Contributed on April 12, 2013

3.6K

1.5K

BPM for developers

Transcript

BPM for developers: improve agility of implementations A. Samarin About me• An enterprise architect – From a programmer to a systems architect – Experience in scientific, international, governmental and industry environments: CERN, ISO, IOC, BUPA, Groupe Mutuel, State of Geneva, EDQM, Bund ISB, AfDB – Have created systems which work without me – Practical adviser for design and implementation of enterprise architectures and solutions• My main “tool” is a blend of: – BPM, SOA, EA, ECM, governance and strategy• Blog http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/• PhD in computer graphics and 2 published books© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 2 Agenda• BPM• Process• Coordination• Automation• Implementation model© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 3 Business Process Management (BPM) is a tool for improving business performance A natural evolution of BPR, Lean, ISO 9001, 6 A multitude of tools Sigma “handle” processesThe theory The toolsBPM as a discipline BPM as software: The aim is to have a single(use processes to business description of BPM suite (BPMS)manage an processes:enterprise) – model in design – input for project planning and execution An enterprise portfolio – executable program for of the business coordination of work processes as well as – documentation for all the practices and tools staff members for governing the – basis for management design, execution and decisions evolution of this The practice portfolio Any process-centric enterprise has some BPM, but how can we industrialise this BPM? © A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 4 BPM as a management discipline (1)• BPM as a management discipline about how to use processes to manage the enterprise – to model, automate, execute, control, measure and optimise the flow of business activities that span the enterprise’s systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries• Model means to make known, to describe or to communicate a plan of how to carry out future actions to obtain a desired outcome – To plan – To simulate© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 5 BPM as a management discipline (2)• Automate means to instrument the proposed plan of work by some existing or new tools – To instrument• Optimise means to introduce formally justified changes – To reflect – To refactor – To improve• Those 6 BPM functions are applied iteratively and continuously© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 6 Feedback improvement loop• An enterprise is a complex, dynamic and adaptive system; one can improve it by: – measuring – observing – deciding – implementing 2 3 4 1© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 7 Process improvement disciplines© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 8 Process-oriented view of an enterprise (before BPM)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 9 Process-oriented view of an enterprise (with BPM)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 10 Process-oriented view of an enterprise (with BPM)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 11 BPM suite components© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 12 BPM suite components (extended list)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 13 Be ready for common (mis-)understanding© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 14 Process anatomy (1)• The business is driven by events• For each event there is a process to be executed• Process coordinates execution of activities• The execution is carried out in accordance with business rules© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 15 Process anatomy (2)• Each business activity operates with some business objects• A group of staff member (business role) is responsible for the execution of each activity• The execution of business processes produces audit trails• Audit trails (which are very detailed) are also used for the calculation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 16 Process templates and instances• Process template – a formal description of the process Templates Instances and their• Process instance – versions enactment of a process template• Different variations of relationship between template and instance© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 17 Different enterprise artefacts• Business artefacts – Events Human – Processes “workflow” Data structures – Activities Roles – Roles Documents Events – Rules Rules Processes – Data & documents Services Audit trails – Audit trails KPIs – Performance indicators – Services• Organisational and technical artefacts …© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 18 Business processes are complex relationships between artefacts• Who (roles) is doing What (business objects), When (coordination of activities), Why (business rules), How (business activities) and with Which Results (performance indicators)• Make these relationships explicit and executable What you model is what you execute© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 19 Services and processes (1)• Services are considered to be explicitly-defined and operationally-independent units of functionality – Formal description – Operational independence – Invisible implementation© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 20 Services and processes (2)• Processes are considered to be an explicitly-defined coordination of services to create a particular outcome – Formal description – Coordination© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 21 Synergy between BPM and SOA (1) – structuring relationships• BPM, by revealing the artefacts and the relationships between them, provides the necessary context (e.g. granularity) for the definition of services• SOA provides recommendations for the implementation, execution and governance of services© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 22 Synergy between BPM and SOA (2) – structuring relationships• Each enterprise is a complex, dynamic, unique and “fractal” relationship between services and processes – All processes are services – Some operations of a service can be implemented as a process – A process includes services in its implementation service process© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 23 Coordination between activities• Interdependencies between activities must be managed• Coordination can be: – implicit vs explicit – human vs automated – centralised vs decentralised – imperative vs declarative – strong vs weak• May change over the time (e.g. a crisis situation)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 24 Different scales of coordination• Controls on the same page• Flow of pages• Integration of services• Human workflow• Business-to-business© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 25 The explicit coordination brings several advantages• It allows planning and simulation of the behaviour of a service to evaluate its performance. If that service uses other services, then the demand-side needs for those services can also be evaluated.