Webinars: How to use BPMN for modelling business processes ?

I will be talking about BPMN.
See webinars' schedule http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/serv/webinar_schedule.asp

Thanks,
AS

Linkedin: What impact do you find using a BPMS system has on end to end process time?

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Richard,
All depends. I recommend each time to find the point of most leverage -- it may be in automation of existing processes or in changing them.

Often the business people know what is wrong – some kind of “performance errors”. For example, the decomposition of such complex human activities into a mixture of automated and simple human activities not only saves work time and improves the quality of operations, but can also open up the possibility to delegate certain of the new simple human activities to less-qualified staff members. In one particular enterprise in which this decomposition was carried out for the activities of one group leader, we economized their time by about 1 man-month per year.

It is important that your enterprise BPM system (see “http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2009/04/should-we-consider-third-forgotten-bpm.html” about different BPM concepts) can carry out small and incremental improvements. I wrote a book (it is not but yet publish) -- how to architect and implement enterprise BPM systems which are easy to evolve. The table of contents is available at http://improving-bpm-systems.com/book/toc.pdf. Hope you will find it of interest. Please feel free to contact me should you require more information.

Thanks,
AS

Inside Business Architecture: Defining Business Architecture

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My defintion is the following:

business architecture, noun

that part of enterprise architecture concentrating on the conceptualisation and evolution of the form and structure of the enterprise business system

More terminology related to it (e.g. "enterprise business system") can be found at http://www.improving-BPM-systems.com/terminology/business-related-terminology

Thanks,
AS

The Forrester blog for EA professionals: Principles don't matter

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I always recommend to add my favourite principle:

"You may break any principle provided that you master it"

Sure that any of principle is just an advice. It is quite normal to break any them if you know the reasons which are behind a particular principle and how they do match to a particular situation. For example, in the chess game is it recommended to novices do not exchange the queen vs. a pawn, but such an exchange can be a part of a combination which leads to the checkmate.

Thanks,
AS

The Tech Evangelist blog: The Relationship Between SOA, BPM & EA

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Interesting post, because understanding of relationships between elements (i.e. BPM, SOA, and EA) of a system is the way to understand these elements. A few comments.

I define BPM and SOA slightly different.
BPM, actually, covers three different concepts (see Should we consider third (forgotten) BPM?):
1) BPM as a discipline or methodology
2) BPM as some software, i.e. BPM suite
3) BPM as a system for managing of business processes with an enterprise

SOA is architectural approach for constructing software-intensive systems from a set of universally interconnected and interdependent services (service is an operationally independent unit of functionality)

Relationship between BPM and SOA :
BPM discipline, 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.

To build a good enterprise BPM-system, others (BPM discipline, BPM suite, and SOA) are necessary, but not sufficient. A good architecture is mandatory.

BPM and SOA are more than views of enterprise architecture (EA). Classic EA gives only "enterprise genotype” (a full nomenclature of enterprise artefacts) and it does not provide “enterprise phenotype” (a set of observable characteristics such as performance). A possible way to achieve a formal link between "enterprise genotype” and “enterprise phenotype” can be enhancing of EA by BPM and SOA which are able to define "enterprise executable description”.

Top Down or Bottom Up ? I recommend pinball style (see "Linkedin: Top Down or Bottom Up ?")

Thanks,
AS

BPMNEXUS: BP Notations

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A short answer - there is no a commonly agreed BPM reference model which can give a context for BP notations.

An explanation by example. In my BPM reference model, BPM discipline allows you 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.

The main difference of the BPM discipline from previous process-centric methodologies is the need to have a single formal description of the business processes which can be used to model, automate, execute, control, measure and optimise them.

Agree with Ricardo, that expressing of business processes in any notation should serve to communication between people. But, I believe, such a notation should be also executable to validate that communication. (just a sidenote -- I think that any program code should be written to communicate a solution between people.)
So,
• A BPMN-like modelling notation should use a standard execution semantic which can be validated and which guarantees the adequate interpretation of models by different software for different uses, e.g. for functional testing, performance simulation and execution. (I think, this is similar to Brian's post).
• It should be possible to represent the same business process model with different levels of detail, e.g. a high-level view for a normal user, and a more detail for a business analyst.
• There should be a modelling procedure which guides different people how to use these different levels.
• Details of the execution of business processes should come from a coherent set of standards, similar to that provided by the W3C for HTML: a) xHTML for structure and content, b) CSS for presentation, c) DOM-based API for dynamic modifications, and d) some other specialized standards. (At present, W3C works also on some recommendations for HTML5 which include several API for Web application, i.e. the execution environment.)

It seems that W3C standardisation approach for HTML is rather solid. I like it as a good example of customer-centricity which is proved by the current situation with Web browsers – all vendors of Web browsers want to benchmark their product against the ACID3 test (acid3.acidtests.org) to demonstrate their compliance with standards. Once such a baseline has been established, it becomes easy to compare the performance of products.

I think that the current BPM is still vendor-centric and we have to make customer-centric BPM.

Thanks,
AS

Gartner blogs: Does BPM in the Cloud Become a Business Operating Platform?

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I think this is a wrong sequence. At first, BPM should become a business operating platform than this platform can enjoy advantages of the cloud computing.

To achieve the first, it is necessary to have a commonly agreed BPM reference model (e.g. see http://www.slideshare.net/samarin/bpm-concepts-de-base-presentation) and a few reference architectures. Moving to the cloud may follow the way described in http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2009/04/bpm-in-action-calling-for-input-on-bpm.html .

Hope that bpmnexus.ning.com will advance with the BPM reference model soon.

Thanks,
AS