The Role of Standards in BPM

Copyright Kemsley Design Ltd., 20071

The Role of Standards in BPM

Sandy KemsleyKemsley Design Ltd.

www.column2.com


Agenda

Risks and rewards Process standards landscape Graphical notation standards Serialization standards The future of standards


Risks and Rewards

Why use a standard? Why not?


Value of Standards: Business

Commoditization of technology and services

Portability between modeling tools Reduces ambiguity of process models


Value of Standards: Business-IT Alignment Unbroken, bidirectional modeling-

interchange-execution chain Reduces translation errors between

business and IT Less time spent by business analysts

teaching IT about business processes IT time spent just cleaning up

processes and hooking them up to the process engine


Value of Standards: Collaboration

Choreograph processes with partners Share business models in community Outsource business processes:

Process modeling and execution may be done by different organizations

Runtime statistics feed back for process visibility and optimization against original models


Standards Risks

Little value in being an early adopter of standards

Risks in choosing the wrong standard:Obstructs technology upgradesLimits business partner connectivityForces training in obsolete technology


How Standards Are Selected

Application/platform developers choose standards directly

Customers choose standards indirectly by selecting standards-compliant products


Process Standards Landscape

Who’s doing what?

10 Source: BPM Standards Tutorial © 2007 Michael zur Muehlen. All Rights Reserved.

Business Process Management

Business Process Automation

Business Process Innovation

Business Process Monitoring

Notation Standard

Integration Standards

Interaction Standards Standard

Metrics

Audit Standards


Process Standards

BPMN = Business Process Modeling Notation Standard graphical notation

XPDL = XML Process Definition Language De facto standard interchange format

BPDM = Business Process Definition Metamodel Too soon to tell; may overtake XPDL as standard

interchange format BPEL = Business Process Execution Language

Execution language for some BPMS Primarily used as integration/SOA interchange format


Related Standards

SVBR: Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules

ebXML BPSS (ebBP): Business Process Specification Schema

BPRI: Business Process Runtime Interface UML: Unified Modeling Language WS-CDL: Web Services Choreography

Description Language


Process Standards Organizations OMG - www.omg.org

Object Management Group Standards for interoperable enterprise applications Absorbed BPMI in 2005

WfMC - www.wfmc.org Workflow Management Coalition Workflow standards for terminology, interoperability

and connectivity OASIS - www.oasis-open.org

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

E-business standards


OMG

Model-driven architectureStart with model of businessAuto-generate code from model

BPMN (through acquisition) BPDM next


WfMC

Integration standards for process life cycle

Reference model + XPDL Started in 1993


OASIS

Workgroup-specific BPM knowledge ebXML, BPEL


W3C

Protocol stack standards for application integration

WS-CDL No BPM experience


OMG & Process Standards

Copyright Object Management Group 2006


OMG & Process Standards

Copyright Object Management Group 2006


WfMC & Process Standards

XPDL 2.00 standard WFMC-TC-1025. Copyright Workflow Management Coalition 2006.


OASIS & Process Standards

Published with permission of the author


The Problem with Process Standards

Several overlapping and competing standards

Multiple standards organizations Different views of how standards fit

together


Graphical Notation Standards

Drawing a pretty – and standard – picture


Graphical notationstandard: BPMN

Diagramming standard for drawing business processes

Method of communicating processes:Understandable by business users

and unambiguousReduces translation errors between

business and IT Easy transition between tools


From the BPMN Charter

Usable by the business community: Minimum technical constraints on business

user/analyst Supports only the concepts of modeling that

are applicable to business processes Useful in illuminating a complex executable

process Produce unambiguous notation of a

business process Allow direct mapping from BPMN to BPEL


BPMN Issues

No serialization/file format No user/role modeling No data modeling No KPI modeling Methodology-independent


BPMN History

BPMN 0.9 draft by BPMI, 2002 BPMN 1.0 draft, 2003 BPMN 1.0, 2004 BPMI merged into OMG, 2005 BPMN 1.0 as OMG spec, 2006 BPMN 1.1, 2007



