Process Discovery & Mass Personalization

At dinner with Forrester analyst Clay Richardson he mentioned that process support should be less like mass transit trains and buses, and more like a Zipcar.   Both approaches can be seen as a way to solve metropolitan transportation problems; both are more efficient in energey use; both save the consumer money over owning and maintaining (including parking) a private vehicle.  This fits well with ideas I have been trying to communicate

Searching for BPMN / XPDL Incompatibility

For you who read this blog on occasion, please help.  I am looking for any valid BPMN diagrams that can not be represented as standard XPDL.  Many people understand that XPDL is a superset of BPMN, meaning that everything from BPMN can be represented as XPDL, while the converse is not necessarily true.  There are, however, a few vocal opponents who claim that XPDL can not be used to store BPMN.

OK.  Both BPMN and XPDL are complex subjects. 

Model Portability Landmark

WfMC announced last week the BPMN Model Portability Validation test. This is a test that certifies that a BPM diagram, of a specified complexity, can be accurately exchanged between tools that have passed the test.

The test starts with a diagram that incorporates all the required BPMN elements.

Model Strategy & Simulation

Most BPM systems offer some form of simulation capability. Simulation capabilities range from the very simple ability to walk through a process, to very sophisticated case-arrival/activity performance models, and even to goal-seeking optimization capabilities.  In this post I explore the relationship between simulation and Model PReserving/Transforming Strategy. 

Model Strategy: Preserving vs. Transforming

It started out as a casual conversation over drinks at the Oct 2008 BPM Tech Show in DC, late in the afternoon, after the tutorials and presentations had finished. We wanted to know: “why is there such a variation in different BPM systems?” This expanded into a breakfast meeting the following morning on the topic of “What are advantages/ disadvantages of either preserving or transforming a BPM model?” We found that most existing systems tend to follow one of two possible strategies. Existing BPM Systems (and their associated methodologies) can be categorized as supporting either a “Model Transforming Strategy” or a “Model Preserving Strategy”.

It was remarkable how passionate people were about their position.

Directly Executing BPMN

The article “Why BPEL is not the holy grail for BPM” presents a scenario for implementation which is difficult for BPEL based products to actually execute. It presented a particular product based on BPEL that was not able to execute this diagram.  What about products that are based on executing the BPMN directly without conversion?

bxModeller Initial Review

A few weeks ago I became aware of the bxModeller from Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. and the University of Salento in Italy which is an open source / free tool for BPMN/XPDL modeling. I got access the bxModeller to see how it would perform. It can be entirely accessed on-line. Nothing needs to be installed. That is certainly convenient. You create projects, give them names, and start designing the processes. Later you export the results as XPDL.

BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide

There is a new book on BPMN modelling called “BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide” by Stephen A White and Derek Miers.  It was launched at the Gartner BPM Summit event in Washington DC last week.

Net Take Away: This is a great resource for those coming up to speed on BPMN.  It uses a lot of practical examples of process diagram, starting from simple ones and working toward the more complex ones.

Notes on Musical Notation

I attended the keynote by Dennis Wisnosky, CTO of Dept Of Defense, today at the Architecture & Process conference. He is currently on a campaign to get vendors to make truly interoperable implementations of BPM technology. He has been testing implementations of BPMN, and found disparity.

WYDIWYE: The Answer to BPEL Transform Problems

I just want to highlight an excellent post by William Vambenepe on the subject of BPMN to BPEL: going to battle with one hand tied? He does a very simple experiment: draw a meaningful diagram in BPMN, in this case a fairly simple one involving an Inclusive-OR branch, and then attempt to convert this to BPEL. He does this conversion and presents the results is quite obviously a diagram that fails in fact to capture the exact meaning. He says he has no solution to this problem.