Category: conferences

ARIS ProcessWorld

I’m at the IDS Scheer user conference this week, so expect to see a lot of blogging about that around here. Leaving Toronto in -15C for +15C in Jacksonville, Florida wasn’t my only reason for attending; I’m very interested in how people are modelling their processes more collaboratively, and a room full of real users is the best way to get a good cross-section. As I wrote yesterday, I’m also interested in how processes are moving from a model to an executable environment, since I think that there’s still a lot of people who are recreating those models in their BPMS after they’ve already been created once in a process modelling tool like ARIS or ProVision. I saw a press release early today how about IDS Scheer and Fujitsu will be showing off their integration at the conference this week, and I imagine that there will be a few other BPMS vendors there with the same story.

I had a great conversation at tonight’s reception with a couple of people from an end-user organization about the whole modelling-execution conundrum, and hope to have more of this over the next few days. I also want to see what customers are doing to advance modelling/design collaboration in their enterprises.

All related posts this week will be tagged with the category ARISProcessWorld.

Disclosure: IDS Scheer covered my expenses to attend. If you think that’s not fair, keep in mind that I’m an independent analyst/architect/blogger and I’m not paid for the blogging part (that’s right, I don’t work for ebizQ, they just host my blog), so 4 days down here means 4 lost days of real billable work for me.

EnterpriseCamp (the unconference edition)

I’m not sure why Bryce Johnson thought that he’d have full turnout at 9:30am on a Saturday, even for something as exciting as EnterpriseCamp, but a few of us managed to make it on time. Of course, my brain is still in a time zone some where east of here and I’m waking up at 5am so it’s easier for me this week.

We kicked off a bit late and the attendance was lower than the signups, but there were some great sessions (and I’m not just talking about mine). Like other unconferences, there was no set agenda, just a blank grid of time slots for sessions and a pad of Post-It notes; those of us interested in leading a talk outlined our topic verbally to the group, then posted it in an open time slot. The schedule was pretty fluid all day long, which fit well with the mood of the group and the small number of simultaneous sessions (3 at most, I think), but we still managed to fit in all the proposed sessions and finish up on time.

One cool thing that the organizers did was create icon stickers that we could put on our nametags to designate our interests: people tagging, if you will. They also provided great food (breakfast and lunch), a huge variety of herbal teas (important for us non-coffee types) and a notebook containing some Enterprise 2.0 articles and the all-important key to the people-tagging icons.

The first session that I attended was Carsten Knoch talking about bringing Web 2.0 features into the enterprise, which was a perfect lead-in to my session on a specific example of this, namely, integrating Web 2.0 functionality into BPM software. Carsten talked more in general terms about what features and techniques could be introduced, techniques for building applications, and why all of this Web 2.0 stuff is scary to the enterprise. He had a pretty comprehensive presentation, a bit unusual for an unconference, and I hope to see it posted somewhere.

I followed immediately after Carsten, and although I had the best intentions to prepare a little presentation the night before (but ended up out for dinner with friends) or at least a few notes on the subway on the way to EnterpriseCamp (but ended up chatting with a South African backpacker on his way around the world), I took the floor with a blank flip-chart and wrote four lines:

  • tagging
  • RSS
  • zero footprint
  • mashups

I then riffed on each of these, with lots of great input from the audience, with my focus on how they apply in the world of BPM but some expansion into other types of enterprise software. Great discussion: I love it when I can learn something while giving a presentation. I could have gone on for hours, except for the smell of pizza wafting in from the lunch area.

In the afternoon, I sat in on Tom Purves and Jevon MacDonald discussing adoption of Web 2.0 technology (specifically their product, for the most part) within the enterprise. That evolved into a discussion about Consulting 2.0 and a variety of other topics.

I also attended Bryce’s session on tagging, taxonomies and folksonomies, which generated some really interesting discussion. The idea of creating tag relationships rather than tag pruning as applicable to Enterprise 2.0 tagging applications: you want people to be able to add tags that are meaningful to them, but if others are using different tags that mean the same thing, find some way to relate the tags.

Definitely a worthwhile way to spend my Saturday. Many thanks to Navantis and Microsoft for their sponsorship of EnterpriseCamp.

