Process
architecture
& Project
consultations
PV207 – Business Process Management
Spring 2014 Jiří Kolář
● Process architecture again
● Advanced topics
○ Process Mining & discovery
○ Adaptive Case Management
○ ACM vs BPM
○ Process dynamism
Lecture overview
Process architecture - Motivation
● There can be many processes in an
organisation and we need to organise them
● MUNI = more than 100 processes
○ How to identify a processes?
○ How to categorise those processes?
○ How are processes interacting with each other?
○ How to describe such interactions?
○ What happen in case of change (business focus,
organisational)?
○ How to capture process dynamism?
How to identify processes?
● Process is a sequences of steps that “handle”
a business entity
○ We have to identify those entities first!
○ Entity examples:
■ Order
■ Product
○ Process Examples:
■ Prepare an order
■ Manufacture a product
● A Process can “handle” other process as well
○ Examples:
■ Manage a flow of orderes
■ Manage the manufacture of products
How to categorise processes?
● By organisation structure
○ +Naturally easy way of categorising
○ - Does not reflect reality (Hacks needed)
○ - Fragmentation of real process
○ - Silos are back!
● By the “business entity” they are related to
○ + Organisation structure independent
○ + Reflects reality
○ - Needs more effort during analysis
○ - Harder to understand by process actors
● By the process hierarchy
○ But how do we build the hierarchy?
How are processes interacting ?
● There are quite some possible ways of
process interaction:
○ Instantiation
○ Activation
○ Deliver to
○ Notify
○ .....
● Some of them create new processes?
How to describe such interactions?
● Just by BPMN and choreography diagrams
● Process architecture diagrams
From a presentation of Martin Ould ,
Bristol branch of the BCS in May 2005
What happens in case of change?
● Changes in organisation structure
○ Processes aligned with organisation structure
■ Significant rework
○ Structural-independent process architecture
■ No changes in ideal case
● Changes in Business focus
○ Processes aligned with organisation structure
■ Not much, update of some processes
○ Structural-independent process architecture
■ Complete rework
How to capture process dynamism?
With precise process architecture
From a presentation of Martin Ould ,Bristol branch of the BCS in May 2005
Questions?
Break 10mins
Integration centric vs
Document centric BPM
● Integration centric
○ Processes consists of interactions with different
components or systems
○ Main goal is to integrate different systems
■ Legacy
■ External services
■ Different platforms and systems
○ Unification of user interface
● Document centric
○ Process consists of document handling
○ Document workflow can be often implemented in a
DMS with workflow capabilities.
Adaptive Case Management
● Fits for certain knowledge intensive work
○ Court investigation cases
○ Insurance claims
○ Medicine
○ Handling a customer cases....
○ ....
● Each case can be a unique process (ad-hoc)
● Usually document-oriented
● Not so widely used approach
● CMMN (Draft) - Analogy of BPMN
BPM vs ACM
● Adaptive Case Management
○ Processes activities performed in ad hoc order
○ Case (as an instance) is a first class citizen
○ Patterns detection and reusability
○ Document management
● Business Process management
○ Process activities performed in defined order
○ Process (as a definition) is first class citizen
○ Process is a pattern itself
○ Document oriented or integration oriented
Dynamic aspects of processes
● Dynamism
○ Ease of design-time process change and
reengineering
○ Problem: versioning of concurrent process instances
● Adaptability
○ Ability to cope with exceptional circumstances and
non standard behaviours
○ i.e. Exception handling
● Flexibility
○ Amount of partially defined model structures specified
in design time, which allow ad-hoc behaviour in run-
time
Ballance process rigidity
● Processes should:
○ Navigate users to maintaining good practices in work
process
○ Codify an efficient and goal oriented work-process
○ Keep work-process uniform and measurable
● Processes should not:
○ Tight hands of a worker, inhibit improvements
○ Raise work-process complexity and administrative
overhead
○ Decrease work-process efficiency
○ Cause technological overkills
FIN
Questions?
PV207 – Business Process Management
Spring 2013 Jiří Kolář