Clearly I have been quiet for some time – busy organizing conferences and events and also spending more and more time exploring the world of Software as a Service (SaaS) as it applies to BPM. Some are talking about this conjunction as really a Platform as a Service (PaaS). Over the last 6 months or so I have been playing in the SaaS-BPM space - initially developing the process modeling training material for Appian, and more recently experimenting with a relative newcomer – Itensil.

A while back, I talked quite a bit about the Appian experience – a powerful application building environment that is now delivered On Demand. However, in common with virtually all BPM Suites, it suffered from an overdose of complexity – its just not really accessible to the common person.

Over recent months, I have been experimenting with Itensil as a vehicle to deliver both on demand BPM Training, and also to provide a robust collaboration support environment for BPM Projects. I have also used it to support the preparation of the two major events I have been involved in putting on – the BPM Technology Showcase and BPM Lisbon 2008. I think you would agree, this is not your run of the mill problem that we find in use around BPM, yet sharing many characteristics with difficult problems found in many businesses. With this series of postings I will explore what I have found out about Itensil.

Introduction

If you are reading this, then you are probably already fairly knowledgeable about Business Process and will understand that I have spent most of the last 20 years focusing almost exclusively in that domain. Initially this was developing a product called Office Engine (I killed that off in 1992 - was not a good time to have the greatest thing since sliced bread), and since then I’ve been crawling all over, and teasing apart just about every major product out there concerned with Business Process – my main interest is in using business processes to drive the way that work happens.

Now if you are like me, you are probably more than just a little frustrated with the rigid and inflexible nature of most workflow systems. What I am getting at is the lack of adaptability inherent in most workflow and BPM systems – you are stuck with whatever process was described at the time it was built. Now while that might be a good thing for a big insurance company or bank wanting to make sure that a clerk doesn’t get creative with a bank draft, it is a cumbersome problem for the rest of us. It smacks of control for controls own sake. Even for the smallest change, you have to refer your application back to at least a business analyst (or worse, the IT department) and then wait for them to get around to understanding what you want, before they reflect that in the next rev that is rolled out some time in the future. Not much use to you as you try to deal with some unique customer situation that has just emerged in the middle of your major bid process; or the customer who says to the architect – I know we are halfway through building this hotel, but can I have a swimming pool on the 10^th floor (the point being that the architect cannot throw away all the work to date and start with a new version of the process).

I am referring to a class of processes and applications that most Workflow/BPM Suites just can’t get anywhere near – collaborative knowledge worker processes, where individuals continually interpret the case in hand and make decisions accordingly. I have already mentioned architecture and bid management, but the examples here are endless – from emergency response management, to how an advertising agency operates, through to consultancy, medical investigations (indeed all sorts of investigations and research) … right through to what you do.

Adaptability is also an issue if you are building out applications – it’s just that now you have to blend adaptability and collaboration with more rigorous procedures - all of which somehow need to live together. I think this is the sweet spot for BPM and SaaS delivery. It is not the highly rigorous, slowly changing transactional procedures that you use to record and support your sales transactions, or issue credit cards. Those sorts of processes are what traditional BPM Suites are designed for (and are good at). But what they cannot handle are scenarios where change and adaptability are at the core – where change is part of domain.

Itensil Dynamic Process Platform (DPP)

The Itensil Dynamic Process Platform is really quite a different architecture from every other BPM Suite I have looked at. The developers have combined the ease of use and adaptability of a wiki, with the mechanics of Process. Every object in the system, whether it be a Process, a Document, an Entity or even the home page has a sort of Wiki style history feature. You can roll back to it at any time (make the previous version active).

Processes development has some real wow factors associated with it (see Instant Wows below). Each Process design can then be instantiated into individual Process Activities (each of which can be adapted by the end user on the fly if needed). There is also an instant, ad hoc team collaboration environment, which can be endlessly adapted and added to (really a special use of the process functionality that is embedded into a tool called “Meeting”). Any number of instances of a Process (and Meetings) can be rolled up into a “Project,” which has its own Wiki home page. A Process instance might belong to several different Projects. There’s a lot more than this, but I will get to that later.

This is the core environment that delivers an end-user accessible process support environment. Itensil describe the processes that they designed the product to support as “roughly repeatable,” where each instance of a process is subtly different from all that went before. It really is a nuanced blend of what I call “Practice” and “Procedure.”

At the heart of the system is a sophisticated document management and content repository that is all served up out of a LAMP stack – actually most end-users won’t care what operating system or application server platform it sits on, it is delivered On Demand over the Internet (although an On Premise version is also available for those who must have it).

But its not just an end-user tool set – you could think of the Itensil DPP as Process Platform as a Service (PPaaS), where an application developer or third party can embed their own IP and application know-how into a robust application and blend that with an accessible and tightly integrated user interface that is entirely delivered through AJAX in a Browser.

