Frank Michael Kraft's Blog

Today I want to speak about a small pet project that is more fun than serious. I was thinking about future collaboration patterns and to try to make business process modeling more attractive instead of thinking about modeling tool number 101.

That’s when I thought, what if Business Process Modeling could be made more real by means of virtual reality. In know – Second Life is not the place, where one would meet too many Business Process Modelers. But – there are businesses to be fair. Even though the hype is gone, it’ still there and – a place where I could try the idea of more tangible Business Process Modeling in a virtual reality.

Viola.

What, if a group of avatars would meet and collaboratively move around and build the process? Discuss about it, while they watch each other? They could simulate the process and adapt it, if necessary.

Ok – maybe the process is more like the 3D version of a paper or screen type of pattern. So why not try one or the other pattern? Like walk though the process?

Maybe completely new patterns of representing models emerge over time. Maybe it is also an idea to sit at a table and use activities like lego bricks.

Maybe even if 3D is exploited in a better way, sub processes can be displayed together with the main process. Or the whole process is like a big house with many rooms.

Interestingly enough in the last BPM 09 conference in Ulm there was a scientific discussion about tangible process modeling. There was a research project where Activities were made tangible by means of plastic bricks and people moved them around on the table. In the real world I mean. They mentioned the next challenge was to digitalize the result in a more effective way. Well – maybe virtual reality modeling is the solution to this problem. In some future.

So – that’s my fun project.

I just took the BPMN Model understanding self test. It is a research project of Humboldt University of Berlin, that I can recommend. I was asked about 30 models and how I understand them. The test takes about 30 minutes and is a nice excercise.

http://www.bpmn-selftest.org/

I made it to rank 14 of 394. However I wonder who the 13 were, that were better . So give it a try, maybe you can beat me. The test is anonymous however.

Nevertheless I want to share what I thought when I saw the models. They were quite complicated. I think if models are as complicated in a real project as those in the test, then something went terribly wrong in the first place. I agree, that it is fine for a research project to use artifical complicated models, to find out more about human model comprehension. And I am very interested in the research result. But models must be much simpler than those.

Simpler models could be reached by limiting the scope of one model – i.e. splitting it up in different parts, using submodels for example. As far as I remember human comprehension can assess 7 items at once, not more. So in essence I think a model should not contain more than about 7 important steps.

Also it can mean to model only the most important cases and model the special cases in a different model.

And it can mean to question, if BPMN is the right model language for the purpose chosen. I know that BPMN is popular and becomes even more, because it is a standard. But in my eyes the question remains, if the task flow oriented modeling it does is really the best way to do it. In my eyes it should be evaluated as a result of this research project, if goal driven and constraint based modeling would not result in much easier models.

This is my BPMN 2.0 Overview Map.

It shows a Choreography model in the middle, Orchestration with public Processes and private Processes, that belong to the public Processes.

Systems integration is the realization of the underlying business processes. This sounds so simple. But in reality there is often a misalignment between the business process design and the systems design. It is the wrong way to just implement business processes, that are as they are today or that are designed without discretion of the principles of loose coupling.

Often system designers need knowledge about how business processes work, but on the other hand business process designers need knowledge about how system integration works. As long as both sides are willing to learn and willing to share the knowledge, it is possible to come up with common principles of modeling, that avoid the most common mistakes, that lead to project cost overrun or failure.  I say it clearly what I mean: using BPMN 2.0 choreography modeling language in itself is no gurantee for success. But: It is a VERY useful tool for the communication between the business and system experts, which is a necessary condition of success.

So in other words, it is necessary, that the process design follows the principles of loose coupling of business processes. That is no design task, that can be solved by system designers alone, if the business process is modeled in a tightly coupled way. In other words: If the business process is designed in the right way – in the loosely coupled way – then the system design is without a hitch. If the business process is designed in the wrong way – there is no way to save the project on the system design level.

So are business experts forced to design business processes different, just to make the job of system designers easier? No. If it is designed that way, it is a better business process. It would work even better even if there was no system, but just paper and phone. It is more tolerant to errors. It gives the individual more freedom to decide. It makes it easier to reach the goal. Yes, it requires a little bit more brain power than just modeling the sunny day case. But in the end it pays off abundantly.

And in my eyes this is good news. It is NOT the system programming that dominates the design and dictates the constraints. It can be the business process needs again, that prescribe the way to go. And that is why BPMN 2.0 is so helpful, because it starts with the business process model.