A BP-project model… what for?

Hola a todos,

One of my goals for this initial period is to create some a number of “chunks of information” that should make more understandable the workflow and dataflow that occur in a BPM project done with Intalio. Why?

• Because it is a model (by itself) that can help managers and project managers grasp the main concepts and steps
• For ROI to be computed (it should be, anyway), then first a cost model must be established
• Because by formalizing it, we can explain it to other members in the team what a BPM project really takes
• Why not? even if the approach is pretty eXtreme-like, the idea of BPM cannot easily enter into the minds & souls of non-specialists
• No project manager is going to assume a project where the risks cannot be modeled (and dealt with) **
• The BPM model offered by Intalio is not the same offered by other BPM platforms that are either a) more oriented towards the Business-Analysts or b) more technology-oriented, making BPEL-like reasoning explicit and where SOA is mostly the piping among applications. Consequently, the project model cannot be the same.
• Finally, it is sure that people are smart and will eventually propose something else, either for enhancing
  this proposal or –let’s hope– for replacing it completely for something less absurd. However, a first step is required.

** Some people have not understood what eXtreme really means

Many decision-makers find extraordinary the idea of BPM, but they cannot see what it looks like. Then, they see it, and they don’t assimilate it. Even after a custom-made demo, the paradigm-shift is so strong that the audience is unwilling to think about actually adopting it internally. Afterwards, convincing the decision-makers to go further, spend money and resources (and time) is… just out of question!

(Don’t care. Every paradigm-shifts make all companies, organizations and societies go through these sort-of-”usual” crisis)

The normal workflow, where each guy does its own stuff: business people just describe fuzzy things & functionality, IT people work on this problem and produce a solution… and then nobody is really satisfied… it just doesn’t work as it should, but it’s known and it works.

The Agile Processes, where the tools and the code are “the thing” is not very tranquilizing for people used to create solutions in a certain way for already a number of years. Yes, agile approaches have made their way and are “tendence” but in BPM the abstractions are much higher… and doubt creeps into the scene…

Do not point at these reluctant guys with your finger: THE critical business data is exposed to us via the BPM, and the complex business logic of each of this bricks is huge… remember that similar projects, such as data-migration, are tackled with extreme prudence.

Any reason for this? well, problems like accessing a database and all the transactional-related conflicts are just a simple issue when compared to the conflicts we can have nowadays in BPM: the bricks are ERPs, CRMs, Financial applications, the Accounting system, among many other sparse and dense constituents… therefore, the ramifications of any underspecification or any misconception will be broader than with a single database. The constituent systems of an SOA have been created, developed, maintained and used mostly as separate entities, because the semantics of any composition are not necessarily well-known.

As the abstractions of BPM are more general, the transactional contexts and business logic are much more powerful… for the good and for the bad.

If the IT applications were created (“by God”) as individual applications, and they are each so complex, how can you guarantee (you, little human ) that no mistake will be introduced? An error in the semantics of the composition can become a real disaster for the target organization. Why do you think that just by putting BPM on-the-loop the world will certainly become simpler?

Of course, the BPM on SOA can be applied without much consternation in most modern companies, small projects, etc. However, in order to make this a really transcendental approach, what we should try to change is the mindset and development approach in BIG organizations, mainly in government, in the management of critical resources (food, public services), in the fundamental services for economy, etc.

My thoughts are getting a bit too wild. May be I’m tired, or may be it is time to continue the technical discussion.

Roles in the simplistic view of a BP-project

Grüezi,

In the last entry I explained 3 roles and the way they interact with the Intalio suite. In this entry, I will explain a bit more how the project starts and how the two first roles interact.

The Business Analyst (BA) is a functional specialist. She/he is responsible for creating a process specification. As this specification becomes very complex very rapidly, it is important to adopt an approach that I’ll baptize eXtreme Process Definition (XPD). Like eXtreme Programming, the idea is to make prototypes that are tested and validated very often, adding new functionality very quickly.

From the project management point of view, this corresponds to choosing a life-cycle named “Evolutive Prototyping”, where the previous core functionality is preserved, and new functionality is added; this has as advantage the capacity to always deliver a product, creating an optimal result for everybody at almost any situation (risk, cost, priority can make your project stop, and you always have something to deliver). A number of rules must be adopted, in order to make the evolution towards a final product agile.

The BPMS Designer enable this approach since the Rapid Prototyping of new functions is made possible even for non-technical guys. How? Well, the specification of Business Processes (BPs) is made by the business guys themselves:-O, using a language that is natural to them since it is just like flow diagrams: the Business Process Modeling Notation or BPMN. No programming (Zero Code) is the motto.