Collaboration+Process≠Workflow+Document Management    

While all BPM Suite vendors are trying to work out how to graft collaboration onto their existing workflow tooling, Itensil have taken another approach. From the ground up, they have added business process support to a rich collaboration environment. Rather than design-time ease of use (i.e. for the Business Analyst and Professional Developer), they have sought to deliver run-time ease of use and adaptability for the knowledge worker (i.e. designed for people like you and me). In Itensil, all processes are developed in the environment itself using the outline editor and/or the process modeling canvas. Each one is, in its own way pretty special (see below).

Itensil’s Organizing Principle is Adaptability @ The User Level

Instant Wows

Outline to Process – When initially envisaging a process, the user merely outlines the steps in a wiki editor (perhaps cutting and pasting from somewhere on the web or other office document such as Word, PDF, Excel or a Mindmap outline). They can also insert markers (associated file attributes) to create dropzones for any outputs that are produced, and specify  team roles, along with review loops and due dates if desired). The Process itself is generated automatically. Each step has an attached Wiki page that serves as the user interface for that step.

Instant Mode Switching – The user can immediately switch between “Run” mode (instantiating the process); “Status” view providing an overview of the steps and also provides mechanisms to re-assign tasks to team members, set due dates, jump to steps, etc.); and the “Design” view which will take you to a drag and drop modeling canvas and the outline editor.

On the Fly Process Change – When Processes are run an instance is referred to as an Activity, each of which is adaptable at run-time (as required by the end-user). Alternatively, the user might decide to save the changes to the default process model (affecting all future Activities).

Run Time Binding - At the Task level, the user could decide to bind a separate (stand alone) Process to a Task to further elaborate on how the work should be done (perhaps involving other roles). The user interface presents an interface that allows the standalone sub-process to be viewed discretely, dragging the artifacts from one process level to another (and thereby avoiding the need for complex mapping). 

WebDav – Itensil supports a network file system that is delivered via the Internet (while HTTP gives you read access, WebDAV gives you write access). Essentially, it acts like virtual file system, allowing users to edit files in situ (saving the new version automatically). It provides a network drive that is available at the Project, Process, or Meeting levels (indeed any level). In this way, Itensil can more easily support the virtual enterprise as users up and down the value chain collaborate in a safe and secure environment.

Object History – all objects in the domain receive the wiki treatment; each file, each page, each process, everything … has a history associated with it. Suitably authorized users can roll back to a previous version (making the older version active but still keeping the new edits). Even a process can be undone step-by-step to recover from errors or facilitate a change to the process. Of course, all objects in the system have a robust security model associated with them (setting up the system it is possible to control the default permissions on different classes of objects). 

Look Ma, No Forms – given that all steps in a process are presented to the user via a WYSIWYG wiki page, the system provides a natural canvas for presenting information. Users can create Process Attributes at any point, and simply drag them onto the wiki canvas in edit mode. Placement is just a question of where the cursor was at the time. In fact what is happening is a tiny Xform is created automatically to support that attribute. So if you decide that this process needs a “Budget” field, all you need to do is drop into Design Mode, select the step where it is set, open the Attributes panel, click the new attribute link, give it a name, say what sort (say Currency) and then drag it onto the canvas where you want it. The user will then be prompted to provide the Budget at the right point (which might then be reused at a later step).

These points have massive implications for adoption, design and usability of BPM – rather than having to predict all processes in advance, the user can decide how to interpret the task in hand and apply an appropriate personal template. The net result, better adoption by the end-users themselves (they are in control) and a more agile adaptable organization. The outline to process functionality provides a real step up in accessibility, putting it in reach of the average knowledge worker or manager – if you can work with a PowerPoint outline, you can work with Itensil.  

Itensil Power Features

So while all of this might sound really interesting but not quite appropriate for your complex business problems, the latest set of features delivered by Itensil change all of that. These facilities are primarily designed for the professional developer or business analyst; they provide the tooling to help build out Itensil into vertical industry domains and deliver discrete, knowledge-intensive applications. Further, I understand that the whole environment is configurable including the look and feel and the brand image delivered (meaning that OEM partners can embed the entire environment into their own offering). 

Entities – Itensil now incorporates a mechanism to flesh out your Line of Business (LOB) data structure, and establish the relationships between those Entities. Once the established, the system can then automatically walk the meta-data structure, automatically finding related Entities and presenting the correct information to the user at run-time. 

This is in contrast to the usual approach taken by most BPM vendors who rely on Process level variables (i.e. named value pairs) to represent LOB data. This traditional approach introduces significant complexity to the end user trying to work on developing a process (they must always worry about the mapping of attributes from one process to another and over time the sets of variables can easily become fragmented, further driving the complexity and cost of ownership). In Itensil, this is all done automatically.

