconcepts – but it is useful to design processes

■ Software plays an important role to provide flexible enactment environments

■ Adequate tooling can contribute to development of thefield


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Textbook on BPM, bpm-book.com

1. Introduction

2. Evolution of Enterprise Systems Architectures

3. Business Process ModellingFoundation

4. Process Orchestrations

5. Process Choreographies

6. Properties of Business Processes

7. BPM Architectures

8. Business Process Methodology


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organizing the business process management …a business process consists of a set of activities...

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