1 Masking flexibility behind rigidity: Notes on how much flexibility people are willing to cope with Prepared for BPMDS’05 by Ilia Bider, IbisSoft,Stockholm, Sweden
Dec 18, 2015
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Masking flexibility behind rigidity: Notes on how
much flexibility people are willing to cope with
Prepared for BPMDS’05 byIlia Bider, IbisSoft,Stockholm, Sweden
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Do we need flexibility
A bit of provocation
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Flexibility - Hypothesis• The issue was brought
about as soon as Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) appeared
• First WFMS were considered as rigid as they did not cover all situations the user could get into
Flexibility is required
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Flexibility – reality by example
Reaction on flexibility of associative search
• Search through association – unusual, difficult to accept
VS
• Directed search – normal – easy to accept
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Why complaints on rigidity - hypothesis
• Preliminary business process mapping/modeling/analysis cannot be exact.
• This results in “wrong” rigidity rather than in lack of flexibility
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Solutions
• Start with “wrong” rigidity and quickly transform it to the right one. Risks – before the transformation is completed – users can give up
• Start with real flexibility and quickly transform it into the “right” rigidity. Risks – users may not be able or willing to cope with flexibility
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Starting with flexibility - a catch
• In the beginning of BPMS introduction flexibility is required due to insufficiency of the underlying BP model
• In the beginning of BMPS introduction flexibility constitute an extra burden on the users while they learn how to use the system
Solution – limit flexibility as soon as possible
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Starting with flexibility
• Workflow approach does not permit to start with full flexibility (Meccano model)
• Different approach is required (Meccano model)
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Starting with total flexibilityState flow: Background
• Modeling and control of physical processes - Mathematical system theory
• Continuous-time physical process trajectory:
• x – vector of state variables (reals)• – derivatives of state variables• w – vector of environment variables• Goal – a point or a surface in the state space
0),,( wxxF
x
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State flow: what is needed
• Find a way for representing states of business processes.
• Understand how to represent speed and direction of movement.
• Find out how to connect speed and direction of movement to the position in the state space.
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State flow: state and goal
• For each item Ordered = Delivered
• To pay = Total + Freight + Tax
• Invoiced = To pay
• Paid = Invoiced
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State flow: state and activities
• Ordered > Delivered shipment • To pay > Invoiced invoicing
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Integrated state = state + operative plan
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State flow: acquiring rigidity via policies and dynamical planning
• Obligations• Prohibitions• Recommendations
Two step planning
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Totally flexible BPS system ProBis includes
• Most common business objects– People (contacts and users)
– Organizations (groups of people)
– Documents (piece of information having a physical form)
• 3 generalized business processes– iTeam – suitable for internal information exchange, etc
– xTeam – suitable for sale, purchase, CRM
– Project – suitable for administration of projects
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Test site Making experiment on living creatures
• SRAT – a medium size Union for academics (12 000 members), about 10 employees
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Going rigid – first steps
• Terminology and screen layouts – even quite educated people prefer their own terminology (even if it will limit the usability)
• Registering external events, particularly when starting a new process. Require special dialog (even if it will limit the usability)
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Going rigid – next steps
• Splitting general processes to specialized ones
• Introducing automated planning
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Questions and discussion
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Acknowledgement
• Our work is currently supported by Swedish Agency for Innovation System (VINNOVA)
• The author would like to thanks all people participating in the projects that gave raise to the current discussion
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Thank You!
Ilia Bider,IbisSoft, Sweden
www.ibissoft.com/english/index.htmEmail: [email protected]