Each Entity can have a number of XForms associated with it. Since the Entity relationships are already known, the XForms environment can also display the related Form at the same time as the primary Entity. So a Person form might also include the Address as a sub-form. When designing a Process, an Entity Relationship is easily established that can then automatically make use of this form – say you know that the user should enter a new person called a “Target,” then it is as simple as saying a New Entity Relationship of type Person is required, which is referred to as a Target. When you drag the resulting widget onto the work zone wiki page, the system will ask which Form is to be used (as there might be several different views), and hey presto, you have a sophisticated XForm delivered to the user (based on a robust data model). Of course, the professional developer can also resort to specialist tools for creating sophisticated Xforms instead of using the out-of-the-box functionality.

Integrated Rule Builder - Of course, developers might want even greater sophistication to create rule driven XForms that embed some special behavior. Say for example, if you want to display a different section of the Form based on whether the Customer is based in the US (the tax calculation might then be different on a state by state basis), or if the Customer was in the UK, then the form should include provisions for VAT (a wholly different regime). The point is that these form-related rules are executing on the fly in the browser of the user, yet still pointing back to the Entities and Process Attributes (speeding up the user experience and removing latency in the connection).  On the other hand, say for example you want the rule to run on the server to govern process logic, then that same rule or a new one could be applied to the process. All of this functionality is supported with a drag and drop rules builder that knows all about the associated entities and attributes (i.e. it is tightly integrated with the LOB modeled earlier).

Partner/Customer Mode – this interface enables partners and customers to take part in the process, yet doesn’t provide them with access to the rest of the environment. For example, if your application is designed to support the RFP process in putting on a conference, each hotel representative can be provided with this sort of guest access to upload their response and later respond to queries.

Organizational Hierarchy – the new version introduces a more sophisticated modeler, allowing the system to reflect any number of complex organizational forms. For example, this now supports a user changing department in the organization and the supervisor role is automatically updated. similar ssignmnets  meemversnymoerves as the have any additional questions or information that will make our call more usefulf a

Courseware – Now this might sound a bit strange for a BPM Suite, but when you consider that this is a knowledge-centric environment (heads-up process support, as against heads-down process control), it is important that you have a way of training people and unlocking areas of the system once they are qualified. It is also a better way of ensuring compliance (in the sense that only qualified people are given relevant work to do). So Itensil have released a Courseware builder – where the course itself is a process – the wiki page is the user interface for delivery. It will handle embedded graphics, all your advice notes and any attachments (whether they be PDFs or bits of embedded Flash).

Training can then be delivered in-situ, as required at the coalface. The new Quiz Builder supports the user as she develops the process-driven courseware, generating multi-choice quizzes to test a users understanding before moving on to the next section or opening up access to some specific process or feature capability (you have to supply the questions and answers). People taking a course don’t get access to the process that controls it, but from the perspective of a professional training developer this sort of functionality is really game-changing. Quite apart from changing the rules of the game in Distance Learning delivery (better than endlessly regenerating Flash courseware), it is also a way of ensuring that applications and features are sufficiently understood.

Now I am sure it could do with improvement, and as I write this I am already thinking of areas where I would like to see changes, but once you grok the implications of this it is quite literally mind-blowing.

Excel Interface – Itensil now supports the capability to Import and Export form content to an Excel spreadsheet leveraging the XML format of Excel. While you could use the cut and paste method (as in Paste to Outline feature of Process building interface), in certain applications it is necessary to export LOB data into Excel for offline and disconnected working (or even just to take a snapshot of a case in order to lock down the data as an evidential artifact).

So in these ways, Itensil allows the developer to deliver structured LOB information and applications alongside the knowledge worker collaborative environment that distinguishes it from the competition.

The Big Idea

It really is all about leveraging the power of process to knowledge workers in a rich collaborative space in the cloud. Personally, I think Itensil have really brought something fundamentally new to the market. The reality is that this sort of end-user accessibility really does change the game. Knowledge workers can now do it for themselves, seamlessly transitioning from the freeform collaboration environment of a wiki to the structured work that some of their processes demand. At the same time, Itensil have delivered an evolving work environment that is under the control of the users who most need it – the knowledge workers themselves. As a result, the cost of ownership for an application is dramatically lower – instead of always having to refer back to a Business Analyst or IT developer.

For the industry, I think we are going to see Itensil define a new segment in the BPMS market that is currently massively underserved. Knowledge workers are poorly served – they quickly revert to email as most BPM Suites fail to deliver the necessary adaptability. And we shouldn’t forget that all of this is delivered On Demand, in a multi-tenant platform (i.e. all you need is a web browser and an Internet connection). The Itensil combination of Web 2.0 + Collaboration + BPM is quite literally showing the way forward and I think, starting to beat up the competition.

