The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) standard from OMG has a lot to recommend it, but it’s not perfect. Since late February of this year, I’ve been doing BPMN training, and through that I have come to appreciate the subtle power of the notation and how it maps – or sometimes not – to the way real business analysts and architects want to model their processes.
The Marriage of BPM and Six Sigma
BPM Six Sigma Context
BPM tends to focus on the automation of business process through the use of BPM suites. Every software system automates a process; and generally every process, efficiency, or quality improvement project involves use of software systems.
Process Centric
“It’s all about process” – As stated by Jack Welch, General Electric’s famous CEO, success in business is all about process.
How to Launch and Implement BPM and SOA Projects
The move to SOA and BPM means that application development can be more modular. But data is the essential foundation. BPMInstitute.org: You are now out on your own. What does BizThink do? Fletcher: We have a unique offering which involves process redesign and SOA and...
BPM Suites Increase Business Agility
The inability of earlier generations of application development software to support effective collaboration between business and IT is the source of a good deal of confusion, wasted efforts, and delayed ROI to the organizations that are implementing new application...
Bridging the Gap between Business Modeling and SOA
I’ve found topics to be more interesting if I can apply them to something or someone I’m familiar with. If a relative has cancer, I’ll listen more intently to news items about cancer treatment. If a friend is moving to Mexico, I’ll think about international events in a slightly different light. I call it the “relevance factor”. We each evaluate information against our own personal scale to determine what to do with it. If we can find some frame of reference for or application of it, we’ll pay attention and store it for future use. If not, we’ll dismiss or ignore it.
SOA Watch: Convergence of SOA and SaaS
Clearly, SOA and SaaS are converging. The movement and direction are clear. Take, for instance, the rapid rise of SaaS. Based upon current trends, IDC predicts a compound growth rate of 20% per annum for SaaS, set against the overall software market, which is only growing at around 6% per annum. This leaves IDC in no doubt that there is a fundamental shift toward SaaS as a delivery mechanism, and its use within the notion of Web 2.0, and the convergence of SOA, Web 2.0, and SaaS.
What’s causing this shift? There are 5 primary drivers:
1. Purchasers believe th
Business Architecture: In the Absence of Standards
It is my observation that there are no true standards regarding business architecture. Ask any three Business Architects and they will likely agree conceptually on the components that make up business architecture. However, you will get three very different descriptions of how to develop and integrate those components.
There are many techniques available for developing business architecture; and a good Business Architect can adapt just about any set of methods to do so.
The Four Dimensions of the Business Architecture
The early beginnings of Business Architecture (BA) development used a business/function process model of the enterprise. This type of model illustrates the typical functional groupings of a business. These groups are further placed into two categories: Primary, which directly relate to the business of the Enterprise, (e.g. Customer Care), and Supporting, which enable the primary functionality, (e.g. Finance). Each functional group contains several unique business processes (e.g. in Finance, there are corporate accounting and asset management).
Using Staff Frustration to Improve a Process
The frustration lens diagnoses the process from the perspective of those who work in it. The purpose is to learn what frustrations people experience when doing their work. You can ask people about these as you create the as-is-flowchart, or you can complete the chart first and ask later. Use the first method if the process is relatively short and there aren’t many frustrations.
The Business Architecture Center of Excellence
Business architecture enables an enterprise to turn business strategy into operational reality through the visualization and resolution of cross-functional inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. Consider the following scenario found in a US federal government agency....