Adaptive Case Management – Case Study Servicemanagement from AdaPro GmbH on Vimeo.

Außerdem stellt die AdaPro am Donnerstag und Freitag auf der CloudZone in Karlsruhe aus. Sie sind herzlich eingeladen, den Stand zu besuchen und sich eine Trial Lizenz der AdaPro Workstream Platform zu sichern.

Termine und Orte

17. April 14:00 Uhr bis 18:00 Uhr in München. [Buchen]

New Capabilities with BPMN 2.0 from AdaPro GmbH on Vimeo.

I know there are more new things like the metamodel, additions on executeable BPMN and other changes like non-interrupting events. But for me the most important innovation is what I describe in the video – and most important what you can do with it.

And yes, I know that BPMN 2.0 is around for some month. However these new capabilities still wait to be exploited. They are only used very rarely – if they are used at all currently.

Please also help me understand which BPMN 2.0 offerings you would like to see by voting or adding a new idea to the BPMN 2.0 Offerings Wishlist.

Neue Möglichkeiten mit BPMN 2.0 from AdaPro GmbH on Vimeo.

Short description

The training explains how BPMN 2.0 can be used for these purposes: “documentation”, “specification”, “model execution” and “model driven development”. The goals for modeling are transparency, integration and flexibility.

The model types of BPMN 2.0 and their purpose-driven application will be explained. You will learn how to use the right modeling elements for the right purpose. You will learn how to assure the quality of the models and how a guideline will support your model creation.

The guideline taught in this training has been proven to achieve short modeling project duration and high customer satisfaction even for difficult modeling tasks. It is based on deep experience in the bpm modeling space and in bpm mentoring.

The training will be in german.

Dates, Locations, Registration and Details:

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/SEM-BPMN

He argues, that taylorism is good, because it makes work effective, predictive and scalable – which are in essence the same arguments that Taylor himself brought up – that´s why it is called “Taylorism”.

My answer to this is: It depends. Taylorism is not a good thing per se nor a bad thing per se. It is a good tool if it is used for the right purpose but it is a bad tool, if it is used for the wrong purpose. Take for example physical production of goods – cars, machines and jewelry for example. The production of these typically follow different production types. Cars are typically produced with the production type of line production (Linienfertigung) (this is where all the “Toyota production system” and “Lean Production” ideas come from). Machines are typically produced in job shop production (Werkstattfertigung) and jewelry is typically produced in manufacturing production (Manufakturfertigung). All of these production types follow different rules and management principles. The key is to use the right tool for the right type of product. It is not right to conclude from the fact that line production is good for cars that it is good for jewelry as well.

Now in the area of business process management we are talking in most part about intellectual work or brain work – not so much about physical production. We cannot conclude that if a management style is good for physical production that it is good for brain work as well. Also within brain work we have different types of work that require different styles of work. We cannot conclude that if a work style is good for one kind of brain work, that it is good for the other as well. We need to differentiate.

Yes, the discussions about Adaptive Case Management versus classical Business Process Management are sometimes heated – but I think this is fine. Sometimes it may sound like: “ACM is the only thing” – no – “BPM is the only thing”. Both is not true. It depends. So far we only had BPM and no ACM. So far we tend to see every problem as a nail because we only had a hammer. No – BPM is not the answer to every process management problem; especially not for knowledge work. So far there was no other solution. Now we have ACM – the new kid in town. Now we have more tools available and we are able to address more types of processes that we were able to address before.

BPM itself is a technology to make processes more flexible than – standard software. So BPM is more flexible than standard software and ACM is more flexible than BPM. We need all of the three. No one claims that we do not need standard software in the future. Nor anyone claims that we do not need BPM in the future – at least no one I know. But yes – we claim that we also need ACM in the future. It depends on the type of work. Knowledge work is clearly ACM. But there will also and in the future a lot of routine work that is best done by BPM or by standard software. In routine work effectiveness, predictiveness and scalability are the main attributes. But in knowledge work it is not. In Knowledge work problem solution, creativity and flexibility and goal achievement are the main attributes. These contradict with effectiveness, predictiveness and scalability to some degree. There are always work types that are kind of “in the middle”. For example customer problem processing. Who is more effective? The worker that solves 5 very easy customer problems per hour; or the one that solves a very difficult customer problem in three days? See – it is just wrong to measure work only by throughput.

So my claim is: The right type of tool for the right type of work.

It also depends on the degree of process maturity. If a process is immature – and we always have immature processes if we have innovation – then it is less predictable than a process that is mature. If it is a mature process, it is predictable and scalable.

This is why mature processes can be implemented in ERP Systems, half-mature processes can be modeled with workflow and immature processes cannot. However – now they can be managed by using ACM. In my view it is obvious that there are far more immature processes than there are mature processes. A typical employee has far more emails in his inbox than workflow items. Most of the emails represent knowledge worker processes – processes for ACM.

