Model Business Process

First of all the Business Process itself is modeled. The focus of this activity is to identify the steps that need to be performed to reach the goal and their dependency. This is done irrespective of the participants, which are not completely clear at this point in time.

Break into Participants

This is a design decision. Often Participants are companies of the business world. Still it is a design decision how fine or coarse granular they are designed and which part of the process is executed in which participant. For example it is possible to define different departments within a company as one or many participants.

Model Choreography

Now the interaction between participants can be modeled by means of the choreography model. This is a top-down approach. Therefore it defines the frame of subsequent detailed process modeling within the participants.

Model Public Processes / Services of Participants

As a next step the public processes and services of the participants can be modeled. It is decisive to model which services which participant exposes and which constraints exist between the service operations (e.g. an order needs to be confirmed, before it can be delivered).

If a complete system is designed from scratch, the public process models and the services are designed as To-Be processes and services. But in most instances the participants will at least in part already exist. Therefore As-Is models will be created and must be aligned with the To-Be model. This is the most challenging part of all. Because if the public process of a participant cannot be freely designed, because the cost to change it is too high, then the choreography must be changed, which in turn means, that the other participant may need to change. This is the most challenging negotiation in the design process.

Derive Business Objects

Before an implementation can start, Business Objects, which implement the behavior of the participants, need to be derived. The behavior of the Business Objects needs to be made consistent with the public behavior of the participant.

In the end the public behavior of the participant will be an abstract process, while the business objects will be concrete. This will also be very clear, when it is time to model correlation rules – i.e. which message instance is processed by which process instance. At this point in time, the most natural process instance will be the business object instance. Remember: The public process is only an abstract process – therefore it does not have instances.

Model Common Monitoring Process

Now the details have been modeled and we want to re-aggregate the execution of the processes into a common process view on instance level. The Monitoring Process View is needed as a re-simplification of the already modeled details. In the optimal case the monitoring process is equal to the original process model which stood at the beginning. Most probably there will be deviations for good reasons. This of course is also a good exercise to re-confirm the original requirements and justify the deviations from it.

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.

First of all I have Workstreams and Workitems that are part of the Workstreams. These can be decomposed into finer ones. Each Workitem has a status and an estimate about the remaining effort. This way I can aggregate the remaining effort for a complete Workstream.

I will explain in Webinars how I work with these. I have encountered several patterns of knowledge work, using these. I found it quite practical to define bigger goals and then to decompose these later into concrete steps. But I have encountered many more patterns of daily knowledge work than this one. I will also give a preview of the Software in the Webinars.

To each Workitem I can attach documents, pictures and notes. Thus I have all information available once I work with the Workitem. Or if I have information (e.g. an email) I ask myself: To which Workitem / Workstream does it belong to? Then I would attach it to the Workitem / Workstream and keep my email inbox clean. If I can’t attach it to a Workitem, then the email is not so important anyway. Or – of course if it is, then I would create a new Workitem first, belonging to a given Workstream.

But this was not enough. I wanted to keep under control until when I would have to complete what. Instead of maintaining a completion date for all 2.000+ Workitems (which would be out of date very soon) I defined Sprints – i.e. milestones with a predefined date. I assigned Workitems to these Sprints as I found feasible. This way I am able to see the remaining work for each Sprint. This is the only kind of “order” I give to my Workitems. Other than this, they are not ordered – so I don’t have to maintain too much unnecessary information as with other project tools that I know. This lets me be flexible and agile.

You might ask how I aggregate the remaining work for Sprints, if hierarchical Workitems are assigned to different Sprints. Well – I have solved this.

Then I was able to create Analytics for the progress of my work. I am able to visualize the remaining work of my Sprints as time progresses. This is my Burndown Diagram.

As time progresses I see how much I still have to do, and how successful I was to burn down the remaining work for the next Sprints and in whole. Of course, new work is added as well. Sometimes existing work is moved to another Sprint or a new Sprint is created and existing Work is assigned.

