Intelligent Enterprise

Surprisingly little information has reached public view concerning BPMN 2.0, the update of the Business Process Management Notation standard now under consideration in OMG. Unlike most standards approval processes, the outcome of this one is not preordained. There are two submissions, quite different, and it could go either way.

Oracle's Vishal Saxena notes that one reason BPMN 1.x has been so successful is that it "keeps simple things simple" by focusing on abstract business-level modeling, allowing developers flexibility in how to implement the technical details, and argues that BPMN 2.0 "should maintain this flexibility." In response, IDS Scheer's Sebastian Stein points out that a problem with BPMN 1.x is that it "only has implicitly defined execution semantics," and BPMN 2.0 needs to make them explicit. He goes on to neatly summarize the competing proposals:

Regarding TIBCO's first-ever "analyst summit" at their annual TUCON user conference, I'll leave it to Sandy Kemsley to record the actual content of the presentations to analysts. I'll stick to the impressionistic view.

Apparently "the analysts" told TIBCO they wanted to hear executives talk about go-to-market strategy, so we got almost nothing about product and an awful lot about "value propositions." Are there really analysts who want to spend half a day hearing about value props and selling tactics? Scary. But, having lowered my expectations completely, TIBCO's "solution showcase" exhibits — open to the hoi polloi after the analyst event ended — actually blew my socks off:

It seems my last post, drawn from a press release, keynote slides, and mini-briefing, missed the coded messages in IBM's business process management suite announcement. Here is the decoded version.

The announcement of an "IBM BPM Suite" represents a big deal internally at IBM. It is intended to signify a commitment to a single BPMS based on interworking components from separate divisions — WebSphere, FileNet, Lotus, Rational, GBS, etc. It required signoff from all the various warlords — Rosamilia, Goyal, LeBlanc, Bowden, etc. They know they're not there yet, but the commitment to get there is new.

You're probably saying, "wait a minute, didn't IBM already have a business process management suite? Yes, I admit, they were in my 2006 BPMS Report series, in which they agreed (reluctantly, I hear) to let the combination of WebSphere Modeler, Monitor, WID, and Process Server be described as a BPM Suite. But here at IBM's Impact 2008 conference in Las Vegas, the company actually announced it has an orderable suite — sort of…

We have space left in our two-day class Process Modeling with BPMN in Chicago on April 16-17. This is a great opportunity to jump-start your education on what has emerged as the important standard in BPM. The training is hosted by the BPM Institute and taught by me. This is the new v3.0 of the training material, based on BPMN 1.1, and includes 60 days use of what I think is the best BPMN tool around, Process Modeler for Visio from ITP Commerce. We use the tool for simple exercises in class, as well as for the certification exercises mailed in after class, with individualized feedback from me. That part is optional, but that's where you really learn how to do BPMN.

Is there a business process management Hall of Fame? I don't think so, but there should be, to recognize the true pioneers and innovators in the field. BPM's core ideas and technologies come from several divergent fields, and my list would include those who first introduced them — ideas about what a business process is, and what managing one really means. Thinking about who should be in a BPM Hall of Fame is a fun exercise, and you might it helpful in framing your own views. My list emphasizes technology, recognizing those who first recognized that improving business processes demanded fundamentally new technology, often enabled by fundamental shifts in the surrounding IT environment.

My nominees would be:

BEA recently completed a "thorough analysis" of the business process management market, based on analyst reports, articles, and customer surveys. Some highlights, with my thoughts:

• BPM is one of the fastest-growing software markets, projected to go from $500 Million in 2006 to $6 Billion in 2011. When I see $6 Billion I have to wonder what they're counting, but yeah, it's definitely moving.

• Rapidly consolidating, from 150 vendors in 2006 to 25 in 2007. That's just silly. It was never 150, and it's more than 25 today. I would say the BPMS market is still ripe for consolidation, which hasn't really happened yet.

• 65% of BPM solutions in BEA's own survey integrate 3+ systems. A good sign I agree. Being BEA customers, though, I suspect that is well above the industry as a whole.

• Company politics and shortage of soft skills outweigh technical challenges. I agree, for a SOA shop, BPM is a piece of cake technically.

