Books on process modeling generally warn against getting bogged down in detail. They tend to recommend a top-down methodology that starts with a big-picture end-to-end view and drills down just as far as you need for your modeling purpose. In preparing my Process Modeling with BPMN training I stumbled across a pretty good recipe for how to do this in Worflow Modeling by Sharp and McDermott - one of the only books on the topic I can recommend. My training overlaps slightly with the information-gathering phase that Sharp and McDermott talk about, but mainly focuses on how to put that knowledge into BPMN, so you can share it, run it through a simulation engine, or even generate an executable implementation.
Subprocesses are a very handy concept in BPMN. Besides providing a natural way to draw a condensed top-down view with drill-down to any level of detail, BPMN subprocesses also determine the boundaries of when an event can be received - a change to an order in process, for example. But I find that one really basic property of BPMN subprocesses gets in the way of top-down modeling, as described by Sharp and McDermott, or anyone else for that matter.
One of the reasons for my absence from the blogosphere this month is I've been heads-down putting together my training on Process Modeling With BPMN. But when I talk to vendors about what I'm trying to do - teach business analysts how to use things like gateways and events correctly and with a recognizable business purpose - they kind of chuckle at my quixotic delusion. You'll never get business analysts to understand that stuff, they say. But I'm still of the mind that the main reason business people don't quite get BPMN yet is that the tool vendors themselves don't follow the spec. Come on, guys, it's not that hard.
Air travel is God's punishment for living in California. At 5:30 on Friday evening, when most attendees are safely home with loved ones, my journey home is just beginning, many miles before I sleep. Day 3 of Process World ("User Day") was the best for me, since I came to find out what ARIS actually is and does, more than the corporate vision.
Long-time readers of BPMS Watch know I've learned the hard way that to most people who self-identify with an interest in BPM, the big leap is not executing the process and rules but simply documenting it, writing it down. Now that I'm waist-deep in that world myself with the new BPMN training, I decided to trek over to IDS Scheer's user conference in Florida. It's been an eye-opener for sure.
While I've been shouting from the rooftops that process modeling (in BPMN, ARIS, or whatever) is not that hard, Lombardi Software has been hearing from its customers that it's not that easy, either. The tools are complex, expensive, and only a small fraction of their features are used. Collaborating on models - while they're being developed - is near impossible. Making the models understandable to executives or business users means reducing them to a simple Powerpoint diagram or Visio flowchart. So process modeling - step #1 in the process of BPM - is already a barrier.
That barrier is what Lombardi aims to blow away with Blueprint, launched officially today. I've seen a lot of tools that the vendor insists is cool and different, but Blueprint really is cool and different.
SOA analyst Beth Gold-Bernstein of ebizQ posts about her quest for a BPMN tool to support her effort, together with Brenda Michelson. to create a "service design method."
Our goal is to take a pragmatic business driven approach to incremental (ie ? project driven) SOA design and implementation. We plan to use standard modeling techniques and tools where ever feasible. The status of this project is that we have now defined the process and design artifacts, and our next task is to model out a case study and see if it holds water and to find the holes.... I argued that it was time for business and IT to start speaking the same language, and we should start off with BPMN right from the start.
She then describes how she downloaded Tibco's free BPMN tool and tried - unsuccessfully - to get it to do what she wanted. I had the same problem when I was looking for a hands-on tool for my BPMN training. Tibco, Savvion, various Visio stencils... the free ones just didn't do what I wanted, either. And my goal was simpler than Beth's -- it was just to explain how to use BPMN!!
BPMS Watch invites you to join me at BPMInstitute.org's Business Process Management Conference, April 10-11 at The Drake Hotel in Chicago. As part of my participation in the event, I have secured a limited number of Complimentary 1-Day Conference Passes (a $995 value) for BPMS Watch readers. (Note: this is for the conference events, not the BPMN training, and there is some fine print to note at the bottom... but a great deal nonetheless.
Just received a note from Phil Gilbert of Lombardi, a key contributor to the BPDM effort in OMG, that says:
[I] wanted to let you know that the OMG Architecture Board voted to approve the BPDM spec today. There are actually 2 more small hurdles instead of 1 more as I told you earlier. But these are 99.9% certain to approve specs that have passed the Architecture Board review. Apparently these take several weeks calendar time as the boards that approve aren't on the TC calendar, they have their own.
In any event, it appears that a major milestone for the industry has been passed: a specification for a business process metamodel (as opposed to UML-defined process) is poised to achieve standards status and have the backing (and implementation) of process platform and modeling vendors. This will insure a standards-based way in which BPMN models can be exchanged, and both standards are driven by the same organization, allowing for unprecedented alignment. In fact, at this meeting, the next major version of BPMN is being discussed and it is expected that the focus will be on using that effort to merge the BPMN and BPDM specs, so that there will be one modeling spec, and that spec will have it's explicit notation and its explicit metamodel.
BPMN is the de facto standard for process modeling, but many leading modeling tools, particularly those incorporated within high-end business process analysis (BPA) suites, have so far been reluctant to adopt it. Now that appears to be changing. Recently IDS Scheer announced that ARIS, generally considered the leading standalone BPA suite, would be supporting the full BPMN notation in the v7.0.2 service release this spring. Announcement of BPMN support was tucked into their press release on new simulation capabilities based on Lanner's technology.
My comment on Keith Swenson's XPDL-BPEL apples-and-oranges post and the failure of XPDL to fill the vacuum left by OMG in the BPMN specification stirred up an interesting response from Keith that reinvigorates the discussion and helps clear the air. But he still frames the discussion in terms of portability of executable designs rather than portability of models (i.e. abstracted from implementation details). In the XPDL vs BPEL discussion, this is appropriate, but in the discussion of BPMN portability it misses a fundamental point.