Do I feel I have my work under control? Yes. Is it flexible enough to adapt the plan to unplanned events? Sure. Is the could implementation an advantage or a disadvantage? I found it to be an advantage. I have access to the information wherever I am where there is a Computer or with my iPhone. Think of the famous new iPad – it fits perfectly.

Until today I am using this Workstream Platform all on my own. Later this year I am planning to use it as a collaboration platform, inviting others to work with me. Then the cloud implementation will play out its full strength.

I have come to the conclusion in the meanwhile, that the appearance of IT will change.

As noted in the article, there is a sense of IT limitation in the offices at the one hand and the reluctance to change in the IT departments. “Never touch a running system.” – an old proverb that contains much wisdom. Of course the problem is cost of change.

As noted in the article, everybody installs one or some forbidden tools on his office computer, much to the discontent of the IT departments. We can’t help – in the end we have to have the best tools for our work.

In the end the article shortly touches on cloud software, but does not elaborate its potential. But when I think of it, it overcomes many of the difficulties mentioned. There is nothing to install on the office computer. Just use the browser. Neither does it disrupt existing systems. There is no big change project. Just use it. Ok – if there is a project group or department they need to decide which one they would want to use and how they organize it.

I expect IT’s role to change over time. Instead of being responsible for making the systems run, they become the central point of governance which services are good to use and which they will veto against. They will have quality criteria that they will apply. This will relieve the IT department of much of today’s burden and let them concentrate on their core competency. Also it will release budget for interesting forward looking projects.

That’s not only, because individuals want to use the best tools possible. It’s also because other forms of work are strongly emerging, among which I want to emphasize Knowledge Work and Collaboration between organizational entities. More and more project groups emerge that work cross enterprises and organizations in non-standard – i.e. in unpredictable or only partially predictable processes and collaborations. Why is (was?) there such a hype about Google Wave? Isn’t that the reason? Google Wave is just a small forerunner of the tide to come. Completely new forms of applications will emerge that will offer functionality for organizing these new kind of processes. Multi-Enterprise Business Applications may be a good name for them.

And the processes they cover will differ from those processes that we know today and that are commodity. As I already stressed those processes will be agile, adaptive, unpredictable, partially predictable, collaborative, creative, knowledge oriented. I hesitate to call them processes, because “process” implies: First do that, then this. That is not the kind I am speaking of. A Knowledge Worker complies with such a process only in rare cases. Neither is it desireable. The Knowledge Worker needs enabling for the goal he wants to achieve and the he or she best knows how to achieve – and to have the freedom to try, to fail, to retry and to succeed. So we might call the new work pattern Workstream instead of Process.

So which IT department would be responsible for such a Multi-Enterprise Business Application? The natural answer is: It will be served as “Software as a Service” by an independent provider and the individual Enterprise will purchase users. That is another strong reason, why the IT will change – because there is practically no other way to address this emerging demand.

To quickly wrap it up: It was a good decision. I have built 9 Business Objects in the meanwhile of which the first one was the most difficult obviously. The others quite naturally follow. These are as of now: Workitem, Sprint, Book, Attachment, Note, Payment, Regular Payment, Statement, Transaction. Furthermore I have added Analytical Objects for the purpose of analyzing the Business Objects. I will explain by and by what they do. I will not explain the programming model and architecture of Microsoft Windows Azure in detail. You can inform yourself in public sources, if you want. The UI is HTML – so it’s not worse than salesforce.com. Plus I have added some diagrams in Microsoft Silverlight.

I was able to quickly implement the business logic, that I wanted to have. The programming language I use is C#, which I like. After implementation you press a button (ok, three, four) and then the application is running live in the cloud. It’s just so easy, lean and clean.

So the first Business Object I implemented is the Workitem. In salesforce.com I called it Goal – I am still a little bit indecisive how to call it. I can say so far that it is different from all other Workitems or Tasks that I happen to know. I asked myself what I need for my daily work. My work is that of a Knowledge Worker. It is in good part unpredictable, but not unrelated. Also it is not unplanned. And it has clear goals and a clear purpose. So for this requirement I tailored this Business Object Workitem and I worked with it for many weeks now. I have worked now with at least 3000 instances of it and I am more happy with it than with any other task or project tool that I used so far. I have my work under control now, notwithstanding the fact that many unpredicted events occurred and adaptations of the plan were either necessary or chosen by me.