In the early days of BPM — four or five years ago — everyone thought BPEL was the BPM standard, at least for runtime execution. Not long after, the importance of business-friendly process modeling came to the fore, and BPMN emerged as the standard for that. The mismatch between graph-oriented BPMN models, where you can route the flow just about anywhere, and block-oriented BPEL, where you can't, didn't seem to worry BPM vendors. After all, a model was just a model, a business requirements document in diagrammatic form. The BPEL designer would use the BPMN as business input to the implementation and go from there.

Then a new concept emerged, the BPM Suite, which included process modeling, executable implementation, and BAM in an integrated toolset that promised the improved business-IT alignment and agility needed to cope with ever-changing business requirements. Suddenly the process model became more than a business requirements spec. It was actually the first phase of the process implementation. No problem, said the BPEL vendors. We'll just generate skeleton BPEL from the process model, and use that as the starting point for the BPEL designer. Voila! Business empowerment! Business-IT alignment!

When I launched my course "Process Modeling with BPMN," I discussed why so many people beginning to "do" business process management (BPM) were looking for training in modeling, and why that was especially needed for BPMN. Now, having delivered the training, I have a better appreciation of Business Process Modeling Notation's strengths and limitations, a better understanding of what students really want, and what they really need to know about BPMN modeling. This post describes what I got right the first time and where I've had to adjust.

Business process management system vendor Metastorm acquired business process analysis vendor Proforma on August 1, which came as kind of a surprise to me, since the last thing most business analysts want is to have their modeling tool funnel them into some proprietary runtime. As usual, Sandy Kemsley has it covered.

I bring it up only because a graduate of my BPMN training pinged me about a white paper on the Metastorm Web site that disses BPMN big-time while at the same time admitting that the company probably needs to adapt its proprietary "SAR" notation to be more like the unlovable standard. The paper raises all of the usual canards about BPMN — it's too complicated for untrained business analysts, but does not cover all the implementation detail needed for execution.

Last week, I got a briefing from the business process management (BPM) folks at Oracle, as part of my BPMS Report series, and I came away surprised at both the completeness and, in many ways, coolness of the offering. A few things stand out (for the rest you'll have to wait for the report, later this month):

Oracle provides a unique solution to the problems of business-IT interaction and round-tripping. For modeling, Oracle OEMs IDS-Scheer ARIS, rebranded Oracle BPA Suite, and has added to it Oracle SOA Extensions that link it to the executable process design and runtime environment, called Oracle SOA Suite. Modelers can use either traditional ARIS EPC or the new BPMN to model process activity flows, but Oracle favors BPMN, in keeping with its marketing theme of "standards-based BPM." Unlike most other BPMN-based offerings, this is full BPMN - intermediate events, pools and message flows, etc.

There's no denying that BPMN is gaining traction in the marketplace. I see it in my training. I see it in BPMS and BPA vendors getting on board. But what's amazing about this is that it's happening without a standard way to store and interchange BPMN between tools. It almost boggles the mind that the creators of BPMN "forgot" about this when they started, and its current owners place model interchange so far down the priority list (it's still not in the draft BPMN 1.1 spec, not yet released).

At the OMG Think Tank last week, I had a small roundtable on "what should be the purpose of BPM standards?" Not well attended, but it was the afternoon of the last day, and half the audience had left for home already. Besides, the topic was sort of a subtext for the conference as a whole, already beaten to death. But clearly there is no unanimity on the subject.

BPMN is the de facto standard for process modeling, but many leading modeling tools, particularly those incorporated within high-end business process analysis (BPA) suites, have so far been reluctant to adopt it. Now that appears to be changing.

Recently IDS Scheer announced that ARIS, generally considered the leading standalone BPA suite, would be supporting the full BPMN notation in the v7.0.2 service release this spring. Announcement of BPMN support was tucked into their press release on new simulation capabilities based on Lanner's technology. IDS Scheer will provide their own BPMN serialization using the "ARIS Markup Language" rather than XPDL or BPDM, asserting that customers are not asking for a standards-based serialization. Also, they are currently working on a mapping between EPC (ARIS’s standard process modeling notation) and BPMN.