Well after a lot of hard work the event is now fully fleshed out. Of course there are a million and one things to get done to organize a major event - and I am still getting through them.

But we have a full program of really interesting vendors (IMNSHO). They cover a range of different themes that regular readers will recognize. This is a real opportunity for people involved in BPM projects to save hundreds of hours and many thousands of dollars by assessing all the best vendors in one place, picking up on the best practices, pitfalls and other implementation wrinkles.

In no particular order they are:

BPM and SaaS - Appian, Integrify, Itensil, Lombardi (Blueprint) … I am not sure whether I should put Cordys, and Fujitsu in that category (since apparently they can do this combination but haven’t made a big noise about it).

Case Handling - Cordys, Graham Technology, Itensil, Pallas Athena, Pega

Complex Customer Interaction - Graham Technology, Pega

Knowledge Workers - Appian, HandySoft and Itensil

Microsoft and .NET - Ascentn, Bluespring Software and BizAgi

BPM-SOA Stack - BEA, Fujitsu and TIBCO

Unified Data Model - BizAgi, Pega

They all have something special about them - they are all becoming more and more “model driven” (some are better than others), they all feature mechanisms to monitor and track work. Here is the complete list along with links to their web sites.

Appian - Ascentn - BEA - BizAgi - Bluespring Software - Cordys - Graham Technology - HandySoft - Integrify - Itensil - Fujitsu - Lombardi - Pallas Athena - Pega - TIBCO

That’s 15 vendors, each delivering 4 sessions - one in the morning and one in the afternoon on each of the core showcase days (Tuesday and Wednesday). The Showcase itself is capped off with a simulated product bake-off where each vendor demonstrates how they have built out one or other of the two core scenarios we will provide them with.

I intend to create short 5-minute videos of each vendor, featuring their best points and place them on YouTube with links to their product profile - which I will endeavor to get up on the BPMF site within a few weeks of the event (but I am traveling for the month of March so it might not be till mid-April before that happens.

Oh - and lets not forget the Monday when you will hear a keynote from Connie Moore (of Forrester), followed by three new case studies (the best submissions from the Awards program - Wells Fargo, Geisinger Health and Louisiana Supreme Court), the three inclusive ½ day training courses:

• Ensuring BPM Project Success - from me
• Modeling in BPMN - from Stephen White of IBM (the main author of the BPMN specification)
• BPM Overview from the WfMC

And all of this is available for the killer price of just $395 (up until close of business this Friday … after that it reverts to $595). Just to put that price in perspective, that’s less than you would pay a traditional conference for their pre-conference workshop !! We have deliberately kept the prices low so that you can bring the team – to form a shared understanding of the issues and the way ahead (and it’s impossible to get around all 15 vendors in the 12 sessions that you will have time to attend).
You can get directly to the registration page here

Download the brochure here

The BPM Awards and Technology Showcase is taking shape and it’s promising to be quite an interesting affair. Located at the Sheraton in Downtown Nashville, it is easy (and cheap) for the whole US to get there, it will take place in late February – 25^th through the 27^th.

In my opinion, participation by any organisation with a BPM project(s) on its plate (current or planned), will save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars – through the stunning case studies, through exploration of what the vendors have to offer in one concentrated educational program; and through the all inclusive workshops focusing on implementation best practices. Although it has run successfully in Europe over several years, this format is relatively new for the BPM market in the US.

In the contrast to the traditional conference+trade show model – where you will find a mix of hypothetical talks and vendor marketing – this is event is focus on providing pragmatic and actionable information specifically about BPM technology and its implementation. Rather than trying to glean scraps of insight in the chaos of an exhibition showroom floor, this event is primarily based around structured sessions that focus on how products are used and deployed (and the best practices, challenges and pitfalls along the way).

Of course it is much more than that:

On the Monday (Feb 25^th) we have a “BPM in Practice” day where you’ll get the big picture in a Keynote from Connie Moore of Forrester. We then segue immediately into a selection of the top North American case studies from the 2007 Global Excellence Awards in BPM and Workflow (I think the best ones). This is where we have the real 24 Carat Gold – three brand new case studies from Wells Fargo, Louisiana Supreme Court and Geisinger Health – all focused on the reality of modern BPM implementation. These case studies are delivered by the business and IT people themselves talking about their experiences – setting the scene for what is to follow over the next 2 days.

Then, over a Gala lunch, we have the Awards Ceremony itself (where the shiny stuff get handed out to the winners). This is quickly followed by a joint presentation from Nathaniel Palmer and I – where we discuss the Technology Assessment Framework (everybody will have copies of all the product reports by this time).