And: It is served in the cloud. Obviously this means that I can access it from every computer with a browser, which I regularly do. Recently I was in a shop and wanted to buy a memory extension. I did not remember the model. So I asked, if I could quickly use the computer, logged into my Platform and looked it up. Just as easy. In other instances I just pulled out my iPhone, logged into my Platform – using the standard browser, and edited some workitems. I did not even have to write an iPhone App for this. Although I might in the future.

What did I do with the old workitems/goal instances that I had already created in salesforce.com including attachments and notes? Within two days I migrated them completely into my Azure Workstream Platform. How? Salesforce.com offers web services to read the content. So I pulled out the Web Service Description (WSDL) from my salesforce application – which as we remember were custom objects – into Microsoft Visual Studio, generated WebService Proxies for that, mapped them into my Business Object Structure and then pulled the content over. That’s it. From that point on I as productive in my own Azure Workstream Platform. And I am until today.

I will explain more about the functionality of the Business Objects, that I created, soon.

I aswered, that I have experience with that and that I agree that there is a tremendous potential with that. That really was an interesting discussion, because I did not hear such analysis before in the discussions in the public marketplace. I think this is the right direction to think.

I had already governed the design of the process of about 200 or more business objects, creating about 2.000 models including roughly about 5.000 web service operations. I didn’t use BPMN for that, because it was not flexible enough for this purpose, neither any of the existing languages. I used an own Domain Specific Language (DSL) for Modeling the behavior of those Business Objects.

My summary of that exercise is, that I agree to the original question. Only by modeling the process of Business Objects which are part of the ERP system, the ERP system’s web services will as a result have the right granularity. What is the right granularity for web services? Reusability. If web services are reusable, then they pay off most. In order for them to be reusable, they need to fulfil certain conditions. A web service operation should only do one thing at a time., i.e. not trigger an endless chain of activities in the system. It should have clearly defined preconditions. The effects and results of the web service operations must be clearly defined in terms, that can also be preconditions to other web service operations. That are the most important criteria in my view.

A system must be designed for this philosophy from the beginning. I strongly believe that adding web services to an existing system falls short of this goal. Even if it has some value, it would not use the full potential.

In general what I miss in the public standards is a language to describe the behavior of web services. Yes, BPMN 2.0 goes into that direction. But BPMN 2.0 still has to prove that it can fulfil the promise in practice. I think to a degree it can. It will turn out later, if it is possible to simplify the language or if it becomes an inspiration for other approaches (e.g. constraint based instead of workflow based).  And using BPMN 2.0 in itself does not guarantee the success. Additional guidance is necessary, certain quality criteria that each model must fulfil.

However, if the behavior of web service operations of an ERP system is defined, and if the granularity of the web service operations are so, that they are reusable, then the potential is very big. Because it means, that it is possible to attach own processes to that ERP service and even to interweave own processes in-between ERP processes. For example to add an approval before the release of an order under certain conditions, to add an own method of calculating benefits for the payroll and the like.

However as a limitation to the original question I would say, that not all of the processes modeled could be customized or changed arbitrarily. There are certain core processes, that the ERP system offers, that can not be changed without the danger of losing the consistency of the process. Therefore it is clearly necessary to describe which part of the process needs to remain stable and which parts of the process can change or are open for additions and interweaving. This of course must be part of the model.

For example someone has an internet site. However the provider is raising the fees. You have do decide between different options, but all are worse than today. There is another provider, that is cheaper. But you are not sure with the new options – how long the cancellation period is there. Also you don’t want to pay twice for too long. Furthermore it turned out, that you don’t like your domain name. But of course there is traffic on your current domain name. And you currently have difficulties finding one, because all good ideas you have are already occupied and the free ones you don’t like.

You have to perform some steps like

• Create e new domain name that you like and is free.
• Order the new domain name.
• Decide about the new conditions with your current provider.
• Cancel your current provider.
• Engage with the new provider.
• Migrate the data from the old provider to the new.
• Redirect your current visitors to the new domain.