Lacking support for fundamental concepts like human tasks and subprocesses, BPEL has become a favorite whipping boy of BPM vendors and consultants. But for all its faults, BPEL enjoys something that BPMN advocates can only dream about: an XML storage and interchange format that makes sense. It's often said that BPEL is an XML language not a graphical notation, but the reality is that graphical BPEL design tools all use more or less the same notation, based on a simple mapping to native BPEL language constructs: Receive, Reply, Invoke, etc. BPMN has a standard notation, but still lacks a standard storage and interchange format consistent with the fundamental goals of BPMN itself.

I've been thinking about this recently with the announcement from OMG that the "official" XML format for BPMN, based on OMG's new Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM), is in its final stages of ratification. Besides BPDM, Intalio has developed an alternative XML format for BPMN and has contributed it to the Eclipse Foundation. And let's not forget XPDL 2.0, the Workflow Management Coalition's reworking of its old process interchange warhorse to encompass various pieces of the BPMN spec. But to me, none of these proposals is as satisfying as BPEL's approach, which makes the XML format closely match the terminology and semantics of the process constructs, their target audience, and business purpose.

I'm in the process of updating my 2006 Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Report series on BPMInstitute.org to the new-and-improved 2007 version. A major change from last year is a beefed-up evaluation scoring. I've discovered that many users (and most vendors) are happy to skip the 25-page walkthrough of the product and go straight to the scorecard at the end. Which product "won?" I haven't figured out the presentation - it will probably be some two-dimensional appoach, like the Forrester Wave or Gartner MQ - but I'm close to having a finished scoring methodology. It's probably asking for trouble, but I'm publishing it right here so that you can comment upon it.

Keith Swenson is one of the true superheroes of BPM, and a pioneer in the development of interoperability standards. Known for his stalwart defense of XPDL, he periodically feels called upon to insist that XPDL does not compete with BPEL… then usually adding that XPDL is actually better. But I've always felt that Keith obscures the real difference between XPDL and BPEL and their relationships to the "real" BPM standard, which is BPMN.

The latest fracas started a couple days ago when Keith claimed victory in the non-war from the fact that eight of the 12 vendors in the top-three Quadrants of the Gartner MQ support XPDL. Even though a number of those vendors also support BPEL, at least as an interchange format for automated fragments of the process, it is fair to say that vendor support for XPDL is probably more widespread than vendor support for BPEL. So let's stipulate that - no problem.

Sandy Kemsley calls attention to an excellent review of BPEL's history and current status from Oracle's Dave Shaffer and Manoj Das in (ironically) WebSphere Journal. Probably the best summary of the differences between the new BPEL 2.0 and the little-lamented BPEL 1.1 standard that I've seen yet in print. She also notes the seeming fakeness of BPEL4People, a joint SAP-IBM white paper that appeared 18 months ago that has achieved what I agree is the highest buzz-to-bang ratio in the history of BPM.

My sources tell me that IBM and SAP have been meeting actively to put forth a BPEL4People spec later this spring, an activity that for some reason the companies' lawyers have shrouded in secrecy. If you recall my original post on this topic, the essence of the BPEL4People white paper is a new BPEL People activity that allows human task management to be integrated more directly with the BPEL logic than is possible with standard Invoke and an external task management service. That means BPEL4People "breaks" BPEL 2.0 engines, except for those with the foresight to implement the People activity. What, you don't have the specs for that? Oh, that's right…

[This is a re-post of something I wrote yesterday on the SAP Business Process Expert megablog, in case you don't follow that site.]

At the recent Gartner BPM Summit, I was shocked to see how high a pedestal the Gartner analysts now place simulation analysis in their gallery of must-have BPM capabilities. Ever obedient, the BPMS and modeling tool vendors now universally throw it into the box. How else to get into that Magic Quadrant?

But have these analysts ever really used these tools, or even scrutinized them closely? I'm not really sure. I haven't looked at all of them myself, but my sampling to date tells me this is a fake feature if ever there was one.

I'm not going to try to compete with Sandy Kemsley's wall-to-wall coverage of this event. Mine will be more impressionistic.

Simon Hayward keynote. Gartner likes to sell futures on technology. It's what they do. Simon has a chart of the value realization from BPM over time, with three curves. Today the "productivity" curve is highest. In 2012 (safely over the horizon) the "visibility" curve overtakes it. In 2017 (I'll be dead by then) the "innovation" curve reigns supreme. After that, I don't know, maybe global warming wipes out the earth. Does this kind of chart really advance the ball?

