A current challenge to integrate business process models developed in ARIS and implemented in BEA Aqualogic (or any combo BP modeling and BP implementation platforms) may benefit from understanding Oracle's Business Process Outlines approach, as explained by Bruce at the BPMS Watch blog. Bruce tries to explain how Oracle's Business Process Outline attempts to keep Business Process Models designed in their Business Process Analysis (BPA) suite (their implementation of the IDS-Scheer ARIS tool) in sync with what I call Implementation models in their SOA Suite.
"...a problem with BPEL in BPM has always been keeping the executable design in sync with the business analyst’s model once the developer has taken a whack at it — the notorious roundtripping problem. Oracle has solved that here with the Business Process Outline - a model that sits in between BPA (ARIS) and BPEL, with unambiguous mappings to both, and intelligible to business as well as IT."
I wonder if some of this approach will flow back into the ARIS product and be generic enough for other BPM implementation platforms to adopt.
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog : BPDM is Key Step Forward for Business Process Modeling and SOA.
Sometimes I read some of these articles on the various levels of standards in the Business Process Management realm and I feel like Jessica Simpson in that ever-rotating High Definition TV ad. But this standard is being discussed by the same body in charge of the Business Process Modeling Notation, OMG, so I must want it.
I believe that utilizing existing frameworks, like APQC PCF, SCOR, etc., and reusing existing process models can alleviate some of the The Problems With Modeling that Robert McIlree writes about on his blog. As business architects, we definitely need to understand the goals and methodology of the projects we are working on and attempt to build architecture models as they are needed to support what the project is delivering right now. A high-level to low-level approach seems to support this, delivering models that help to define scope and early project deliverables like plans and functional hierarchies of processes and roles and then build on these with more detail, like swim-lane diagrams and organizational charts. I'm surely just getting my feet wet with this approach, but am hoping codify some of it so that others in my organization can architect and model in this value-added way.
Oracle Corporation :: Oracle Announces General Availability of Oracle(R) Business Process Analysis Suite: Their suite is built on the IDS-Scheer ARIS Platform suite of tools we are using as our standard business architecture platform, including process modeling. I'm hoping that we can pull the Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise business models into the enterprise-wide repository and utilize these standard processes as a framework to build our unique, value-added processes. And also integrate them with other processes that utilize PeopleSoft resources. Should be interesting.
I'm a tad bit peeved at the part of the announcement with some details of the suite's components, including the modeling piece called Architect (the standard ARIS tool is called Business Architect):
A standards-based tool for process modeling that supports standards-based notations and templates including Business Process Modeling Notation
If I'm not mistaken, I think that BPMN is NOT used to document the Oracle application business processes...it uses the ARIS de-facto standard EPC for that. And I've written before about my nonplused attitude toward ARIS's weak support for BPMN...maybe they've done something wonderful with it in the Oracle implementation and we'll see that in the product soon.
UPDATE: AMIS Blog has news from a demo of Oracle BPA, which was very informative, including their hierarchical organization of business processes, something I'm struggling with for our own enterprise business process architecture right now: "Oracle BPA recognizes four levels of decomposition: 0=Industry Level or Process Category (SCM, HRM), 1=Business Process (Inventory Management) ,2=Detail Business Process (level of SOA Services), 3=Activity Model (BPEL) and application specific.". I would love to see a demonstration of this product, just to get a look at how they structure their organization of business processes...can anyone get us a demo?
UPDATE 2: Here's an Oracle BPA datasheet (PDF), with too-small graphics, but enough of a view to confirm that they are using the ARIS EPC modeling notation for their business process models. This might make it even more instructional for us building out our BP architecture since we could begin looking at integration with Oracle's standards since we would like to incorporate their HCM process models (supported by their PeopleSoft tool).
Although I'm not a fan of the Web 2.0 hype-title, I just call it the web, ebizQ blogger Sandy Kemsley (who it looks like will be at ARIS ProcessWorld 2007 in February) ties in some of a bloggers favorite tasks (tagging, and RSS syndication) in her 2006 Wrap-up / 2007 Look-forward post:
"There are two more Web 2.0 characteristics that I think we're going to start seeing in BPM in 2007: tagging and process syndication. Tagging would allow anyone to add freeform keywords to a process instance (for example, one that required special handling) to make it easier to find that instance in the future by searching on the keywords. Process event syndication would allow internal and external process participants to "subscribe" to a process, and feed that process' events into a standard feed reader in order to monitor the process, thereby improving visibility into the process through the use of existing feed technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
It truly will be interesting to see how these blogging-popularized knowledge ellicitation (tagging) and knowledge sharing (syndication via RSS) techniques and tools integrate in with BPM product offerings.
