Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN · Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN IBM Research – Zurich Process Management Technologies ... Introduction:

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN

IBM Research – Zurich

Process Management Technologies

Hagen Völzer Joint work with Jochen Küster and Cédric Favre





Introduction: A Business Rule in IBM WODM

Uses connection to a repository of business objects (and their attributes)

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IT System

Agility through Artifact Separation

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Business Rule

(Textual Requirement)

Implementation

of rule (Code)

IT

Advantages: – Change- and maintenance friendly

– Less development effort

– What you see is what you execute

yesterday

Business

Business

today

IT System

Rules Engine

Rule





When is such an approach successful?

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Characteristics of (such) business

rules:

–Rules are meaningful to

business

–Can be read/created directly by

business in a way that is

understood by a dedicated

engine

–Rules change frequently





Can this be done for other artifacts/aspects as well?

Other artifacts: – Forms / UI

– Process / control flow (main

business behavior)

– KPI / monitoring data

– Business events

– Data model / information

structure / business objects

– ?

How successful / realistic is the

idea for these artifacts?

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Characteristics for rules: – Rules are meaningful to

business

– Can be read/created directly

by business in a way that is

understood by a dedicated

engine

– Rules change frequently





Outline

The Business-IT gap problem for process models

A solution approach: The Shared Process Model (work in

progress) –Basic solution design

–Recorded demo of a prototype

–Our notion of consistency

Discussion

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IT System

The Case of Process Models

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Business Model

IT Model

IT

Disadvantages: – Models, being maintained independently, quickly get out of sync

(inconsistent)

– What you see is not what is executed (audit failures, ineffective

operations, misinterpreted monitoring data)

– Not change friendly

Practice

Business

Business

Theory

IT System

Process Engine

Process Model

Process Engine





Road Block 1 (yesterday)

Example from a bank

Different languages and

tools on business and IT

level

BPMN / ARIS

BPEL

Transformation from

Business to IT is possibly

automated

No bidirectional

transformations

Inconsistencies quickly

occur and cause

problems

Today: Can use BPMN 2.0

as common language for

business and IT




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Road Block 2: Different Concerns and Levels of Detail Current Practice:

– Companies use multiple models

– Is this necessary?

Case study [Branco et al., Uni

Waterloo]

– 70 model pairs from a single bank

– 23 interviews (business and IT)

Study differences in model pairs

(business –IT)

– Identified change patterns and

their frequency

– Other findings regarding

consistency (later)

In addition, we talked to other BPM

practitioners and architects

Business

Model

IT Model





Business and IT want different models/views (1/2)

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IT model has compared to business model:

Complementary implementation detail (data, services, communication)

Formalization and renaming (task/event specialization, condition formalization) – no

alteration of flow

Contd.

Business

Model

IT Model





Business and IT want different models/views (2/2)

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IT model has compared to business model:

Behavioral refinement and refactoring – Hierarchical refinement / subsumption

– Hierarchical refactoring (for maintenance and performance)

– Added IT tasks

Added behavior (e.g. technical exception handling)

=> Organizations use multiple models of the same process (The difference between them is

technically more than just “omitting some details”)

IT Model

Business

Model




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Multiple models get inconsistent

Scenario 1: IT Refinement / Implementation – IT may change business-relevant aspects, resulting in inconsistency with

business view, because: • Business view is incomplete (frequently) • Business view contains inconsistencies (frequently to occasionally) • Business view contradicts some IT requirements, e.g. order of tasks (occasionally) • Business view does not anymore faithfully represent the actual business process

(rarely)

Scenario 2: Business Change – Business makes changes to the business view due to new business

requirements (Case study: roughly 2 fixes per project per year)

Scenario 3: Technical Change – New IT requirements cause change of the Technical view

• E.g. upcoming IT infrastructure changes require changes in executable process models

– Some changes may affect business-relevant aspects





Inconsistencies cause problems

Shipment delays, business disruptions, audit failures

From the case study:

E.g. some functionality was deleted inadvertently from IT model because

there was no correspondence in the business model – IT implementation was outsourced