And – what we need is a “process funnel” – as I tried to depict in the diagram. That is – a process that today is a completely unmanaged process (only by email) should become an ACM managed process. After a while – if it is a mature process – it can become a BPM managed process (for example by exporting it from an ACM system and importing it into a BPM system). After a while – if the process has further matured – it may become part of an ERP system. This approach has the advantage that each step is easier than doing the whole thing from scratch. And only proven processes become part of the mature process landscape. But even then there will be new more unpredictable processes – and that is a good thing. Because they spawn creativity, challenge, competition, achievement and all things that make life interesting and companies flourishing.

An important aspect to this is, that the seamless integration best works if all of those levels follow some basic rules, that I call rules of adaptive processes (that covers more than just adaptive case management). I work to promote the concept of adaptive processes that is a holistic approach to the whole process landscape – be they standard processes, workflows or adaptive case processes – and makes all levels fit to each other.

Kurzbeschreibung

Das Seminar erklärt die Nutzung von BPMN 2.0 für die Ziele “Dokumentation und Handlungsanweisung”, “Spezifikation einer Software”, “Modellausführung” und “Modellgetriebene Entwicklung”. Dabei werden die Ziele Transparenz, Integration und Flexibilität verfolgt.

Die Modelltypen von BPMN 2.0 werden erläutert und ihr zielgerichteter Einsatz wird erklärt. Sie lernen dabei die Nutzung der Modellierungselemente und die Modellierungsregeln für den jeweils richtigen Zweck. Es wird eine Methode an die Hand gegeben, mit dessen Hilfe Sie die Qualität der Modelle sichern können und bei der die Erstellung der Modelle durch einen Leitfaden unterstützt wird.

Zielgruppe

Ideal für den Einstieg in die BPMN und um BPMN 2.0 kennenzulernen, sowie einen Überblick zu gewinnen.

Dieses Seminar eignet sich außerdem für Kenner der BPMN 1.x Versionen, um den Anschluss an BPMN 2.0 zu halten, insbesondere Tag 2.

Für Projektleiter und Projektmitarbeiter eines Modellierungsprojektes, Business Process Architects, Director Business Process Management, Business Architect, System Architect, SOA Architekten, Prozessarchitekten, Qualitätsmanagement.

Termine

Ihr Trainer

Frank Michael Kraft, Geschäftsführer der AdaPro GmbH, ist Mitautor des BPMN 2.0 Standard. Er hat 19 Jahre Industrieerfahrung als Architekt für Individualsoftware und Standardsoftware für Geschäftsprozesse. Er ist Experte und Innovator, vor allem im Bereich der Serviceorientierten Architektur (SOA) und des Business Process Management (BPM). Herr Kraft hat umfangreiche praktische Erfahrung im Training und Mentoring der Modellierung von Geschäftsprozessen und ist als Gutachter für die EU-Kommission tätig.

Anmeldung und Details

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/SEM-BPMN

It is not possible to map behavior.

Assume there is a given system landscape of different business systems each fulfilling a part of the business processes. Now assume the goal is to model a common layer of services around these systems, a SOA layer, and to map this layer back to the different business systems. The purpose is to allow flexibility in the underlying system landscape, because the SOA layer remains stable, even if underlying systems change.

I wrote about this already here.

The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is designated to fulfill the mapping job. This – often – is a naïve assumption. Why?

What is an Enterprise Service Bus able to do? It can route and transform messages (if we omit the discussion of technical adapters that is irrelevant for now). This is not very much. Message transformation is not enough for mapping the process logic of different application systems. Yes – they can map interfaces from one format to the next – if the mapping is easy. Even if we start to discuss structural transformations and key mapping it is not so easy – but I want to omit this discussion as well.

The point I want to make is about behavior. What is behavior? Behavior is the contract that a service provides to service clients with regards to the messages that it is able to receive or send depending on the state of the business process that the service offers. A service contract that only defines the signature of service operations (WSDL) is too less to understand a service. It is necessary to know if it is possible to send an order cancellation after an order confirmation has been sent from the supplier to the customer or if it is not possible. It is necessary to know if it is possible to send two purchasing change requests in a row, even before the first purchasing change request has been answered or if it is not possible. This is a contract that a service offers to its clients – and it has to be defined. This is behavior. A means to define such a behavioral contract is the BPMN 2.0 choreography and interaction modeling for example.

So – now – if one participant – the customer – of the interaction is able to send a cancellation of an order after the order has been confirmed, but the other participant – the supplier – is not able to process such a cancellation request, then there is no way to make this scenario work by mapping. What should an Enterprise Service Bus do in such a situation? The Enterprise Service Bus certainly does not solve the problem.

So – how can the problem be solved? The only way is to agree on the contract before the business system(s) that should interact are purchased or developed – or to be lucky and thus be able to configure each of the business systems to comply to a contract that is defined afterwards. But good planning is always better than hope to be lucky.