I cringe and second guess our ARIS decision everytime I read, like in this BPM 2006 Wrap-up about the further BP industry adoption of Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) standard:
2006 was the year that the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), a notational standard for the graphical representation of process models, went mainstream. Version 2.0 of the standard was released, and every major BPM vendor is providing some way for their users to make use of the BPMN standard, whether it's through a third-party modeling tool or directly in their own process modelers.
IDS-Scheer has been slow to provide robust BPMN support in the ARIS tool, mostly due to the fact that most ARIS functionality is built around their proprietary Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) notation. I questioned their CTO at ProcessWorld 2006 about this and the answer was that most of their current clients weren't asking for BPMN support because they already were way down the road with the EPC notation. I have to admit I've grown to like the structure and workflow-supporting emphasis on events (key milestones in the life-cycle of key corporate information and situations...i.e.: Contract Opened, Contract Modified, Fiscal Calendar Begins) that EPC enforces, but I equally see the fact that the process flows that most business people know how to do themselves more closely resemble the BPMN standard.
I will put together a post showing some of the major places I see differences in the process flow s I get from SMEs and how they translate into EPC format.
Making sure we correctly design and maintain the relationships between the 'pieces' of our business and IT infrastructure are the jobs of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Configuration Management (CM). On recent work engagement, we recently released a couple of processes to maintain Documentation and Software / Hardware pieces (called Configuration Items or CIs in the CM world), so I've started to learn something about this process area. A meeting last week touched on potential integration points between our Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling tool, ARIS, and the soon to be coming-online Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) in Remedy. (BTW...EA includes Business Architecture, which is where we're using ARIS the most currently and is my main focus these days). As I've pondered this a bit since then, there is a lot of overlap in the core data maintained in both the Enterprise Architecture and Configuration Management process areas...these Configuration Items. EA seems to be concerned with designing these CIs (which include business processes CIs as well as the hardware and software CIs that support those processes) and the relationships between them (with the relationships being the important thing) and CM is concerned with communicating the change in t hese CIs as they move from development into production environments (making sure everyone is aware of the impacts of CI change and correctly plans for it). ARIS provides a tool to graphically build relationships between CIs including new potential CIs and existing CIs (re-use is important!). Remedy and other CMDB tools serve a similar role, although they are more concerned with maintaining those existing CIs and relationships that exist in the currently deployed environment (as opposed to the in-design / proposed / nirvana CIs and relationships built during the development cycle).
I say all of this to let those of us interested in EA and CM know that there are a couple of bloggers I've recently discovered taking about this same thing.
Serge Thorn's IT Blog covered a late-April CMDB vendor initiative (BMC, IBM, HP) in a post a couple of weeks ago...an excerpt:
"Very often information is spread among various sources and no standards exist on how to exchange meta data from all these potential sources of CMDB information. Today, the CMDB interfaces that exist are all proprietary, which is the problem that this group wants to tackle."
And the ServiceCatalog blog chimed in (and connected us to Serge), linking integration of islands of CM information (from EA and CM efforts, for instance) via standards (or the lack thereof):
"Serge brings an excellent point on CMDB integration -- standards are missing. And no market really grows without standards. "
These are a couple of bloggers to keep track of...so I've added them to the blogroll.
The Open Process Handbook Initiative Authoring Guidelines (in the 'Specifics of an entry' section) provides some really good tips and principles to use when describing business process activities. The document's 'General method of creating entries' section also covers the different options for doing process decomposition which enforces development of an easy-to-complex hierarchy of processes (aids in communication) and reuse of process assets...albeit in the context of OPHI's Process Handbook (but they describe a general method that could just as well be used when developing processes in the context of the APQC's PCF, which I would like to see us use).
One goal I have for moving business process design forward is for all business process modelers to utilize some common standards when describing business processes. When it comes to business process modeling notation, my organization has adopted the ERP de-facto standard Event-driven Process Chain (EPC), which is fully implemented by it's developer, IDS-Scheer, in their business process management tool ARIS. EPC templates and shapes are also available in MS Visio 2003 Professional. But that only gives us a graphical notation to use...it doesn't set the standards for how we name the processes and elementary activities (aka functions or work steps) that get drawn in the tool. That is still a decision of the business process analysts and/or subject matter experts designing the processes.