So when to do what? There are some natural constraints. You can’t order a new domain before you have made up your mind for the new domain name. You can’t migrate the data, if you don’t have the old site as well as the new site. If you don’t decide about one new option with your current provider you loose the data and the traffic.

Others are not so clear. Will you move from the old provider to the new one still using your current domain name to get more time to think for a better name? Will you want to avoid taking one of the options of your current provider, and move quickly? Or do you first want to create the new domain name and apply to the new provider only after you have created one. Then you would need to choose one of the options with your old provider.

This is a relatively simple case. So your job is to find out more information, more details about the conditions, the technical capabilities of changing the domain name later, the cancellation period. And you have to make up your mind as of how long you will want the time to think about a new domain name. After you have made those decisions, you can order the activities into a definite order. But after you have made these decisions, the difficult part of the work is done. The technical migration is business as usual, because you have done this already earlier.

So the workstream starts with

1. Find out information about provider options
2. Find out information about cancellation period
3. Find out information technical possibilities of late domain change.
4. Decide
5. Order the remaining steps
6. Do the rest in an yet unknown order

Later, when step 1-4 are completed, “Do the rest in an yet unkown order” can be broken down into a definite order of the steps mentioned earlier.

So in essence there is no “Process Design Time” and “Process Run Time”. Because the Workstream is already running, while it is still being designed, if you will. That is a characteristic of Knowledge Work.

I agree with Richard Florida, that Creativity Work is and will be the driving force of present and future economic development.

I believe because of philosophical and metaphysical reasons that one of the abilities of humankind that makes them most human is their ability to create – to be creative. It is always stunning to see what humans can create.

The economic crisis is not a crisis for creative people. Yes, there are ups and downs in each life and career. But lack of ressources incites creativity with creative people, it always did. Therefore they will find better ways to solve problems as there are today. And these better ways will be more effective. And that’s what will account for the profits of tomorrow.

Why is this relevant for a BPM site? It is very relevant. The reason is, that we need to ask what BPM is able to do and if it is sufficient for what is needed for the creative worker, the knowledge worker.

In my opinion the answer is: “No”.

What is BPM good for? It is good for modeling standard processes for mainly repetitive work. This is not the creative work. The creative work is for most part unpredictable. That’s what BPM falls short of. But a growing share of the value of our economy is created in the creative class of workers – and the economic crisis even does give this a boost, as I believe. So – what will be the methods and tools that will help those people and improve their daily work experience? There is nothing to improve? Far from true. Do creative people execute processes? Not in the sense we understand it today. But still what they do is somehow related to what they did yesterday and will do tomorrow.

That should give us something to think about.

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.

I expect that many of us will have to re-evaluate the things we are doing and how we are doing them. Cost pressure has arrived on a grand scale and will not be released in the coming year. We have to find more effective ways of doing our work or the work of our company. Therefore this will increase the pressure to evaluate and utilize cloud solutions. We can’t affort to ignore the economies of scale.

Furthermore many things will change. Re-organizations will take place. Be it company departments, that are affected, be it the personal job description, be it the project(s) that each of us is part in. Thus, standard processes need to change. They need to be adapted to new situations.  This is the time when BPM as it is known today will be questioned. The lifecycle of a typical BPM project is much too long to react to unforeseen changes, to necessary adaptations and to ad hoc processes. Included in this is the development cycle, if the BPM projects goal is a system specification for an implementation project.

Instead, what we will be looking for are effective tools to manage processes, that have not been foreseen, or at least deviations from known processes. Still we want to monitor what we are doing, how the process progresses, to manage collaboration and to monitor the collaboration. We need the control over these processes, to stay cool in all the turmoil, and still consequently pursue our goals or the goals that have been entrusted to us. Thus, a new breed of software will arise that goes beyond BPM. I expect at the end of the year we will have prototypes and first successful pilot projects for that new breed of software. This will be the foundation for the following three to five years for that new breed of software to be established.

That is what I expect.