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I have created a short video on the role of Business Rules and Business Process Management.

The video is linked to the graphic below:

You can also view the youTube video here.

A PDF of The presentation is available (user registration required) here.

Enjoy:

I created a short video on my viewpoints on the Process Participant.

You can also view the youTube video here.

A PDF of The presentation is available (user registration required) here.

Enjoy:

As you can see in my link list, our new book The Microguide to Process Modeling in BPMN is available on Amazon. In chapter three, we developed a list of BPMN shapes that can be confusing or hide details.

In the book we argue for the a clear depiction of process models in BPMN. These shapes, while usefull for very technical requirements, will not help this goal.
Some BPMN shapes might not be very useful in a busines-orientedc scenario. For example, there is a multievent shape for an event triggered by any event type. Because it can be misinterpreted, we do not recommend that you use this type of notation. This is also true with the complex merge gateway. It allows any type of split to merge with one generic shape.

Multi Event

Indicates that multiple events trigger these shapes. We are not talking about starting a process with a multi-event, this pattern is usefull. It is the various intermediate and ends we are concerned with. The implementation relies on a runtime engine to execute script or code, therefore the behavior is completely hidden from the diagram. This is useful if you like to write code, but not as useful if you want to effectively communicate with a diagram. Try using the exclusive event-driven gateway with specific event shapes instead.

Complex Merge

Indicates that there are multiple ways to merge flow paths on this shape. While this may seem like a nice shortcut to solve your merge problems, it may introduce interpretation errors and unpredictable merge behavior. Instead, stick to the rule “if you split with it, merge with it.” You can also try using a subprocess shape to merge paths that don’t seem to match up.

Empty Gateway

According to the BPMN specification, this shape is identical to the exclusive gateway. We don’t recommend using it because you are inviting interpretation errors. Being more explicit is always better for accurate communication.

Event Driven Gateway

This is an older version of the event-driven gateway. There are rules restricting this shape so that all attached intermediate events must be identical. The newer 1.1 version (pentagon instead of six-sided star) allows for any intermediate event combination to be attached.

Link Start Event

Signals that the process starts from another page. This does not make sense because if it’s already started it cannot start here. Use the intermediate (catching) Link event instead.
Link End Event

Signals that the process ends here but can continue on another page. This doesn’t make sense because if the process ends, it cannot continue. Use the intermediate Link event instead (throwing).

Excerpts with permission for ‘MicroGuide to Process Modeling’ by Tom Debevoise and Rick Geneva.

My friend Marcelo send me another interesting eMail on a problem he is facing selling BPM into a world dominated by vendos like SAP:

Dear Tom:
I would desire to share with you a recurrent problem we faced trying to sell BPM Projects. Here in Argentina, the medium-large companies have SAP in a high percentage of them, to support their operations. When we initiate the selling process of BPM projects, the reality we faced is the people have only a vague idea about BPM, and tends to confuse BPM with simple workflows systems, DMS or include it as a part of an ERP and not as a separate system. We then make an effort to evangelize about BPM concepts and platforms. Nevertheless, the followings questions are formulated recurrently:

• Which are the differences between a BPM System and SAP? To be more clear, what things a BPM System can do are not possible to do with SAP?
• The current SAP platform (SAP Portal) is much more that a simple ERP (like the case of SAP R3). Now, SAP is a development framework furthermore an ERP. Then if we made the investment of buying SAP, which are the arguments to invest in another platform, in this case a BPM platform? Moreover, the SAP people say us that is possible to build the processes and workflows inside SAP.
• Which is the difference between a workflow system and a BPM system? SAP Portal support workflows.

In several cases, the attitude of client IT people is tough. Some people feel the BPM proposal as a dispute to the SAP selling decision. Why? Because severals BPM platforms declare the “zero programming” feature to build processes, the facilities to modify the bussiness rules without the intervention of any IT consultant, and the quickly development time of BPM projects, in contrast with SAP implementations and maintenance, which are expensives and require the participation of SAP consultants in almost permanent form. Others (the more technological people), feels the BPM proposal like a challenge to their programming abilities, because the nature of “zero programming” of certain BPM platforms (further on the integration points with other systems, which are essentials to the BPM System operation, and require programming).
In my mind leave a phrase that an BPM vendor said, talking about this issue: “One of my main competitors, is an IT Area with a very high ego. This people oppose to the BPM buying decision because they say that they can develop it from scratch. The operation people, which are who have the operation pains, leave disconcert between the words of IT people and the words of BPM vendor. Who have the reason?”.
I hope to have been clear, my english is not so good. If you have some questions, let me know, I am for you disposal.
Best regards.
Marcelo Saparrat
Director de Operaciones
TecnoAp
( (+54)-221-4895206
* msaparrat@tecnoap.com
4 www.tecnoap.com

Marcelo: There is actually a pretty good post about this here.

