What You May Not Model
Posted by José D. De la Cruz on November 22, 2008
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- If your intention is to model operational risk, I strongly suggest not to use Intalio.
- If you intend to compute the organizational performance a priori (via benchmarking the working capacity of the organizational units in a company), Intalio may not be the tool you’re looking for.
- If you want to compute process time or process cost, this cannot be done directly. You should wait until having an executable process, and then this may be feasible. However, there are other tools that may fit much better this requirement.
- If you need just to replace a composite application, and you focus on low-level notions (synchronous and asynchronous communications), be warned that Intalio and BPM do not include those kinds of
primitives directly, and that your modeling can be uncomfortable. There are plenty of BPEL-level modeling tools that might fulfill your requirements directly. - If you already have a model process written in some other language like EPC, UML, OSSAD, b-Flow… do not expect to find plug-ins that will help you import/translate.
- If your requirements do include the creation of a process framework (or a process library/reference), know that Intalio does not provide any process repository functionality. You should build one of your own.
- If there is not need for an executable BP as a result of the modeling effort, you’re not going to use the maximum capacity of Intalio…
- If you have no need of rigorous semantics that help you build valid and correct Biz Process models, just use any drawing tool with the notation you prefer.
Of course, Intalio is a great tool, but you will get no satisfaction of using it for what it was not intended.
Beware of the Law of the Hammer:
The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover
that everything needs pounding
– Gerald Weinberg
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Antoine Toulme said
Intalio would like to help with your hammer, and taking your analogy further, with the developer edition and the enterprise edition, we intend to deliver different types of them.
We also welcome feedback on what you’d like to see in the product, if you need an import from a specific tool you can contact d3@intalio.com to file for it.
Thanks for the feedback!
AS said
The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding
Sure, but we are consultants yet.
* If you intend to compute the organizational performance a priori (via benchmarking the working capacity of the organizational units in a company), Intalio may not be the tool you’re looking for.
How are going to evaluate “working capacity” WITHOUT executable processes?
* If you want to compute process time or process cost, this cannot be done directly. You should wait until having an executable process, and then this may be feasible. However, there are other tools that may fit much better this requirement.
May be we have to execute differently an executable business process model from Intalio? The model is still OK.
* If you need just to replace a composite application, and you focus on low-level notions (synchronous and asynchronous communications), be warned that Intalio and BPM do not include those kinds of primitives directly, and that your modeling can be uncomfortable.
There are plenty of BPEL-level modeling tools that might fulfill your requirements directly.
“houses for courses” is applicable for Intalio by definition, but how it is linked to BPM?
* If you already have a model process written in some other language like EPC, UML, OSSAD, b-Flow… do not expect to find plug-ins that will help you import/translate.
This is reasonable because a model in UML has to be re-thought BEFORE being in BPMN, by definition.
* If your requirements do include the creation of a process framework (or a process library/reference), know that Intalio does not provide any process repository functionality. You should build one of your own.
Can a poor-man solution (i.e. SVN) help to avoid such a build?
* If there is not need for an executable BP as a result of the modeling effort, you’re not going to use the maximum capacity of Intalio…
Yes, but “be ready” to be executable is a great advantage vs a Visio-like diagrams.
* If you have no need of rigorous semantics that help you build valid and correct Biz Process models, just use any drawing tool with the notation you prefer.
The main reason to draw a business process is to achieve good understanding between stakeholders of this process. If you draw it without “rigorous semantics” then you may expect the similar return.
Thanks,
AS
José D. De la Cruz said
Thanks Sasha,
I agree with almost all your comments and your analysis of the potential solutions.
The idea of this set of entries is to avoid to create some expectations on possible users of Intalio, specially the ones that want a more biz-oriented view of the BPs.
Most of them look for more abstract reasoning tools (risk, cost, etc.).
The advanced ones look for EA-enabled tools, and on change management. This means that the BP models should evolve, be stored and eventually several versions of the BP might be compared.
I would like to understand and to help understand what Intalio is good for, and also when it is not the right tool/approach.
Take care,
JDC