We then all go to a choice of 3 workshops – I will be running a concentrated form of our “Developing A Structured Approach for BPM Project Success” course, and if Steve White gets the permission to come from his masters at IBM, he will run a shortened version of the BPM Process Modeling Fundamentals (focused on BPMN). In parallel the leading lights at the WfMC will run their own session, taking a more general view of BPM (I expect they will also talk about the role of XPDL). Its worth noting that these workshops are usually delivered as conference add-ons – the difference with this event is that they are all included in the very cheap price of attendance ($295 if you get in quickly).

On Tuesday and Wednesday (26^th and 27^th) we have the Showcase itself. On each day we start with a short plenary (who’s on when, showing what); then we immediately split into 5 tracks. On each track there are six sessions during the day (three different vendors giving two sessions each on each track). The delegates self select the sessions that or interest to them. Each session is 40-45 minutes, with a 5 minute break to get to the next session (we do let you have breaks for coffee and lunch).

But the real difference here is that there is no exhibition, just concentrated truth telling from the vendors as they explain and demonstrate how their products are used for real. These are up close and personal sessions where the 25-30 people in the audience can pop any question they like.

And as you’ll discover (assuming you come), the whole thing quickly becomes very interactive.  Everyone realizes it is OK to ask questions and very soon we are all learning from each other. This opportunity to interact is further bolstered by the birds of a feather lunch tables and Round Table discussions on the Tuesday (where each table will explore a particular area).

Moreover, the format ensures it is a level playing field for all (rather than who can afford the biggest stand). Vendors range from the relatively small innovation leaders such as Ascent, BizAgi and Itensil, through the established pure-play BPM vendors (such as Lombardi and Appian) then into the big guys like TIBCO, and we anticipate BEA/Oracle will also have a presence.

To cap it all – we end on the Tuesday with two different vendor shoot-out scenarios, where participating vendors show how their tool was used to build out a specific example. We will have two different flavors here – one aimed at the more traditional transactional example (human & system centric), the other describing a knowledge worker scenario (human collaboration oriented).

So if you are interested – check out the Event Brochure here. The early-bird registration ends on Friday (currently at just $295) and can be accessed directly here. We still have a couple of slots left open for vendors to participate, so if you are interested, contact me directly.

I know I have been remiss in keeping this blog thing going. As I have alluded to before, the reality is that there are just not enough hours in the day. So as a next step, I thought I would start writing a bit about some of the work I have been involved in lately, drawing attention to the growing interest in BPM-SaaS oriented plays. As (if/when) I get permission to talk about these services more openly, I will post links and invitations, etc.

The first one I can start to talk about is Appian Anywhere (A2) – the Appian Enterprise (AE) product delivered on demand over the Web. It has been in private beta for a while now. I have been building the online training and video help for A2 which is due to launch sometime soon … probably early next year.

It has been very instructive for me - firstly, to have to get down into the innards of the BPMS and build actual applications … and secondly to appreciate just how much effort is required. That last point is at the level of developing effective applications and also building effective online training. Along the way, I have also discovered a few things about process modeling and what BPMN really enables (A2 is one of the stronger BPMN implementations), and also what is not in the process model but you need to be wary of.

I have had to grapple with application implementation issues that are really not part of the “process” model. I am really pointing at issues that the user has to deal with in getting their BPM system to present the related data and docs of the application (all deemed to be neatly outside of the scope of the BPMN specification). A2 (and AE) have one of the sexiest (Ajax) forms environments I have seen (I’ll see if I can put a clip up on YouTube). But even that forms environment relies on a robust set of process variables being defined for the process … which of course must be accurately mapped to all related processes and to the data sources themselves.

In A2 you declare the related variables at the outset (in the Process Properties), with a wide selection of types from the Boolean Yes/No through users, people, files, numbers, text, date-time, etc. Even discussion forums, folders, groups and messages can be defined as variables. Alternatively, you can just start process modeling and declare your variables as you need to, right in the middle of defining the process. Whenever, a new variable is needed, there is always an option to create one. The data itself is automatically persisted (although you do get the option of mapping the data to MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server).

Manipulating these variables is pretty straight forward – whenever you need to make a decision, place them on a form, or use the embedded Expression Editor - the context of the variable is automatically carried forward. For example, inserting a text data field into an external database, will automatically provide the text variables to choose from. If the field were of a type Date-Time then the declared Date-Time variables are presented to choose from.

The point that I am trying to make here is that defining useful processes is a lot more than merely the order of activities and the assignment of tasks to individuals. You need ways of dealing with the process relevant data … and that is where the complexity really comes in.

