Tag Archives: Workflow

Model Strategy: Preserving vs. Transforming

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It started out as a casual conversation over drinks at the Oct 2008 BPM Tech Show in DC, late in the afternoon, after the tutorials and presentations had finished. We wanted to know: “why is there such a variation in different BPM systems?” This expanded into a breakfast meeting the following morning on the topic of “What are advantages/ disadvantages of either preserving or transforming a BPM model?” We found that most existing systems tend to follow one of two possible strategies. Existing BPM Systems (and their associated methodologies) can be categorized as supporting either a “Model Transforming Strategy” or a “Model Preserving Strategy”.

It was remarkable how passionate people were about their position. Continue reading →

Directly Executing BPMN

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The article “Why BPEL is not the holy grail for BPM” presents a scenario for implementation which is difficult for BPEL based products to actually execute. It presented a particular product based on BPEL that was not able to execute this diagram.  What about products that are based on executing the BPMN directly without conversion? Continue reading →

Will BPMN 2.0 have “Model Portability”?

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The big feature coming in BPMN 2.0 is the ability to serialize the model into a form that is portable between tools.  Regular readers of this blog will know that we have this today with XPDL, but those responsible for the future of BPMN say “We are going to give you something better.”  OK, I am all for progress to something better, but are they really going to achieve this? Continue reading →

bxModeller Initial Review

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A few weeks ago I became aware of the bxModeller from Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. and the University of Salento in Italy which is an open source / free tool for BPMN/XPDL modeling. I got access the bxModeller to see how it would perform. It can be entirely accessed on-line. Nothing needs to be installed. That is certainly convenient. You create projects, give them names, and start designing the processes. Later you export the results as XPDL. Continue reading →

The Right Amount of BPMN

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After a few months without much BPM discussion, then I blinked and found that I have been missing the Great BPMN Debate. To bring you up to speed: Michael zur Muehlen and Jan Recker have been studying how people actually use BPMN to draw business processes, and have counted the occurrance of rate of various elements. He summarized this in a blog post,which came to the conclusion that practitioners could focus on learning and using a small subset of a dozen BPMN elements, that vendors could prioritize implementations to get the more common elements first, and that some elements were used so rarely that the value of their existence was questioned. Continue reading →

Human Process: Email Voting

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The BPMN specification includes a sample process to use as an example of how you would use BPMN to draw the process and how it would then be converted to BPEL. Bruce Silver has suggested that this be used as an example process to test interoperability between different process diagramming tools. One point in favor of this is that it is fairly well fleshed out and documented. Also, it is a real process that would be reasonable to use in real life.

As I set out to implement this process, it struck me how dramatically different the process would be drawn if you had an implementation engine that supported human activities directly. Continue reading →

Human Process: Trouble Ticket

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With all the talk about “Human Facilitator Processes“; what actually does a real one look like? The best documented example of a human process is provided by the OMG known as the “Trouble Ticket” scenario.

98-02-09_original_scenario.pdf, also see 98-03-10-TroubleTicket_Nortel.pdf, and 98-07-13-TroubleTicket_Hitachi.pdf

This is a process to allow a software company to handle a customer support issue. Continue reading →

Human “Facilitator” Processes

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In a previous post, I introduced the concept that there are two predominant views of BPM. One view is that of the Automators, who are creating business processes which replace humans by doing the same things that had traditionally been done manually. The other view is that of the Facilitators, who are creating BPM processes to involve actual people in processes can not and probably never will be fully automated. Both groups see themselves as making “human processes”, both groups create BPMN diagrams filled activities and gateways. Continue reading →

BPM Standards Tutorials, Sept 29, Germany

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Key members of the BPM standards community are coming together in Mainz Germany on September 29 to present six hour-long tutorials on subjects relevant to getting BPM system to work together. The tutorials range from general overview of the BPM market, to specific detailed presentations on standards. For those vendors who are already familiar with BPM there is an interactive XPDL design strategy session to discuss specific implementation approaches.

This is presented as part of Business Process Management 2006 which is a four day event, the BPM Standards will be presented on the last day, Friday. While the first three days are primarily in German, the BPM Standards day will be presented exclusively in English.

The schedule is:

  • 09:00 Welcome and Introduction
  • 09:10-10:00 BPMN/XPDL overview
  • 10:00-10:45 BPMN/XPDL details
  • 11:15-12:00 Human BPM (workflow) vs. EAI BPM (Service Orchestration)
  • 12:00-13:00 Lunch
  • 13:00-13:45 What is BPM? What is Workflow? The Business Value of BPM & Workflow.
  • 14:00-14:45 Relationship between BPM and SOA – How to leverage what you have.
  • 15:15-16:00 XPDL vs. BPEL
  • 16:00-16:30 Panel Session, Q&A, Roundup, Feedback

The presenters include Jon Pyke (WfMC Chair), Robert Shapiro (Global360), Keith Swenson (Fujitsu), Saša Bojanic (ProZone), Justin Brunt (TIBCO), Ken Mei (Global 360), Philippe Betschart (W4 Global), Philip Larson (Appian Corp), Thomas Olbrich (Chair Business Process Management 2006), and draws upon work created and helped along by the Workflow Management Coalition.

Here is a detailed schedule of the presentations. Hope to see you there!