If you want to jump-start your BPMN efforts, I'll be offering a half-day pre-conference workshop on Process Modeling with BPMN at the upcoming Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit in Orlando. This Gartner event is the leading independent SOA and application infrastructure conference, and the agenda's 6 tracks and 70+ sessions cover future trends and latest best practices in application development, application integration, SOA, Web Services and Web2.0, as well as SaaS/Cloud Computing.
Regarding TIBCO's first-ever "analyst summit" at their annual user conference, I'll leave it to Sandy to record the actual content of the presentations to analysts. I'll stick to the impressionistic view. Apparently "the analysts" had told TIBCO they wanted to hear executives talk about go-to-market strategy, so we got almost nothing about product and an awful lot about "value propositions." Are there really analysts who want to spend half a day hearing about value props and selling tactics?
Surprisingly little information has reached public view concerning BPMN 2.0, now under consideration in OMG. Unlike most standards approval processes, the outcome of this one is not preordained. There are two submissions, quite different, and it could go either way. Oracle's Vishal Saxena notes that one reason BPMN 1.x has been so successful is that it "keeps simple things simple" by focusing on abstract business-level modeling, allowing developers flexibility in how to implement the technical details, and argues that BPMN 2.
Since my recent post, a bit more has dribbled out into the blogosphere about the negotiations over BPMN 2.0, most of it completely off track. But now SAP's David Frankel, definitely an insider, is shining a welcome light in those dark spaces with his BPMN 2.0 Update. The biggest difference between the two submissions is in how they define the BPMN 2.0 metamodel. The BPMN-S submission positions the OMG's Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) as the metamodel for BPMN 2.
One of BPMN's most important elements is unfortunately also the most misunderstood. It's called a pool, a rectangular shape that serves as a container for a process. So in that sense a pool is synonymous with a process, and that's as basic as you can get. The confusion sets in when you understand that a business process diagram (BPD) - the top-level object in BPMN, describing a single end-to-end business process - frequently contains multiple pools.
I will be speaking at BPMInstitute.org's Business Process Management Conference as well as providing Training at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA over June 24-27. I will be presenting at the conference a keynote titled BPMN and Business-Empowered Implementation, as well as instructing my 2-Day Training Course Process Modeling with BPMN . I recommend you consider attending both conference sessions and training courses to get the most out of the event.
Having long held the inside track, the BPDM camp has felt little need to advocate publicly for its vision for BPMN 2.0. However, with united opposition from IBM, SAP, and Oracle, EDS's Fred Cummins, co-chair of the BMI task force in OMG (responsible for BPMN and other BPM standards), has begun something of a public defense. His first post addresses the concern that BPDM is "too complex." He begins by acknowledging that BPMN and BPDM sprang from different goals: BPMN focused on defining a graphical notation that was consistent with the way business people think about business processes.
This is starting to get good. Let's face it, not many people care about BPM standards, other than wouldn't it be nice if we could agree on some. I'm really no different, although at this point I would admit to having a vested interest in getting quickly to a version of BPMN that was portable between tools. So I've tried to publicize and opine on some of the issues behind the normally secret deliberations over BPMN 2.
Conrad Bock of NIST picks up the defense of BPDM where Fred Cummins left off. Since I don?t see much other discussion on the web about this important topic, I?m going to renew the thread here. Here are Conrad?s points: The calls for a BPMN metamodel started two or three years ago, including OMG reopening the BPDM submitter list to the new BPMI members, and invitations from the BPDM submitters at the time.
Are you as sick as I am of so-called "architects" swiftboating BPM with phony strawman arguments? Here's the latest, from blogger Nick Malik: I like point out really nutty ideas, even when a lot of people have spent a lot of time investing in them.... [BPM] created pretty languages for describing business processes, and we started telling the business that once business processes are described using these languages, then you can push a button and "