Skipping Mashup Camp 3

I’ve decided not to attend Mashup Camp 3 in Boston next week, in part because I just got back from a month vacation and have a ton of things to do (like this weekend’s Enterprise Camp here in Toronto), and in part because I missed the window for cheap flights and I’m not willing to pay $900 to fly from Toronto to Boston — the problem with being an independent is that you really scrutinize that extra $600 in airfare when it comes out of your own pocket!

Have fun without me this time.

Mark your calendar: BPM Think Tank 2007

I attended this year’s OMG BPM Think tank, blogged extensively about it, and generally concluded that it was a great conference with excellent opportunities both for learning and for participating. The dates for the 2007 BPM Think Tank have now been announced as July 23-25, with a general theme of “Developing Your BPM Success Factors Roadmap” (a buzzword-enabled conference title if I’ve ever heard one). No venue announced yet, although the last two were in the Washington DC area.

From the announcement email:

The Object Management Group™ (OMG™), in partnership with BPTrends, and OMG’s BPMI Steering Committee encourage you to “Save the Date” for BPM Think Tank 2007: Developing Your BPM Success Factors Roadmap. The event will be held July 23-25, 2007.

This popular annual event will once again feature presentations by leading experts and roundtable discussions actively involving attendees. BPM Think Tank 2007 will gather together experts and practitioners alike to discuss the practical application of BPM standards, technologies and practices to achieve successful business results. A unique format with roundtable discussions, as well as technology exhibits, case study presentations and expert panel sessions, will allow participants to gain uncommon insight into BPM in the real world, within the standards community, on the IT drawing board and in the process owner’s office.

This year’s theme, “Developing Your BPM Success Factors Roadmap” will focus on issues of interest to those who have recently started a BPM initiative or who are just now evaluating BPMS (Business Process Management Systems), as well as those experienced with BPM who want to get to the next level.

Conference Overview

BPM Think Tank 2007 will feature a full day of beginning tutorials and two days of advanced roundtable discussions with experienced “been there and done it” people, leveraging their knowledge to develop real-world roadmaps for delivering business value using BPM. At BPM Think Tank 2007, learning will be action-oriented around a success factors template.

For businesses, the case study approach will be used by presenters from businesses that have implemented BPM and have real “lessons learned” to share. Participants will discuss those lessons, the costs and the benefits with their peers, as well as gain an understanding of the practical value of BPM standards.

For vendors, participants will interact with other vendors who have implemented BPM technologies and competed in the market. Participants will discuss not only the “whats” of the main BPM standards, but also the “hows,” the “lessons learned” and the “shortcuts.”

The unique, highly interactive BPM Roundtables are small group sessions moderated by subject matter experts who will facilitate group discussion around specific topics as diverse as BPM Project Governance and A Roadmap for BPMN. Presenters will include technical specification authors, as well as senior process managers and individuals in charge of their company’s IT architecture and application development. These BPM Roundtables have been a highly acclaimed feature of the BPM Think Tank in the past and clearly differentiate this event from others in the BPM marketplace.

This year’s BPM Think Tank 2007 is being co-chaired by Phil Gilbert, Chair of the OMG’s BPMI Steering Committee and Paul Harmon, Founder and Executive Editor of BPTrends.

For more information, visit http://www.omg.org/e-tt/. BPM Think Tank 2007 is produced by the Object Management Group in partnership with BPTrends (www.bptrends.com). Exhibit space is available; for more information contact Kevin Loughry at [email protected], +1-781-444 0404. Sponsorship opportunities are available; contact Ken Berk at [email protected], +1-781-444 0404.

A last few notes on Proforma

I received Proforma’s press release last week about the Forrester report on process modelling tools (PDF, free download), in which Proforma places well against their usual competitors, IDS Scheer and MEGA. All three are in the leaders category, with Proforma leading on current product offerings, and IDS Scheer leading on strategy. This result is quite different from Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture tools published in April: many of the same tools are being evaluated, but the Forrester focus is purely on business process modelling, while the Gartner focus is on the broader topic of EA modelling. Gartner also published an MQ on business process analysis tools this year that has results closer to the Forrester report, not surprisingly.

All of this made me realize that I still had a few notes about the Proforma user conference that I attended a couple of weeks back in Las Vegas, mostly all the ones from the Proforma folks about upcoming product release, ProVision Series 6. Here’s the rundown. [All inaccuracies in this information are due to my hurried notetaking, delayed transcription, and incomplete understanding of Proforma’s product, and I rely on those more knowledgeable to add any corrections in the comments.]

