SOA for Egov PilotMichael Lang, Vitria Technologies,IncDave McPherson, Vitria Technologies, IncBrooke Stevenson, Spry Technologies, Inc

Using BPM software to govern a collaboration process used to define software services

April 30, 2008

Pilot Goal

Show how COTS BPM tools can be used in SOA to help effect transformation

Collaboration is essential in SOA for Mapping the SOA to existing POR Architectures and Enterprise

Architectures Decomposing a system into a collection of capabilities/services Defining the precise meaning of services that are exposed

BPM is essential in Implementing the collaboration process Governing the collaboration Monitoring and analyzing the collaboration process

Plan A

Use business process models developed by BTA to show how BPM tools can be used wire up (software) services to effect transformation The models were classified Not enough services were available

We “talk the talk” but we do not “walk the walk”

The broad availability of proven BPM tools should be reason enough for the federal government to make better progress in transitioning to SOA

BPM tools deliver ROI on the investment in SOA

Plan B

Apply the BPM tool to manage the process of collaboration used to define a target service architecture to enable transformation We worked with a pilot that is being managed out of the Army CIO/G-

6 AAIC They are working on several challenges

What are the capabilities buried in various POR’s Which of these capabilities should/can be exposed as services How do these capabilities map to various architectures, ie DODAF Describe the services in a way that promotes dynamic discovery and

execution They have been collaborating via a semantic wiki to build

vocabularies that define the semantics of the Core Enterprise Services (CES) domain and the semantics of the Acquisition Lifecycle

Army Pilot: Enabling Transformation

The Transitional Plan1. Transition from monolithic systems engineering to

SOA

2. Build highly interoperable services by collaborating on domain vocabularies

3. Orchestrate services in new ways to achieve rapid integration and support new capabilities

Transformational Technologies1. Standards: WSDL, WS-Policy, OWL-S, etc.

2. Semantic Wiki

3. Model-driven BPM – Back to Plan A!

The wider the community collaborating over the vocabulary, the wider the domain over which the vocabulary operates Bottom-up vocabulary development Facilitates the widest possible domain

Interoperation, reuse & integration can only be achieved if the precise (machine readable) meaning of all terms is known Meaning is only established by attaching properties and relationships

to nodes

Near term, BPM can enable management of a repeatable, scalable collaboration process requiring governance

Army Pilot Tenets: Collaboration, Semantics, & Governance

The Collaboration ProcessDemo Storyboard

Document Contents / Structure

Document instance = service specification

Wiki M3O

Master process = document instance lifecycle

Sub Process = document section lifecycle

Other Sub Processes to support the document

lifecycle but not related to the document. For e.g. Voting,

Objection Resolution & Document Access control

Oversight – aggregate and

individual process level

Governing CollaborationDemo Storyboard - Roles

Wiki M3O

Governing Board – owner of multiple service definition

communities

Secretariat – owner of individual service

definition communities

Facilitator – Leader of a particular community. Also a contributor and resolver

Authoring committee – specific sections &

voters

Community – specific sections

Collaboration Event ManagementWiki-BPM Integration

Wiki M3O

RSS

Subscribe to RSS feeds that reflect particular changes / additions.Might need to key off specific text entries like “Ready for review” to indicate major events

RSS Event Source Connector

(aka File Source)

Parse out events based on tags

Populate event header…service name, wiki page url…

Service call for population of data into wiki (e.g. voting results, other validated data entry) TBD

Technology Solution

M3O BPM Suite

Enterprise Elements Enterprise Architecture repository

MatchIT Semantic mapping tool

Knoodl Collaborative Vocabulary Editing Analytics Triple Store

Collaboration

Collaboration is critical to engaging the widest community possible

Collaboration is a process requiring governance Collaboration can occur at multiple levels

Within communities Within domains Across communities

Collaboration requires: the ability to negotiate in an unstructured way & the ability to capture the results of the negotiation in a

formal way

Pilot Lessons Learned

Collaboration is a process and must be governed The following are key to enabling collaboration:

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between community members Governing bodies to approve changes & make decisions Automation & enforcement of the negotiation process

Assurance that decisions are made Assurance that decisions result in an update to the structured information

Auditing the negotiation Visibility via reporting into the status and progress of a collaboration

activity Dynamic access to contextual information Dynamic notification of change within the environment Funding resources to participate in the community

Demonstration

Dave McPherson

Vitria, Inc

Army Pilot Approach:Architecture and Analysis

Transition from one-off integration of siloed program systems architecture to federated services-based architecture Federation allows programs to independently design/engineer to

achieve mission goals, while also aligning with enterprise objectives

Transition from acquisition of systems to acquisition of capabilities via services No need to change overall DoD acquisition policy & procedure Architecture data need to rapidly support decision needs of

business stakeholders Think Business Intelligence (BI) - Query, not Search!

Entry - Setup

Entry - Setup

Introduce to the audience what they are seeing.

Web 2.0 based business process management solution that (spin the cube)1. Collaboratively model

processes using the BPMN2. Manage runtime environments

that directly execute3. Monitor running processes4. Using powerful Analytics to

provide insight into operations Pilot – collaborated on

processes that bring automated oversight and governance to the process of collaborating on service definitions – answer the 3 questions

Power of Web 2.0 for collaboration of business process models

Process models that directly execute and through

What are the three challenges we are solving - 1. How do we bring structure /

rigor to the intended collaboration methodology – the process that drives the collaborative efforts to the desired end goal.

2. How can we measure progress – quantity and quality

3. How can we provide insight into performance across many simultaneous topics

Process Modeling – Collaborative Development BPMN Support

Process Modeling - Oversight

Process Modeling Oversight

Navigation and flow Drill into the Process

Workspace Introduce the Service Definition

Oversight Process How started – RSS event feed Flow through collaboration,

voting , objection handling through budgeting ad assignment

Expand the Service Specification step

Encapsulate complexity into sub-processes

Use of Workflow to bring controlled event management to key tasks like access control and voting

Close, and drill into the Collaboration cycle step

Ease of use Layering of information Responsiveness and power

of web 2.0

Process Modeling- Monitoring Activity

Process Modeling – Collaborative Development BPMN Support

Navigation and flow Iterative models that monitor the collaboration phases of definition of a

service Automatically brings in RSS update feeds to measure collaboration rates

in each cycle – like daily. Working on publishing the feeds to other policy driven process to act

accordingly. For example; validation of entries Use of workflow and associated notifications to bring attention to key

indicators that effect negatively effect performance Hover over the master model and navigate back Spin through the Manage, Monitor cubes

Execute the models Spin through to the Optimize workspace Cover flow view organize dashboards that provide insight into operational

processes Open the process activity monitor

Process Activity Monitoring

Process Activity Monitoring

Navigation and flow Navigate through widgets to explain what they are seeing Process activity status Drill down into an individual process model (allow time for it to load) Expand to full size Note

Visualize the current status The audit log of steps Play how you got here Open up the collaboration cycle (replay again – if the arrows come

up)..perhaps should drill in Go back to the cover flow viewer and select individual performance

Oversight Visualization

Oversight Visualization

Navigation and flow Click on a service category Visualize performance across key roles

Secretariat Collaboration activity Voting Activity

Drill down onto a particular service name

Managed Workflow – Access Control

Managed Workflow - Voting