Frank Michael Kraft's Blog

Unstructured, Semi-Structured and Structured Processes makes a distinction between

• structured,
• unstructured and
• semi-structured

processes, that I like. It is interesting, that in the definition of process the emphasis on the post is less on the sequence of activities, but more on the business goal to reach. That was, what I proposed earlier. And it makes sense. In the end it is more important, what the result of a process is, than what has been done or should be done in which order to try to (!) achieve it. I said “try to” because sometimes just doing a thing can not guarantee that the desired result is achieved. That’s why I say that the result is more important than the doing of an activity or task itself.
Of course it is inevitable that when a business process is implemented in an business process platform, that it is structured. Otherwise it is impossible to implement the business functionality that transforms the business objects that are part of the business process from one state to another. That is said modulo that there may be some generic functionality like a process engine for workflow or generally for execution of modeled process parts of course.
BPMN supports some Ad-Hoc modeling cababilities. There are Ad-Hoc tasks where the sequence is not defined or where it is not defined if none, one or all of them are executed. However one would expect, that any task that can be executed is modeled – at least if it is not, it can not be system supported. Also it is a difference, if the Ad-Hoc cababilities are on the process type level, or on the instance level, meaning that a concrete process instance can be adapted to a new, unexpected flow, sequence or even new Ad-Hoc Tasks.
However the more the tasks become Ad-Hoc the more they become an empty shell. What do I mean by this?
Create an Ad-Hoc task “Calculate stock losses based on financial crisis”. Of course if this is done the first time, there is no busines logic implementation for this. Even if there is a SOA service offering the solution, there needs to be some implementation of calling the service, which means gathering and providing the needed parameters and using the result in other processes.
So – as soon as a process is implemented in a business process platform it has at least some constraints.
Which is ok – because it has been formalized, because it’s execution is more repetitive.
On the other hand especially in times of crisis the importance of Ad-Hoc processes grows to account for the need to compensate unforeseen difficulties in the daily “business as usual”.
The important thing is, that the structured, the unstructured and the semi-structured processes can be integrated as seamless as possible. This is only possible, if there is a common notion of result of a process or of an activity in the process. Furthermore it is an interesting question – especially in semi-structured processes – how much constraints are desribed.

• None Constraints: Unstructured.
• Some Constraints: Semi-Structured.
• All Constraints: Structured.

What is a Process? This discussion seems to be still ongoing, and I have my own take on this.

In Procedure vs. Process it is discussed from the angle of if it is a sequence or order of action or not sequence or order. Also Merriam-Webster dictionary is cited to say that a process is

a series of actions or operations conducing to an end ; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

I fundamentally disagree with this definition. In my opinion the series of action is only one half of a process. The state is the other half. A process must always have a defined state. Either it is not started, it is finished or in the middle – in process. If it is in process, it needs to be further defined, what the detailed state is. So if a process is modeled in terms of actions, then the question is, which state do the individual actions have.

In the Blog Column 2 – links for 2009-02-02 we see the statement that refutes the difference between process and procedure as claimed by Procedure vs. Process . For my taste this is a little bit a too technical discussion.

I rather approach it from a little bit different angle. For me a busines process is the sum of all business objects and process objects that are needed to achieve a common busines goal, their state, their actions and the constraints between the actions and the state.

You might argue, that I define process by process – i.e. business process by process object. But they are different. Process objects are like workflows and have a rather small business goal , but a business process has a much broader scope. All process objects are small business processes, but not vice versa.

By such a definition I exclude such things like interactions with the system, because they do not have a state. So adding a sales order, saving it, adding another sales order and saving it is no business process by this definition, because it has not state and it does not achieve a common business goal. A business process would be to deliver goods which have been ordered by customer orders and bill them, and collect payments for them. This is a common business goal and the whole process has a state which is reflected in the state of it’s business objects, namely the customer order, the delivery, the invoice and the payment.

A blog entry titled “Model and Pasta” has inspired me to ask: What can happen without model governance?

This may happen: The right means are used for the wrong purpose, and the result is a disaster.

I have already discussed, that the modeling purpose does determine the outcome of a modeling exercise.

So what happens, if you use the right modeling language for the wrong purpose? It ends up in spaghetti models.

If you try to use a BPMN model for the purpose of model driven development – as mentioned in the blog (i.e. to generate coding) – for a business process with many special cases, then the result can be a spaghetti model. But this is not because BPMN is not good, it is because the right means for the wrong purpose has been used.

What is the level of detail that should be modeled? By which modeling technique it should be modeled? These difficult questions are best solved within the scope of a model governance process. As soon as a model become a subsitute for coding only – i.e. it is not human readable any more – it misses it’s purpose. Then it would be better to code. A governance process makes sure, that it is still human readable.

Furthermore it needs to be considered, that BPMN is not the only modeling language in the world and should not be used for purposes, where other means are better. I will elaborate on this later.