Software as a service was mentioned in the keynote on the first day, and Proforma’s push further into their Knowledge Exchange server-base product (an intended replacement for their ProServer product, and eventually their TeamWorks product with a “light” version) seems to support that concept architecturally, although the web client is not fully functional yet and web services interfaces won’t be supported until version 6.1. I asked a direct question about whether it would work across the firewall and the answer was “it should work”, which means to me that they haven’t actually tried it and you might want to wait until they do before trying that one at home.

The web client does have quite a bit of rich AJAX-y stuff going on: it shows all the inventory views in a browser, uses some nice UI controls such as elevator bars, drag+drop and double-clicking to open a property dialog, plus allows property editing in the browser client although no real modelling tasks. It uses scalable vector graphics to allow for fast zooming, panning and printing of complex models. I think that they might still be working on the licensing model for the web client: although a user must login, there is no licence required for the web client, such as there is for the desktop client, but this will certainly have to change when the web client is able to be a full desktop client replacement.

They’ve introduced the concept of dimensions in models, which allows for alternative versions to be created based on specific dimensions, where a dimension may be, for example, geography, or as-is versus to-be. In one model, then, you can compare North American as-is models with European to-be models, or whatever else you want to define based on your dimensions. It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but it’s pretty powerful stuff. This replaces the less-powerful concept of scenarios that were used in previous versions.

There were a number of enhancements that aren’t really meaningful to me since I’m not a regular Proforma user, but were welcomed by the audience: embedded Crystal Reports, federated search across repositories, more granular access rights down to the instance of an object, and the ability for a user to change their own password (?!).

There are some new business data modelling tools that are intended to allow designers to work in ProVision, then easily bridge to other technical design tools. This theme was picked up later during a lengthy discussion about interfacing with other applications, which is ultimately the key to making Proforma work as an integral part of any organization. They have development an XML-based common interchange format (CIF) and made it openly available to anyone who wants to interface with them; this covers all model types, not just process models. They interface with an impressive number of BPMS, SOA suites, and business rules systems.

Because of the rise of process model standards, however, they’ve also done a BPEL interface. The CTO’s keynote made a strong statement in support of standards, mentioning BPEL, WS-CDL, XPDL, SVBR and others. However, during a technical presentation the following day, I asked a question about XPDL to find out that it’s under review, but not even on the roadmap yet. They might use CIF as a stepping stone to get to XPDL, as they did with BPEL, but who knows. By then, BPDM will probably be out, and they’ll have to address all three serialization formats at some point.

In my opinion, there’s a few things that they’re going to have to address over the next few years in order to keep their product ahead of the big guys who are nipping at their heels, most of which are Web 2.0-type things that I’ve been talking about for BPMS:

  • Full functionality in a zero-footprint web client
  • Tagging to allow users to build up their own folksonomy around models
  • Syndication and feeds for alerts on changes to models, and to provide feedback to some of their new process monitoring capabilities
  • Support for XPDL now, and eventually BPDM

Is Anyone Executing Those Processes?

There’s just something about that mid-Western accent that I find endearing, and when Roy Massie from SunGard first pronounced “insurance” as a two-syllable word, I was hooked. Roy’s was the last non-Proforma presentation of the conference, and he was the only partner speaking (although I suppose that technically speaking, HP Consulting is likely a partner). If you’ve read Column 2 much in the past, you know that I have had a big focus on systems integration and implementation, so I was very interested in what SunGard had done to integrate ProVision with their products.

First of all, who knew that SunGard even had a BPMS product? Apparently the product of an acquisition, it doesn’t show up on the SunGard site, but has two other sites where it lives. Although SunGard did show up as a niche player on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant back in 2003, they’re not there any more; I imagine that niche might be limited to only SunGard customers for their other systems. I’ve seen SunGard transaction processing systems (not including any BPM functionality) in many of my mutual fund and other financial customers, so this isn’t a completely unexpected leap.