Besides the process itself, the BA must also create the screens that users of the system will see when they will interact with it. Of course, a bit of more technical knowledge is required here, but the path to a first prototype screenshot is really fast.

Just imagine, Intalio Designer makes possible to adopt agile methods at affordable or no cost in the Business Process dimension!!

The Process Assembler (PA) is the one that will make this specification ready-to-execute. His first task is to interact with the BA in order to verify the semantics, in what concerns conditional execution, iterations, the selection of one/many parallel paths (fork, rule-based execution, among many others) and for identifying the information required to compute each rule (for the conditions/predicates of each execution path). Next, the definition of contexts is required: sub-processes, transactional contexts, etc.

Concerning the screens for the users, the PA is responsible for adding the constraints that can be applied to the user interaction: the validation is automatic and declarative, only the predicates that should be respected are required.

A very particular duty of the PA is to connect the web-services and other providers to the BP specification. Now, this can be put off since the agile way does not compell the team to make the system fully executable. The most important issue here is to make a good spec. How to choose the good path towards a complete BP? by following the best-practices in the software engineering field, I propose you to do the pretty standard Work-Breadown Structure (WBS):

• first, the normal case, where everything goes OK,
• second, the alternative paths to the normal case, or the processing planned for special cases (starting by the 1-3 most common)
• third, the error cases, i.e. the cases when things go wrong and special measures and even backtracking should be done

The core functionality is generally respectful of Pareto principles: it applies to 60-70% of cases, letting the remaining 20-30% pending. If your BP has a section with more than 3 alternative paths, you may start thinking about isolating it into a sub-process. We’ll see how to do that in the near future.

I’m aware of the fact that the approach as presented here is not necessarily applicable to many cases. I will soon give details about the document-centered approach that is normally required in order to deal with the complexity of exchanges. I will also then describe how the Process Data should be designed. Bis bald!

A simplistic view of a BP-project using Intalio

Bonjour à tout le monde!

Well, after having dealt with some very specific problems of Intalio, I have to get back to the initial goal of this blog: to explain how to use the BPM suite. I’m sorry if I went a bit onto the specifics of some problems, but I have to document them before I forget them. Once done, let us be back on-the-track.

Since there is no specification about how to use the platform, I will dare to propose a sort-of-methodology in order to use Intalio. Hey! you know, I have not found any reference for this, so I had to create something by myself. Please consider it only as a personal reminder, and if you have elements to add, just write a comment. Thanks in advance.

The Project Roles

In my humble opinion, the Intalio suite is oriented towards 3 basic set of roles:

• the Business Analyst (BA) or Process designer: a functional designer that models the process, its semantics (sequencing, loops, handling of special cases), the conditions that start the process (the triggers) and the conditions that should be satisfied in order to finish the process (the terminating conditions). She/he will interact with the assembler (next role) in order to guarantee that the semantics of the description are respected.
• the Process Assembler (PA): a technical specialist. This role will –first– introduce a more formal semantics onto the business process specification created by the BA. Later, she/he will perform the connections assembly: integrate the set of BP-artifacts onto the process solution. Finally, she/he will interact with the deployer (next role) in order to perform the tests of the executable version.
• the Solution Deployer (SD): the actor that actually makes the specification executable (Business Process + artifacts). This role should define a development/testing environment and a production environment; this last one requires that the SD documents the target IT architecture. This actor is highly competent on the technical issues.

The BP-artifacts that can be assembled by the PA are of three types:

• the web services,
• the user screens, and
• the database connections that are available (lately, since Intalio 5 allows it).

The most critical task that this role must satisfy is the correct mapping of the messages as input/outputs of the process data. I sugggest to adopt an approach based on document-like artifacts. I will address this issue in future entries, of course.

I hope it is clear for the readers that this is a non-linear process. In practice, it becomes evident that the communication among the BA and the PA is actually an ongoing relationship, and may take longer than expected: each phase of the BP should go through specification, modeling, integration, testing, debugging, and validation… :-O

In order to deal with the incremental of my approach, I will soon start explaining a RUP-like approach that I’ve been thinking of. Sure, it won’t be perfect, just like this proposal.

The number of roles in a big project is –of course– higher than 3. My intention is to explain the vanilla approach, before introducing complexity. Bien sûr, this approach is far from perfect, and may not satisfy the requirements of some really knowledgeable guys, but it is a basic proposal that is better than having nothing as a reference. Besides, this is the first time I try to formalize it. I just hope it helps you.