• It can be made to be executable, thus guiding how work is done.• It allows control that the actual behaviour of the service matches its intended behaviour, thus pro-actively detecting potential problematic situations.• It allows the measurement within a service of the dynamics of different characteristics, e.g. valuing, costing, risk, etc.© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 26 Explicit coordination techniques• template-based (or token-based)• event-based (or business-events-based)• data-based (or business-objects-based)• rule-based (or business-rules-based)• role-based (or business-roles-based)• intelligence-based (or business-intelligence-based)• goal-based (also known as purpose-based)• performance-based• community-based• etc.© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 27 Coordination logic in BPMN (1)• Template-based – static connection of “flow objects” or sequence relationship (predecessor and successor) – similar to a river (upstream and downstream) – process template is an abstract description of a process© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 28 Coordination logic in BPMN (2) Click for animation• Token-based – token marks elements which active at a particular time – dynamic connection of “flow objects” or synchronisation (wait for) / chronologic relationship – similar to a “flock” of ducks (split and join) – several tokens may co-exist© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 29 Coordination logic in BPMN (3) Click for animation• Event-based – non-structured synchronisation between tokens – exchange of messages (signals, errors, etc.) – exception handling Wait for (catch) a message event Generate (throw) a message event© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 30 Coordination logic in BPMN (4) Click for animation• Instance-based – process instance is an enactment of a process template – each instance may have different behaviour of tokens – process instances may be coordinated via event-based coordination logic© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 31 Look at automation within processes• Mixing human and automated activities• Each human activity may be surrounded by two automated activities (pre-processing and post-processing)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 32 Speed of developing automation is the primary factor of agility• Explicit versioning of everything (another topic for developers)• Keep automation outside the process template (as they have different speed of changes)• Use an interpretive language for automation scripting (no need to recompile)• Use recovery loops (preserve instance, carry out quick corrections in “this” instance)• Smart error handling (bypass some levels of support)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 33 More tricks• Combine static and dynamic programming languages• Use the strong typing, introspection, no exotic features• Use external (to process engine) universal program (robot) to execute automation scripts (scalability)• Assign automated activities to robots (potential use of specialised robots)• Multiple robots (load balancing)• Process engine queues jobs for robots• Proactive monitoring of resource availability (better to wait a little than recover from an error)• Idempotency© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 34 Java and Jython codes examples© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 35 Multi-layer implementation model (1)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 36 Multi-layer implementation model (2)• The business data layer comprises many pieces of information – names, dates, files, etc.• The business objects layer comprises the many objects specific to a particular business, e.g. a business partner, a product, etc.• The business routines (or regulations) layer comprises the actions which must be carried out on the business objects to perform the business activities.• The business execution layer carries out the business processes.• The business monitoring layer analyses the execution of the business process.• The business intelligence layer implements enterprise-wide planning, performance evaluation and control actions applied to the business processes.© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 37 Multi-layer implementation model (3)A – SharePointB – in-housedevelopmentC – SAP ECC6 B C A © A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 38 Multi-layer implementation model (4) SAP BW/BI, etc. NetWeaver PI, SolMan, etc. NetWeaver BPM, etc. NetWeaver BRM, Java, ECC6, etc. XSD, Java, .Net SQL Server, Oracle, etc.© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 39 Multi-layer implementation model (5)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 40 Services are externalised artefacts© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 41 Categories of services (1)• Business-specific – unique business-managed processes and non-reusable IT- managed services• Business-generic – reusable business-managed processes and reusable IT-managed services• Technology-generic – advanced utilities available as IT-managed services (these services act like an insulation layer)• Technology-specific – typical basic utilities available as IT-managed services© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 42 Categories of services (2)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 43 Some SOA topics and BPM• Service design -> access to BPM artefacts• Service implementation –> wrapping BPM artefacts• Transitioning beyond Basic Services -> processes• Execution and deployment -> messaging over ESB• Governance -> architecting flexible BPM systems© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 44 Incremental introduction of executable processes As is Application A Application B Application C 1st iteration Application A Application B Application C 2nd iteration Application A Application B Application C 3rd iteration Application A Application B Application C To be Application A Application B Application C© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 45 Integration with BI and enterprise risk management   Risk-related events, reports, alerts, indicators, etc.   Risk-related rules, logic and knowledge  Enterprise Enterprise document data warehouse management and collaboration  © A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 46 Thanks© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 47 Variant 1 – classic (one template is used for many instances)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 48 Variant 2 – tailoring (a template is adjusted for each instance)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 49 Variant 3 – reactive (no initial template and next activity is selected based on the current situation)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 50 Variant 4 – proactive planning (similar to variant 3, but a few next activities [fragment] are executed together)© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 51 Variant 5 – scenario-based (similar to variant 4, but a few scenarios are considered) Process fragments are used; those may be patterns© A. Samarin 2013 BPM for developers, v1 52