I am reminded of the 3-waves of Business Process Management as expressed in Business Process management the Third Wave:

• In the first wave of business process management, which began in the 1920s and was dominated by Fredrick Taylor’s theory of management, processes were implicit in work practices and not automated.

• In the second wave of business process management of the past decade or so, processes were manually reengineered and, through a one-time activity, cast in concrete in the bowels of today’s automated ERP and other packaged, off-the-shelf systems. Even with document-centered workflow added to ERP, such systems only took up discrete roles as participants in processes. Rarely did that provide business management control over the processes. Those that did only did so for subprocesses and were generally limited in their capability.
• In the third wave of BPM, the business process is freed from its concrete castings and made the central focus and basic building block of all automation and business systems. They become first-class citizens in the world of automation. Change is the primary design gold because in the world of business process management, the ability to change is far more prized than the ability to create in the first place. It is through agile business process management that entire value chains can be monitored, continuously improved and optimized.

What you are saying is the SAP folks are arguing that the customer should stay with the second wave. Bake the ‘requirements’ into ABAP and create ‘Business-Rules’ by configuring applications.
The last sentence is key to the entire argument. If your organization needs to innovate, need to be agile and respond creatively to changing economic conditions then you can build a case for BPM. To be blunt, SAP is hideously complicated to enter the simplest of business transactions and many of my integration SAP/BPM projects were about taking a 40+ field iDOC and create a 3-4 field workflow screen. Business Rules and BPM creates the integration. That is the nuts and bolts innovation anyway.

BPM is not for every circumstance, if the process you are engineering is complex, changing and innovative in some manner then BPM/Decision Management is the only way to go.

BPM/Decision Management Standard of Care
There are many areas where BPM/Rules are emerging as the standard of care. Life and Casaulty Insurance, Health Benefits, Supply Chain Management, ITIL, Banking and Financial disciplines such as derivatives. These customers will care less what stogy reactionary sales folks are telling them. The back-door way to ’sell BPM’ is find a sucess story in your process area.

Folks
I have been away for a while finishing my next book (more on this soon) and working on the OMG’s certified process expert exam.

I think this exam will be very important and industry changing, The fundamental exam has been released here.

Introducting the process modeling foundation (PMF).
A by product of years of working with BPMN process modeling, we have created the PMF as an outline for methods you progressively adapt to your needs. The PMF directs process diagrams construction building models from the earliest strategy phase to the goal: execution. In short, there are no wasted efforts.
Modeling Maturity
In process modeling, your organization likely seeks improved performance and alignment or reengineered processes. More often, it is the decisions that need improvement. In the introduction, we described the 5 layers of a BPMN process modeling framework (PMF). In the first layer, core processes activities and flows are modeled. In the next, critical decisions are identified. Through increasing and detailed process modeling, increasing understanding arises. We suggest you start process modeling by defining core business processes.
In your joint application design sessions (JAD), firms often make ‘happy days’ use case scenarios, business modeling or creating workflow diagrams in Visio, or combinations of all of these. These use cases (and business cases) haphazardly gather more (or less) information than defined in the PMF. A use-case approach often models too-many details of the processes. This is: from the core level through work flow scenario. The implication, and our experience, is that this approach is too ambitious and leads to uneven and unpredictable results. Processes steps are confused with business rules. There is a tendency to cling to old, batch oriented patterns. JAD Participants become bored and frustrated.
A ‘happy-day path’ only considers flows that occur when the process manages no exceptions. You can take this approach by focusing on activities, gateways and flows. So, someday your team should visit ‘unhappy’ branches. Converting the use case or work-flow into the formal needs of a business process model in BPMN can be challenging.
As your organizations become more mature in BPM, yours will create process models directly in business process modeling notation (BPMN). Beyond the core business process, these JAD sessions are chiefly working on process and scenario modeling in the PMF. As your experience grows, your firm will probably separate the use case scenario into these levels.
Business analysts should become process analysts that build executable processes with BPMN in the process modeling framework. Until then, you need an approach to translate the use case or Visio diagrams into an accurate BPMN model of these workflows. You might convert existing use-cases into BPMN or you might transition the organization to a BPMN. This chapter offers these simple guidelines for both.
If digitizing a process is your goal, then moving a use case into a BPMN business process model prepares the way for model execution, moving a use case through the layers of the PMF.

How could we get along without it?

Here.

And then Dick said “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. It seems we have been here before.

The topic is the current fiancial crisis and using business processes to prevent this from hapening again.SIV’s for dummys is here, thanks for the content Motley Fool!

As a process and rules geek, I can’t help wondering what set of tools could be made available to government and investors to prevent this type of imbalance in the credit markets.