An interesting difference between the Gartner and Brainstorm BPM conference is that at Gartner the keynoters assume and universally assert that if you're not going through the whole model-design-deploy-execute-monitor-analyze-optimize thing you're not really doing BPM. At Brainstorm the keynoting class generally advances the notion that BPM ends with modeling and "process thinking"… although the vendors who sponsor the thing really wish they would stop saying that. I like the Gartner approach, but which one is addressing the "real" BPM marketplace?

While I've been shouting from the rooftops that process modeling (in BPMN, ARIS or whatever) is not that hard, Lombardi Software has been hearing from its customers that it's not that easy, either. The tools are complex, expensive, and only a small fraction of their features are used. Collaborating on models - while they're being developed - is near impossible. Making the models understandable to executives or business users means reducing them to a simple Powerpoint diagram or Visio flowchart. So process modeling - step #1 in the process of BPM - is already a barrier.

SOA analyst Beth Gold-Bernstein of ebizQ posts about her quest for a BPMN tool to support her effort, together with Brenda Michelson, to create a "service design method."

Our goal is to take a pragmatic, business-driven approach to incremental (i.e., project driven) SOA design and implementation. We plan to use standard modeling techniques and tools where ever feasible. The status of this project is that we have now defined the process and design artifacts, and our next task is to model out a case study and see if it holds water and to find the holes…. I argued that it was time for business and IT to start speaking the same language, and we should start off with BPMN right from the start.

My recent posts on simulation analysis and BPMN naturally lead into simulation use case three, which deals with Activity Based Costing (ABC). A number of users have asked me if simulation provided activity based costing, and I always said yes, since I assumed it could. But it's not built into the tools at all. This turned out to be a really interesting part of the training to develop. All completely original, since the modeling tool vendors don't really talk about it (or at least correctly), and the ABC literature doesn't mention simulation, either.

Continuing my recent post re simulation analysis and BPMN… In Use case 2, the problem is usually framed in terms of "bottlenecks." Usually static analysis gives you a rough idea of the staffing requirement even without simulation. For example, if over the workday you create 100 instances an hour, and Task A takes 1 hour, you need around 100 people to perform Task A to keep up. But what if instead of creating 100 instances an hour, you are getting 800 instances overnight and your resource for Task A also is responsible for Task B? Then simulation gives answers you can't get from static analysis

A couple months ago I wrote about the deficient simulation capabilities of most process modeling tools. More recently I’ve been working with ITP Commerce -- the tool provider for my upcoming BPMN training -- on enhancing its simulation features to address the use cases that figure most prominently in process analysis. I’ve come up with three, and I’m building my BPMN training around the particular modeling and simulation patterns associated with each one. Use case 1, which I think is the most important, focuses on the general type of “process improvement” expected from scrutiny of the modeled as-is process (whether using simulation or not).

webMethods, which at the beginning of 2006 couldn’t even break into the BPM analysts’ magic circle/wave/whatever, ended the year taking top honors in the Forrester Wave for Integration-Centric BPM. For you non-subscribers, you can get the report from the webMethods Web site. webMethods has put a lot into its new version of the offering, part of the Fabric 7.0 suite.

Intalio, which calls itself the Open Source BPMS Company, late last month announced the donation of a Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) tool and a Tempo “BPEL4People-based” workflow framework to the open source community. The BPMN modeler, donated to the Eclipse Foundation, is now available under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) and is part of the SOA Tools Platform (STP) project. This follows Intalio’s donation of its EMF model comparator to the Eclipse Foundation earlier this year, and complements the PXE BPEL Engine it previously donated to the Apache Software Foundation. The Tempo workflow framework is available under the open source Apache Software License. The project is hosted by SourceForge.

Oracle has one of the most widely used BPEL tools on the market, but so far they haven't shown up in the business process management suite (BPMS) magic quadrants. That should change soon.

Recall that Oracle did an OEM deal in July with IDS Scheer for the ARIS Process Design Platform, the leader in business process analysis tools according to Gartner’s quadrant. At the time I speculated this had more to do with keeping up with SAP in the enterprise apps battle than engaging in the BPMS marketplace, but that’s apparently not entirely true.