Which in turn points to one of the challenges in BPM modeling for SaaS - who really is the target market, and how much complexity can they handle? There is always the temptation to just keep adding functionality to the process model (as you think of yet another wrinkle in the usage scenario). But the same is also true of the BPM Suite vendors. The problem becomes more “what you want to do/support”, and inevitably the development environment for a BPMS becomes ever more “complex.”

If your target market are really business users without Business Analyst training, then this sort of development environment (in A2) is probably just a bit too complex. But dont get me wrong, if your target market are those people who would have otherwise defined a robust process model to support the build out of a workflow or Java app, then A2 is a doddle.

As a final thought, on this BPM-SaaS thang, I am seeing a lot of interest. I recently recorded a Webinar for Search-CIO which will probably air in early January (when I get links I will post here). Point is that all sorts of folks are now engaging in the promise of BPM at all sorts of levels. My perception is that if we can fix the usability angle (getting people to do it for themselves), then we will finally start to see this BPM market start to explode and be taken more mainstream. In my last posting, I mentioned Itensil who I believe have made some big strides in this area - but they have done that by deciding not to support the transactional process (which is the core of most BPM Suites). They are focused solely on the needs of knowledge workers in their collaborative processes (what I describe as “roughly repeatable practices” rather than “rigorous procedures”).

Mea Culpa - yes, like others in this space, the challenge is keeping the blog going. Usual story of not managing to keep the clones working properly while I am sleeping. Lots of things to start sharing here … and now that I am out from under the endless train of deliverables and trainign courses, I should be able to find the odd bit of time.

The reason for this long awaited posting … I felt I wanted to pick up on discussions emerging in the BPM space - driven by Henk de Man’s presentation at the OMG meeting last week. He was talking to the need for better modeling approaches to support Case Handling (or Case Management depending on your perspective).

Like James Taylor (name now corrected),  I thought Henk’s presentation was also interesting. And as I pointed out during the session, a great many processes should be viewed in the Case Handling context. Readers might also be interested in the papers I produced that discuss these sorts of issues. But really getting at it from the pov of the Customer and Processes - “Business Processes and Customers - Difficult Domains to Integrate” available in the White Papers section of the BPM Focus web site.

The core of Henk’s presentation was that BPMN style modeling is not much help when trying to capture the essence of Case Handling. His own product has a strong Case Handling orientation and uses “States” and “Events” to enable some of the flexibility that Case Handling apps demand. In my experience, the key differentiating factor (between a tranditional workflow/BPMS app and Case Handling) is that the emphasis is with Case - it may have many processes and documents associated with it.

I suggested to him that he investigate Role Activity Diagrams (a way of modeling at how the Roles involved change state as a result of the actions and interactions that occur). This is perhaps much more appropriate for the state based view he was hankering after. The best reference on this is Martyn Ould’s book “Business Process Management - A Rigorous Approach”

But all should understand that Case Handling approaches have been around for a very long time. They are everywhere you look once you get it in your head. Think of these:

• Government - State and local government, NGOs, Police, Justice (investigations), Land mgt …
• Financial Services
• Insurance - Every claim is an exception
• Banking - Trade exception handling, premium account management
• Healthcare - From clinical provision to administrative management and payment
• Oil & Gas Exploration- Knowledge workers spread thinlyaround the world
• Pharmaceuticals - Clinical trials, compound development, marketing campaign management
• Virtually all “professions
• Wide range of Small to Medium sized contexts
• All sort of Procurement situations
• Customer Contact Centers - across virtually all industries, where they validate, identify work items and then resolve … here 80% of all calls are WISMO (What Is the Status of My Order)
• Even the weekly Staff Meeting is a kind of case handling situation if you look at it from a process point of view.

All of them have continually unfolding, evolving scenarios. That is where BPM needs to concentrate its efforts. The transactional space that has characterised efforts to date is really pretty straight forward. Case Handling involves synchronous interaction with users, long running case resolution situations, multiple process fragments, knowledge work, …

Interesting vendors in this space are few and far between. At one level it is big systems implementations such as Cordys, Pega and Graham Technology. But there is a simpler more accessible level that is best characterised by folks like Itensil (in my mind one of the most itneresting I have come across). I am sure, that with care you could implement TIBCO, Appian and Lombardi to build effective Case Handling situations, but it is really a quesiton of adopting the right style of design thinking. And with more and more of these vendors offering SaaS delivery mechanisms, I think we are going to see an ever increasing level of innovation in this area.

I think all those who attended BPM Think Tank regard it as probably the most useful event on the BPM Calendar.

Rather naively, I created Wiki to try and capture all the good thoughts that seemed to be circulating … on the assumption that it would immediately fill up with good thought provoking content. Also, as Sandy K points out, I should have created it for BPM Think Tank 07 (rather than as an adjunct to BPM Focus). But all of that is too late now - one day I wil get the hang of the new ettiquette that goes with the use of this new socially connected medium.

