Tag: BPEL

BPM standards, architecture and modeling

Thanks to David Ogren’s BPM Blog for a pointer to “What is Business Process Modeling?” Like one of the commenters on the article, I also disagree with Mike Havey’s use of the term “business process modeling” as being interchangeable with “business process management”, since modeling is typically seen as being the business-focused activity at the front end of BPM, not the entire range of activities. I also don’t make such a sharp distinction between BPM and EAI: they’re part of the same continuum of technologies, and it is common to include EAI as part of BPM functionality (or vice versa): certainly the former EAI vendors who have hopped on the BPM bandwagon would agree with me on this point. His vision of a BPM architecture is not well-grounded in the current reality of BPMS, starting with “the heart of the architecture is a runtime engine that executes processes whose source code is written in the XML-based BPEL language” (I wish) and continuing with “human participants view and execute pending manual work activities using a graphical worklist application” (not necessarily).

Other than those minor points, it’s a good look at how the current morass of overlapping and competing BPM standards fit together, and has a very clear view of how BPM components are used during the design, development, deployment and monitoring cycle. I’ve been blogging about BPM standards from the beginning, and am completely on side with anyone supporting standards over the continuation of proprietary fiefdoms of process modeling and execution.

Last, but not least, he shows some examples of and provides a reference to itp-commerce‘s Process Modeler for Microsoft Visio, which allows you to create BPMN process models and (in the professional edition) transfer them to BPEL for execution. itp-commerce’s site links to an article by Bruce Silver that reviews the product, but more importantly, talks about the use of BPMN in general, and the use of Visio as a business process modeling tool.

By the way, if you’re interested in some of the theory behind BPM, Mike Havey’s written an article on Pi Calculus and Petri nets.

Strategic process optimization

A webinar going on right now on BPM, BAM and SOA: Optimizing both Business and IT focussing on the ROI of process integration. Beth Gold-Bernstein contrasted the tactical versus strategic approaches to process integration:

  • Tactical approach requires defining underlying integration infrastructure
  • Strategic approach — enterprise integration architecture defines infrastructure, business defines the process

This goes back to one of the key ideas that I’ve been working with lately, namely the role of process and BPM in an enterprise architecture framework.

She also made a distinction between web services orchestration and business process management, where she sees WSO as providing a graphic way to design and control flow between web services, but without all the process governance (monitoring, analytics, management and simulation) that you would find in BPM. Given the role being assigned to BPEL, is this just another artificial distinction in the process marketplace?

Alphabet soup for lunch

Just watched a great lunchtime webinar, “The Business Value of Process Standards”, although I was dining al desko and managed to drop sunflower seeds into my keyboard that required some mid-webinar keyboard surgery. I mentioned this webinar in a previous post on BPM standards, and was glad to see that it lived up to my expectations. eBizq usually makes the webinars available for replay on the same link within a couple of days, so you can check it out if you missed it live.

Jeanne Baker, the primary speaker, is VP of Technology at Sterling Commerce, but she was speaking in her capacity as Chairman of BPMI and didn’t even mention Sterling’s products. In fact, the webinar was sponsored by Oracle, so the only product that was (briefly) discussed was Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager.

Since the discussion was on standards, the inevitable alphabet soup resulted, but two acronyms floated to the top of the broth: BPMN and BPEL. BPMN is a standard for modelling business process notation, and BPEL is a standard for executing business processes. Conveniently, BPMN maps directly to BPEL, so they work in concert for designing and implementing business processes. Both of the speakers stressed the importance of the BPMN and BPEL standards, a point with which I fully agree.

On the subject of modelling standards, I especially liked Ms. Baker’s comment on the use of UML for process design (which echoes my own sentiments from my previously-referenced posting): “UML is used by poor, hapless process modellers [who didn’t have anything better, such as BPMN].” I was laughing so hard when I heard that, I didn’t get the whole quote, but that’s the gist of it.

It’s also worth checking out the newly-designed BPMI site, it’s a lot nicer to look at and has a great deal more information than on my last visit there. It gives a much better definition of BPMI’s role in standards development, and features an interesting graphic that Ms. Baker also used in her presentation to illustrate BPMI’s involvement the lifecycle of business process management:

The diagram shows Process Designers as an essential link between business analysts and system architects, but that skill set is often absent on BPM projects. As she spoke about the importance of that role, it struck me that although I started my career as a developer and software architect, I now usually sit in the process designer role, while spreading in both directions into business analysis and system architecture. I describe myself as a “technology catalyst”, because I like to make to make stuff happen, especially that bridge between business and technology.

From the BPMI site:

BPMI focuses upon the Business Process as the inflexion point between the business environment and a technology implementation. Our work is relevant to a wide range of audiences as we innovate a seamless transition ‘path to execution’ for Business Processes. Our aim is to unify process thinking across Business and IT disciplines.

A lofty, but very worthwhile goal.

BPM standards

I feel pretty strongly about the benefits of standards in all areas of technology, and BPM is no exception. For years, we’ve been using different notations in different tools to create BPM systems that don’t communicate with each other because they speak a different language. There’s been a lot of headway in standardizing the communications part — the messaging protocols, for example — but there’s still work to be done in the design end. How can we hope to make BPM systems truly interoperable when they don’t use the same notation to model the flow within the system?

Every BPM system has its process designer tool, but when it comes right down to it, most people model their process in Microsoft Visio before implementing it in the BPM system. First of all, a lot of people already have Visio on their desktop and know how to use it, so there are less licensing and training issues. Secondly, a process model will usually include all sorts of non-automated steps that will never be represented in the BPM system (especially the “as-is” model), but need to be modelled for proper business analysis. I’m not interested in tools, however, but in the actual BPM notation, which can be drawn in Visio or any number of other process modelling tools.

There are standards emerging for BPM notation, with two strong contenders: UML activity diagrams, and BPMN business process diagrams. If you have a technical background and haven’t had your head in a paper sack for the past 10 years, you know about UML; however, you probably know it as a modelling tool for software design, with activity diagrams being used for computational processes, which is why the OMG originally developed it. UML activity diagrams have recently been repurposed for business process modelling: a type of object-oriented flowchart, if you please.

As much as I like UML for software design, I like the emerging BPMN standard (from BPMI, an industry standards body) better: it’s been designed as a business process modelling notation, not retrofit from some other standard; it’s more understandable to business analysts and other non-technical participants; and it has a direct mapping to WSBPEL for process orchestration. It was only introduced last year and may take a while to catch on, but it’s worth knowing about.

If you’re interested in learning more about BPM standards, there’s a non-vendor webinar (a rarity!) called The Business Value of Process Standards at ebizQ on April 6th.