BPMN Flow Objects

Event

Activity

Gateway


BPMN Connecting Objects

Sequence flow

Message flow

Association


BPMN Swimlanes

Pool

Lanes


BPMN Artifacts

Data object

Group

Annotation


Exception Handling


Transaction


EventsStart Intermediate End

None

Message

Timer n/a

Error n/a

Cancel n/a

Compensation n/a

Rule n/a

Link

Multiple

Terminate n/a n/a


Activities

Task (atomic)

Collapsed sub-process

Expanded sub-process


Other Activity Markers

Activity looping

Multiple instances

Compensation

Ad hoc sub-process


Gateways

Exclusive or (XOR),data-based

Exclusive or (XOR),event-based

Inclusive (OR)

Complex

Parallel (AND)


Sequence Flows

Normal flow

Uncontrolled flow

Conditional flow

Default flow

Exception flow


Associations

Compensation association


Multiple Collapsed Pools for B2B Modeling


Multiple Expanded Pools


Grouping Across Pools


Data object associated with sequence flow

Data objects as inputs and outputs

BPMN Patterns – Data Objects


Interchange Standards

How processes get around


BPM interchange standards

Import/export of process models Evolving landscape of standards:

XPDL (XML Process Definition Language)

BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)

BPDM (Business Process Definition Metamodel)


XPDL

Process definition serialization and interchange format

Maintains spatial information Multiple processes per file Allows vendor-specific extensions Includes user interactions


XPDL

Interchange format for businessprocess definitions

Defines how a process definition is serialized (written to a file)

Maintains graphical positional information

Multiple processes/subprocesses per file



XPDL

Includes user interactions Does not include choreography Allows vendor-specific extensions

Created by modeling tool or process engine

Ignored by other modeling tools and process engines

E.g., colored swimlanes


XPDL History

Developed by WfMC, www.wfmc.org WPDL (Workflow Process Definition

Language), 1998 XPDL 1.0, 2002 XPDL 2.0, 2005 Supported by 70+ modeling/BPM

products


BPDM

Process definition serialization and interchange format

Includes choreography Will become part of BPMN in future

version May displace XPDL


BPDM

Can serve as metamodel for BPMN Metamodel can be used to generate

an interchange formatMay (attempt to) displace XPDLLarger scope/more robust than XPDLXPDL has 2-year head start

Includes choreography and orchestration


BPDM History

Developed by OMG, www.omg.org RFP issued, 2003 BPDM 1.0, 2007


BPEL

Web services orchestration language In BPM, may be used as interchange format In SOA-related products, also used as

execution language Programming language for integration logic

and process automation between services Defines business processes as coordinated

sets of Web service interactions BPEL processes exposed as WSDL services BPEL processes consume WSDL services


BPEL Issues

Does not include some BPMN functionality: Human interaction Interleaved process segments Looping back to previous steps Subprocessess

Does not include graphical layout info Not fully interoperable between vendors


BPEL History

Developed by OASIS, www.oasis-open.org

BPEL4WS 1.0, 2002 BPEL4WS 1.1 proposed to OASIS,

2003 WS-BPEL 2.0 draft, 2005


The Future of Process Standards


BPMN and BPDM

BPMN will remain the primary graphical modeling notation

BPDM may eventually overtake XPDL as interchange/serialization standard

BPMN 2.0 will merge BPDM and BPMN 1.1


XPDL

XPDL as interchange/serialization standard for at least the short term


BPEL

BPEL may become more important as an interchange standard for SOA/integration than as an execution language

BPEL4People (human interactions) specification under development


Questions?

Sandy KemsleyKemsley Design Ltd.www.column2.com

The Role of Standards in BPM

Technology

process standards bpmn

oasis process standards

rewards process standards

value of standards

future of standards

role of standards

wfmc process standards

business models