BPM Think Tank wiki can be viewed here.

At the moment, it is mainly the speakers and Round Table leaders who have access … if you attended the event and have a comment or two, please feel free to contact me and I will provide the necessary access.

Just like the buses - there’s none for ages, then all of a sudden two come past in a row.

The new BPM Focus web site has been in the works for some time. We have been implementing a BPM Suite under the hood to support our interactions with members. This will allow us to have individual conversations with members, to customise their indiviudal experience in the site and to tailor the email interactions we have with members (making sure we only send them stuff that is relevant to their interests).

As with all of these things, getting a complex software environment up and running can be complicated, especially when you are asking it to do things that it wasn’t originally designed to do. So, in the next few days, we will have a BPMS underpinning all interaction in the site. The user wont necessarily be aware of it, as they will still see HTML forms.

Its just that even when they select a White Paper to download, or register for a course, they will be interacting with a process. So to change the way the site works, or any of the interactions–from logging in, to downloading a doc, to updating their own details, to establishing a consulting profile–its all a process. And as anyone knows who has had to build processes to support this sort of behavior, there are lots of wrinkles. But I think we have now cracked it, and by next Monday at least we will have the new site up — but in the meantime, its testing, testing, testing …

There are a couple of new white papers that will be available, a sample case study or two (for those who want to submit a case study to the “Global Excellence Awards in BPM and Workflow”). There is also a summary/white paper that outlines the standards stack being developed at the OMG, explaining the rational of each standard, its functional use, where/how it is beign used and the status of the standard.

But more of that next week …

Despite my best intentions and efforts, maintaining any sort of consistency on this blog has proved almost impossible. For those of us who like to think deeply about a posting (as against a stream of conciousness approach that some others follow), the ability to post seems inversely proportional to the amount of work you have on the go. For me, I have had all sorts of different things pulling me in different directions. And it is not about to change much. After a gruelling month or two of travel providing training in the four corners of the globe, we had the OMG meeting in Brussels where a one day version of BPM Think Tank was held (June 27th).

The week after next we have BPM Think Tank which I have been intimately involved in planning and running (recruiting speakers, cajoling program committee into making decisions, etc). But it is certainly looking like a great program (indeed the best so far).

Late additions include the CTO of the US DoD (yes that one), Colin Tuebner of Forrester (doing a panel with me, running a Round Table and lunchtime keynote), Brenda Michelson (SOA Consortium), and Clear Channel Communications. Add that to the existing program contributors …

These organisations are either providing keynotes, case studies or sitting on panels:

• Analysts & Consultants - Accenture, BPM Focus, BP Trends, Capability Measurement, Forrester Research, onStrategies, Weber Consulting
• Users - AFLAC, Allianz, Maritz Travel, McAfee, Nedbank, VISA,
• Vendors - HandySoft, IBM, Lombardi Software, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP

The list of Roundtables is now truly awesome:

• What are the Barriers to Starting a Process Improvement Program?
  John Alden, Capability Measurement
• How Do We Get More Business Involvement in BPM? John Jeston, ManagementbyProcess
• How Do You Organize and Manage for BPM Success? Derek Miers, BPM Focus
• How Does Lean / Six Sigma Play a Role in BPM? Lance Gibbs, Lombardi Software
• How Do You Develop an Effective Business Architecture? Bruce Douglas, Telelogic
• How Does Regulatory Compliance Fit into BPM? Dennis Davidson, Emerging Technologies
• Using BPDM to Implement BPMN Antoine Lonjon, MEGA International & Stephen White, IBM
• Model-driven Organizations: Fred Cummins, EDS
• BPM and the Microsoft Desktop: Burley Kawasaki, Microsoft
• Why is BPEL Relevant and what is its Future? Ismael Ghalimi, Intalio
• The Relationship between BPM and Business Intelligence: Colin Tuebner, Forrester Research
• BPM in Federal Government: George Thomas, General Services Agency
• BPM and Business Frameworks: Joe Francis, Process Core Group
• Metrics and BPM: Michael zur Muehlen, Stevens Institute of Technology
• Competencies and Skills for BPM: Alan Ramias, PDL
• Expanding the Innovation Horizon Using BPM: Angel Diaz, IBM
• The Relationship Between Process & Business Rules: Paul Vincent, TIBCO
• Security and BPM: What are the Problems with Today’s BPM Approaches? Philip Larson, Appian
• What are the Similarities and Differences between ERP and BPM? Dave Frankel, SAP
• Enterprise 2.0 and BPM Mash-Ups: Sandy Kemsley, Kemsley Design
• What Should be the Goals of BPM Standards Organizations? Bruce Silver, Bruce Silver and Assocs.