– Discovered after process was in production

– Running instances had to be canceled and recreated

E.g. similar scenario but now – inconsistency between audit model and running process caused audit issue

and a fine

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Outline






Discussion

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Start End

A1 A2 A3

C

D

B

Start End

C

BA

F

D

D1 D2

E

Solution: The Shared Process Model

Check in

(private or

common)

Check out

Each view can be changed – Common changes to one view are propagated to the other view (but not private changes) – Links are maintained between model elements to propagate change propagation

Change

IT View Business View

Change

Check out Shared Process Model

(Process Model

Synchronizer)

Check in

(private or

common)




The Shared Process Model – Implementation Approach

Check in

(private or

common)

Check out

Change

IT View Business View

Change

Check out

Shared Process Model

Check in

(private or

common)

Maintain internally two separate BPMN models and links between their elements – Links are created automatically during refinement through refinement patterns and must be

maintained – Links are used to propagate changes from one side to the other and to check consistency

Advantages of this approach: – View creation is simple, export BPMN model, which can be consumed by editors and other tools – Generalization to more than two views relatively straight-forward




Correspondence Links

Links are 1:1, 1:m, m:1, but could be m:m as well

Some elements are not linked (private elements)

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Basic Change Propagation Mechanism

Create horizontal diff between IT models (generic model comparison)

Translate diff from business to IT using links

Apply translated diff to business model to obtain new business model – Links need to be maintained

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Refined Change Propagation Mechanism

Each operation of the diff is applied atomically to create a modified

business model and to update the links

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Recorded Demo





Outline






Discussion

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Business-IT Consistency

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What you see (in business view) is what you execute (in IT)

Intuition: Links always represent hierarchical refinements/subsumptions

Private elements are `between’ links (not within)

In IT, exceptional behavior may be added




Inconsistency Examples

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Business-IT Consistency

Dedicated hierarchical refinement actions preserve consistency

Common changes preserve consistency

For private freehand-editing, consistency can be checked upon check-in

Consistency can be checked efficiently – because it is on the defined directly on the model

Consistency Implies that `business behavior’ is preserved (but not the converse)

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Consistency Management

Change Management on top of Shared Model based on consistency is desirable (future work)

Shared

Model

Business

View IT View

/ /

Business conform (i.e. meets

business requirements =

accepted by business analyst)

and valid (i.e. accepted by

modeling tool)

IT conform (i.e. meets IT

requirements = accepted by IT

architect), valid (i.e. accepted by

modeling tool), and executable

(i.e. accepted by execution

engine)

/

Business-IT consistency (=

integrity of shared model, i.e.,

business view reflects the

executable model)




Conclusion

A single process view is often not enough

Multiple views quickly go out of sync

Multiple views can be kept in sync with the Shared Process Model – i.e., through vertical model synchronization

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Outlook to Future Work

Extensive practical evaluation

Alternative implementation for simple scenarios: Extended meta-model

Advanced scenarios: – Change Management on top of Shared Model

– One business model corresponds to multiple alternative IT models

– More than two views

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Can this be done for other artifacts/aspects as well?

Other artifacts: – Forms / UI

– Process / control flow (main

business behavior)

– KPI / monitoring data

– Business events

– Data model / information structure /

business objects

– ?

How successful / realistic is the

idea for these artifacts?

28 Hagen Völzer

Characteristics for rules: – Rules are meaningful to business

– Can be read/created directly by

business in a way that is

understood by a dedicated engine

– Rules change frequently





References

M. Castelo Branco, Y. Xiong, K. Czarnecki, J. Küster, H. Völzer: A Case

Study on Consistency Management of Business and IT Process Models in

Banking. To appear in Software and Systems Modelling

J. Küster, H. Völzer, C. Favre, M. Castelo Branco and K.Czarnecki:

Supporting Different Process Views through a Shared Process Model.

IBM Tech Report RZ 3823

M. Castelo Branco, J. Troya, K.Czarnecki, J. Küster, H. Völzer: Matching

Business Process Workflows across Abstraction Levels. MoDELS 2012:

626-641

C. Favre, Jochen Küster, and Hagen Völzer : The Shared Process Model.

BPM Demos 2012

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Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN · Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN IBM Research – Zurich Process Management Technologies ... Introduction:

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