Updates from bpmNEXT

Continuing her amazing ability to listen and provide commentary in a rapid fire more, here comes the details out of bpmNext event held last week in California. Here are some of the notes.


My take: Without sounding boastful hopefully, I covered some of the very similar ideas last year in an earlier blog post on Manifesto for BPMN 2.0 and Case for ACM using BPMN.  As for BPM in cloud, the writing has been on the wall for a while.

I am sure the demos must have been awesome, after all this was supposed to be DEMO of BPM.

WYDIWYE or WY-CAN-DIWYE challenge

Folks I see that there is a lot of confusion between my WYDIWYE and yours WYDIWYE.

From my experience, I have seen tons of BPMN models modeled in Visio / Signavio / ARIS and the user expects these models to execute on a BPMN 2.0 engine.  Alas, execution is when the real WYDIWYE challenge comes out. (There are tools that compile process models to other execution languages, for example to Java. )   It’s quite likely that unless you have severely limited your modeling richness, that your compiler will reject your process model! Does your tool truly support WYDIWYE?  Which is to say, does the product you are using support your business process pattern?  Or are you limited in the patterns you can choose to run your business?

Maybe we should call the feature in question “WYCDIWYE”, where the “C” stands for “can”, as in “What-You-Can-Draw-Is-What-You-Execute. Which workflow patterns does your tool support?

Regardless of political affiliation, where modeling freedom is concerned, Roubroo users can all quote Barack Obama - "Yes we can!"

Build ACM from BPMN 2.0?

My comments on Adam Deane's post:

Lets see what we can agree on?

I hope we all agree in value in process participants being able to change process even if they are “cheap butts…” as suggested by Max. I can fully understand why social BPM gets the attention it deserves.

Max you define BPM as model preserving execution while my vision is that you can still preserve the model (or a template of it) even if you make changes to it while execution is in progress. All ongoing executions have to be supported by an underlying definition to exist and also support audit. This vision aligns closely with Stephen White’s vision of what is coming next in BPM, found here http://www.column2.com/2012/09/bpm2012-stephen-white-keynote-on-bpmn/. And further you can make changes in “retrospect”, which is one step ahead even of design-by-doing, as highlighted by Bruce Silver in his review of Roubroo.

If you look at Alexander Simrin’s blog post here :http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.com/2010/12/illustrations-for-bpm-acm-case.html
you will see that its a continuum from structured to unstructured.

The focus of this conversation is use cases for adaptive case management not the degree of WYDIWYE, please take a look at IOR merge semantics before we can conclude either way. Obviously, the design tools prohibits users from drawing a process model which it can not execute – even though the vendor may cliam WYDIWYE. Here are some process patterns as food for thought : http://roubroo.com/resources/process-patterns

Back to the topic – Knowingly or unknowingly, we have all agreed that we are ALL using BPMN 2.0 as the modeling paradigm some with extensions and some without. If you are using something else, then I would like to hear.

Roubroo is using the BPMN 2.0 execution semantics to deliver the adaptive business processes. And this is where the big Question is – do we invent a new way for doing adaptive processes or build on top of the execution semantics which have become the de-facto standard.

Another question: what happens once the goal in ACM is achieved – does that sequence or sequences get repeated? If yes then its a flow, if not – then I am interested in understanding the ROI – but that is probably a separate topic.

Case for ACM using BPMN?

Reading through Adam  Deane's post and comments I realized its important to understand where the industry is headed without the three letter acronym jargon. And more importantly, how can folks leverage the work done to build existing specifications. I very much appreciate the real world examples Adam listed. I saw the commentators telling what ACM is not - I want to hear what it is. Thanks to Max for giving such a good list of what to expect from an ACM:
And my comments follow the "-"
A) business performers can create the processes to meet well defined goals.
- Well who can argue with that - and that is true for any process; the process owner should "OWN" the process. WYDIWYE is critical must have. Dont shoe horn the process to fit what the tool can do.

B) processes are signed off by the process owner and rated by customers.
- Absolutely - it means other folks that consume the process must agree with the definition of the process.

C) They can follow a flow but do not have to.
- When they dont follow a flow what do they do? My point is whether we like it or not, there is a flow.

D) They can be modified during execution where allowed.
- Absolutely. I am assuming the question here is whether you allow state changes or also allow definition changes.

E) Goal completion can have very strict criteria.
- It should have a measurable criteria.

F) Modified processes can be saved as new templates. (adapted)
- Absolutely - in CS corridors  the word is versions.

G) each process instance can be audited.
- Absolutely true. If an instance cannot be audited then we are generating code and reverse engineering audit info from code to tie back to the process initially created.

H) linked objectives and targets allow business perfomance monitoring.
- The key performance indicators should be linked with business performance.

Well a product can do all of these, it can use BPMN as a notation to track what is happening?  Would we call it BPMS, Dynamic BPM, Intelligent BPM or ACM ...? Check out Bruce Silver's review of Roubroo.