How can this planning be done? Use BPMN 2.0 choreography and interaction modeling.

I want to share some thoughts about it.

First Prof. Börger looks at some of weaknesses of the BPMN 2.0 Standard.

He sais:

The crucial criterion is how well the practitioner is supported when walking through the different levels of detail (refinement levels).

The standard does not support process structure at the risk of producing incomprehensible spaghetti diagrams.

The standard document fails to provide a seamless systematic mechanism for refinement from conceptual to executable models, which is necessary to guarantee the reliability of the implementation.

I discussed the same topic some days ago. I agree that the standard does not prescribe a solution to the problem, but as I said keeping some basic rules the solution is easy. It is always a question of discretion how much should be prescribed by a standard and how much should be described in a guideline or methodology or best practice how to use a standard effectively. There are always many ways to do it wrong, but as long as it is easily possible to do it right, it should not be such of a headache. As I said I will discuss the way to do it right in the seminar BPMNexpress. In general also I teach it also in the mentoring.

He also sais:

Furthermore a statistical evaluation (of BPMN 1.1) shows that `the average BPMN model uses less than 20% of the available vocabulary’ and that, out of the more than 50 graphical elements in BPMN, `Only five elements (normal flow, task, end event, start event, and pool) were used in more than 50% of the models we analyzed.’

Yes, and this is why it is possible to learn what you really need to know about BPMN in half a day. Of course full mastery is only reached within a longer process of modeling, mentoring and quality assurance. But this is normal with any modeling method.

The he talks about difficult modeling concepts in BPMN 2.0:

The lifecycle concept is an example of an underspecified feature, particularly in relation to the equally underspecified interruption mechanisms like exceptions or cancellation or compensation for transactions.

I have the same opinion. I tried to convince the BPMN 2.0 standardization team that these concepts are too difficult and problematic. Now I recommend to my clients not to use them. However for all of these problems, there is an easier way to solve them.

A general notion of state is missing and, as a consequence, the specification of relevant data dependent conditions is only poorly supported.

In fact BPMN 2.0 has a notion of state for data objects. This already helps a lot! I do recommend to my clients the use of state for data objects and it makes many modeling problems much simpler.

And yes, the state model is not very elaborated – but it can be extended.

Communication and process interaction are poorly supported for concurrent execution, e.g. of independent (not embedded) subprocesses or of processes belonging to different parts of one organization or to different cooperating organizations.

An analogous problem results from the poor interweaving of different BPMN diagram types, in particular that no consistency criteria are imposed for them, for example collaboration vs choreography vs process diagrams.

I do not agree at all. This is one major part of what is new in BPMN 2.0 compared to BPMN 1.x. I will teach this in BPMNdelta.

Later Prof. Börger looks at difficulties with WPI Workflow Patterns

The workflow patterns, as presented by the WPI, come without pragmatic or rational foundation. In fact there is no statistical underpinning showing how frequently which patterns appear in real-life business processes.

My opinion is that some of these are of practical relevance and others are not. I am preparing a publication on the topic, but it is not finished. Also most of these patterns that are relevant in practice can be reduced back to very simple principles of modeling.

Prof. Börger has the same opinion as he sais:

In fact most patterns are not of fundamental character but are easily definable from a small set of more basic and rather simple patterns.

In the last section Prof. Börger discusses YAWL and coloured petri nets. Some of his statements:

In this section, we show that the purported semantic foundation of YAWL using coloured Petri nets is not `suitable’ for the practice of BPM.

… deal with patterns that Petri nets have difficulty expressing, in particular patterns dealing with cancellation, synchronization of active branches only, and multiple concurrently executing instances of the same task.’

… languages which `lack the concepts to be able to deal with the broad range of requirements one may encounter when trying to precisely capture business scenarios’ directly applies to Petri nets, work flow nets, reset nets and other extensions proposed for modeling business processes.

I already discussed some days ago, why I would not build a new standard for Adaptive Case Management based on BPMN and I argued it is because of the “token logic” – actually what is meant is the petri net logic of BPMN. So we – Prof. Börger and me – have the same opinion on this if we refer to advanced scenarios. These are some of the topics that I will discuss in BPMfuture.

As I said BPMN is good for some problems, but it is difficult with more flexibility as it is needed for Adaptive Case Management and in general for the work of knowledge workers. Instead of building more and more complex formal constructs to address all of these special cases it is easier to not use petri net at all for Adaptive Case Management.

However I am more optimistic than Prof. Börger when we refer to cancellation scenarios and BPMN. Yes – he is right it is very difficult with petri net – but BPMN also has other features of modeling. It is possible in BPMN to use data objects and state – and therefore it becomes easier to model cancellation scenarios. I do teach this in BPMNexpress.

Finally he proposes to use a concept of introducing Product Lines to BPM. I have to study this more, before I say something about it.