SEC has a rule for reporting fraud. This is the proposed rule for investment advisors and the basic rules has been approved. Jones Day has a technical description of this here.
To quote the regulations:’”Fraudulent and deceptive activities which are prohibited and the extent to which the Commission is limited in this area by common law concepts of fraud and deceit… I wonder if knowingly bundleing a bunch of sub-prime mortgages as AAA rated is fraud?Reporting is under CFR Part 230, and 17 CFR Part 275

The problem is that the tightly regulated banking insdustry has avoided tight liquidity requirements by creating these off-book vehicles. Yet the chickens have come home to roost.

Oft-mentioned patterns are within the work of the Netherlands researcher Wil van der Aalst. Dr van der Aalst and other researcher identified twenty-one workflow patterns that define the universe of possibilities that a ‘complete’ workflow engine must address. The seminal paper, entitled ‘Workflow Patterns’, is readily available on the internet. These patterns were not designed to solve business problems. They were designed to be ‘complete’ in a theoretical sense. If software workflow engine can successful run the patterns, then the engine is certifiably complete.

Some of the patterns offer compact solutions to workflow pattern. But their descriptions are not focused on business problems. There are some complete BPMN solutions to the patterns on the internet. One the best is Steven White’s ‘Process Modeling Notations and Workflow Patterns’.

Some of the van der Aalst patterns present good solutions for coordinating workflow scenarios. If you match the needs of coordinating many processes with the correct workflow solution, you can avoid painful reconstruction of processes.

Some of the important van der Aalst workflow patterns that we have already discussed, with simple BPMN include:

• Synchronizing merge is a pattern at a point where many subprocesses merge. The workflow ’synchronizes’ the output from all the incoming parallel paths.

The synchronizing merge pattern causes adds the inclusive parallel path shape to the BPMN specification.

• Deferred Choice, the point where the process makes one of several choices from several alternates.

In the process it represents a point where alternatives are based on an Event that occurs at that point in the process. And the deferred choice pattern calls out the event gateway in the BPMN specification.
There are 19 more patterns that have technical names and different solutions in BPMN. Some match to single BPMN shapes, others correspond to configurations. Understanding and knowing these is not compulsory for successful processes modeling. What you should understand is the workflow patterns created many of the BPMN shapes. The combinations of shapes create a powerful approach to workflow modeling.

As the year ends, I would like to offer a humble opinion, or two. I also have some thoughts about the topics of this blog.

Many deep political, economic, business, or technical struggles often fall about a materialist compared with deterministic view of the universe. The materialistic supporters define a fixed, unchanging truth or dualism. Deterministic supporters believe truth is created by causes and conditions. Debates rage and monikers follow. Determinists call the materialists nihilist and the determinist call the materialists dualists or relativists.

Why should we diverge into philosophy? Like it or not, your philisophy guides your choices. I take a radical view of management movements and betray my biases. First, debates in management theories and the technology that support them have a materialist versus the deterministic nature. Command and control (C2) styles of management and present a materialist view of management practices because they believe there is a ‘fixed’, parameterized nature to management objectives. Management is carried out by overseeing these. Chief among these is the approach offered by Kaplan and Norton in the title “The Balanced Scorecard”, I offer this quotation:

“Strategy is a set of hypothesis of cause and effect. Cause-and-effect relationships can be established by a sequence of if then else statements…. Every measure selected … communicates the meaning of the business unit’s strategy.”

Yet the BSC  approach assumes critical performance indicators will oversee unpredictable changes. The book states “…the scorecard enables senior executives to specify not only the metric by which success will be evaluated … also variables considered important”. In other words these senior executives know what these factors are. The assumption Kaplan and Norton makes pervades C2 tendencies. Management knows best, we, control the horizonal, we control the vertical, there is no need to seek countervailing evidence.

The deterministic, opposing view point is offered by six-sigma management approaches. As my earlier post have noted, monopolistic control of knowledge, incorporated in agile decision practices is the key to building a high performance organization. Yet the goals of the firm have not been articulated. So, I betray my leanings toward deterministic structures and approaches.

My management book of the year

And the winner for the 2007 Business Process Management with a Business Rules Approach Management book of the year is ….

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the great ecumenical spiritual leaders of our time. He is over 80 and he has written many powerful books. He is also widely quoted. One of my favorites is: ‘Sometimes my joy is the source of my smile, sometime my smile is the source of my joy’.

In this book he teaches us what power is and how to use it in an ethical and practical way. He presents a determinist way for understanding and applying power to our lives.On a practical business note, Yvon Chouinard wrote appendix b and discusses the role of Zen Buddhism in his views of business and corporate governance. Certainly, Yvon is an icon in business and his company Patagonia has panache and a global reputation for ethical conduct, environmental awareness and innovation. For my generation and ilk (slightly post hippyoutdorsey children, of the 70’s) as a paragon, Yvon probably exceeds the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Bufette or Larry Ellison.