What was unexpected was the audience response when Roy asked the audience how many of them export their processes from ProVision to a BPMS for execution; I was sitting more than halfway back in the room, and there were no hands up in front of me. I didn’t turn quick enough to count, but Roy said “a couple of you” when characterizing the response. My question is if ProVision users aren’t pushing their process models through to a BPMS for execution, aren’t they missing a lot of value? And what, exactly, are they doing with those process models? Or is this just exposing my bigotry over what process models are good for?

The integration seems pretty straightforward, and based on later information, is similar to what is done by other BPMS vendors: processes are modelled in ProVision, then exported using Proforma’s open Common Interchange Format (CIF) and imported into SunGard EXP Process Director.

I did like Roy’s description of practices (determined by experienced specialists) versus procedures (executed by trained workers), and how they combine to make up processes. I also liked his phrase “enterprise technology sprawl”, and his discussion of how an unstructured collage of technologies can start to dictate business processes. He made the great point that all compliance initiatives are based on process transparency, and (referencing the Aloha Airlines presentation about how they started modelling their business in order to organization themselves out of bankruptcy) that a near-death experience is a great motivator.

Proforma for ITIL

ITIL is not a subject that I spend a lot of time thinking about, but John Clark from HP does. John sat beside me for all of day 2 (except when he was presenting 🙂 ), and I had the chance to talk to he and his wife at lunch. After his presentation, we had a quick session of dueling devices: I showed him the lingerie show photos on Flickr on my Blackberry, and he surfed to the same site on his laptop via a Bluetooth connection to his smartphone.

John’s presentation was about work that the HP Consulting organization had done for Lucent in the area of IT service change management. We saw some of the workflow diagrams that they had created in ProVision for modelling ITIL controls and policies, for example, for Lucent’s incident management process. They integrated the launch and display of ProVision content directly into the HP OpenView Service Desk application for publishing a visualization of the process models directly to the users; this allowed users to see their role in the process in context without having to request that information from the modelling team.

As John put it, it make the users “unconsciously competent”, something that we should all strive to do when designing and building systems.

Strategic Planning with Enterprise Architecture

Laura Six-Stallings from QAD gave a presentation on how they are using enterprise architecture for strategic corporate planning, which absolutely fascinated me since most EA projects that I’ve been involved in have been focussed at much lower levels. She used some wonderfully funny war analogies, going so far to call ProVision a “weapon of mass depiction”, which takes the prize for the best quote of the day.

Since I had been online earlier and determined that her presentation was not available on the Proforma website, I ended up taking a lot of notes, so have a better memory of this presentation than some of the others. I didn’t see anything in the presentation that would have made it particularly proprietary, since she didn’t show their actual strategic planning results, just talked about the methodology for achieving it, but some companies are more paranoid than others.

They started their EA initiative in 2002 with about a dozen business and technology architects, and started using ProVision just last year to implement the Zachman framework. They have a very holistic view of EA, from corporate strategy on down, and they hit their strategic planning process as an early target for EA. Like many organizations, they did their strategic planning in PowerPoint and Word; with over 60 pages of slides and 280 pages of backup documentation, it was a time-consuming and error-prone process to create it in the first place, then to map that onto the more concrete goals of the organization. By implementing EA and ProVision, they were looking to improve the entire process, but also gain some clarity of alignment between strategy, business and technology, and some clarity of ownership over processes and strategies.

She made several turns of phrase that elicited a knowing laugh from the audience — IKIWISI [I Know It When I See It] requirements; As-Was and Could-Be models — but really brought home the challenges that they had to overcome, and the wins that they are expecting as this process rolls out. The biggest issues weren’t surprising: a perception of complexity, based in part of the limited ProVision expertise within QAD, and the cultural shift required to embrace a new way of modelling their strategic plans. However, they now have a long-term strategic plan based roughly on balanced scorecard objectives, and have a whole list of anticipated benefits:

  • Common taxonomy and semantics
  • A holistic multi-dimensional view of enterprise activities
  • Enforced alignment to the strategic plan model
  • Exposure of dependencies, relationships, impacts and conflicts
  • Improved communication and acceptance of the strategic plan
  • Improved priority management
  • Common processes
  • Effective reporting and analysis
  • Improved collaboration

Quite lofty goals, but achievable given the level that they’re attacking with EA. What I took away from this, and from other conversations that I had during the two days, is that to many people, “EA” really translates to IT architecture, but not at QAD.