For those in the know, you will probably recognize these are the worlds experts … who are going to sit at a table with you and help you think and talk about the issues that matter most. Each Round Table only has 10 chairs … and each round of discussions go on for an hour.

So if you are not going to be there … well you’ll miss out on probably the biggest learning opportunity you will have this year in the BPM space. Registration is here.

Well it seems only 5 minutes ago that I was apologizing for my clone management interface not working properly, and here I am just two weeks since the last posting (looking out at a wet and windy Sydney harbor).

Yesterday I finished the first Southern Hemisphere BPM Focus Workshop - the Process Modeling Fundamentals course went down fairly well, and it was good to see a different perspective on BPM. As usual with these things, I discover a new crop of BPMN modeling tools vendors that I didnt know anything about (I suppose I should pay more attention to the BPMN Supporters page as the vendor I had in mind is mentioned there.

One aspect of the Process Modeling fundamentals course that is usually overlooked by folks signing up for the course is the second modeling notation we teach - Role Activity Diagrams. It has become quite apparent that this technique is where delegates get a lot of value. Incorrectly, people assume that BPMN is also associated with a specific methodology - BPMN is method agnostic and is perhaps most relevant when you are looking at the implementation journey of business process. It is less useful for the upstream activity of discovery and understanding of processes. That is where RADs really excel - they are really useful for understanding a given domain and putting a particular issue under the microscope.

What is starting to emerge from these courses is that folks who already think they know process (i.e. IT indoctrinated people) struggle to get their head around RADs, whereas people from the business domain (end users) who have only a superficial understanding of process glom onto it (RADs) immediately. Otoh, the very same people struggle with BPMN - regarding it as just too hard to get their heads around.

With luck, we will soon have a mapping from RADs back to BPDM and along with wider support for BPMN-BPDM, that will provide an effective translation between the two modeling paradigms.

For those of you interested in when-where the next courses will take place - we are still in planning mode there, so now is your time to influence us on location and timing (send me an email directly to miers @ bpmfocus.org).

I know I promised a relatively quick update cycle to my blog - but I am having trouble with my Clone Management Interface (the interface to the three versions of myself that never sleep and are eagerly beavering away at all hours of the day).

BPMN Process Modeling

The BPM Process Modeling Fundamentals courses in London, LA and Washington DC were all pretty much sold out (we couldn’t fit any more in the room). The course for Sydney on June 7th and 8th is also virtually full already (register here). Perhaps we will run another one at the end of the following week before I head back to the UK. Not surprisingly, the Ensuring BPM Project Success course is less well attended (as it is designed for a different audience).

But one thing has struck me as I reflect on the BPMN aspect of the training. A lot of people seem to expect a lot more methodology out of BPMN. In the end, BPMN itself is method independent - that it allows companies, individuals and tool vendors can apply the Notation to any number of methods. Moreover, adding simulation into the mix, while it may be useful in some situations, is not part of BPMN. It belongs in some extended method (which is relatively poorly supported by the attributes of BPMN icons).

Indeed, one could argue that if your challenge is to understand the process (as it is in the early stages of most BPM initiatives), applying simulation to the mix is a complete waste of time as it involves a lot of effort in gathering data about the process and validating that the distributions and estimates of time/resource usage is correctly applied in the model. Moreover, many of these (simulation) models are constructed with the perspective of proving the benefits of the approach (proving to management the benefits in terms of money saved or revenue generated). As such, the modeler is often (unconsciously) constructing a model that is already pre-disposed to supporting the aim … a model that buries the assumptions rather than surfacing them.

In that upstream activity (of understanding the domain to identify the 20% of functionality that will deliver 80% of the value), what is needed is the ability to compare and contrast different perspectives on the process … looking not just at the orchestration (ordered sequence of activities), but also the choreography (the sets of interactions between the roles), and the boundary conditions of the chunks. Because by understanding the process better, the end-users can really identify the areas that will make a difference.

It is in the downstream implementation of that defined scope that BPMN comes into its own as an implementation oriented graphical language. The point is that applying detailed BPMN modeling and simulation too early in the modeling endeavour is inappropriate.

BPM Focus Web Site

Well suffice to say that it is about to go through a major overhaul. We have been busy beavering away implementing a commercial BPM Suite under the covers that will make the whole experience an order of magnitude easier to handle. All those people who are currently on the BPM Focus mailing list will be invited to update their profile, such that we can more effectively target the messages and communication that we send. Moreover, this will facilitate the rapid introduction of a whole range of new services that have been in development for some time. Instead of worrying about the implementation detail, a new service becomes nothing more than a set of robust (BPMN) models. But more on that later.