Process design
& BPMS
PV207 – Business Process Management
Spring 2023 Jiří Kolář
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Lecture overview
● About course
● BPM discipline
○ What is business
process?
○ What is BPM?
○ What is BPM adoption?
○ Why BPM ?
○ Roles in BPM
○ Process life-cycle
○ Phases of process
based development
● Business Process
Management
Systems (BPMS)
○ BPMS components
○ Architecture
○ Human Tasks
○ Business Rules
○ BAM
○ Existing BPMS
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● Introduce the BPM (motivation, use cases..)
● Explain BPM in context of services integration
● Deep dive in business process modeling
● Explain basics of Business Analysis
● Explain how to adopt BPM in organisation
● Introduce Process Monitoring & Measurement
● Hands-on-experience with BPM technologies
● Lead students to the elaboration of a simplified
end-to-end BPM project in a TEAM
Course goals
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Course organization
Fair and equal conditions to everybody
Everything is in the course manual
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y0hIr1VrK7s2O4fMoHayqogJ_ur6YOwmiNyJf1aAW4Q/edit#
Questions resolved by comments to the manual
document (Highlight the topic, Ctrl-M;)
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● The course is “easy to pass”
● Knowledge value is mainly in lectures
● Seminars are complementary & mandatory
● Build your team first week and work in teams
● Check schedule and instructions
● Do homeworks (or you are out ;)
● Avoid Cheating
Important guidelines
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And now on BPM
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Is a Management discipline, focused on
systematic definition, execution and
measurement of processes in organizations
Alternative defintion:
An effort to describe processes in
organisation, measure results and manage
process changes towards higher efficiency
Business Process Management
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● Business Reengineering
○ Enterprise growth
○ Acquisitions
○ Organisational and cultural changes
● Quality Management & Measurement
● Legal compliance, certifications
● Technical
○ A Method for design and development of Enterprise
Information Systems
○ Orchestration of system integration logic
Typical drivers for adoption of BPM:
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● Large enterprises
○ Banking,
○ Insurance Business
○ Telco
○ E-commerce / Retail
○ ++
● Health Care (developed countries)
● Public organisations (developed countries)
○ Courts, State administrative, Governmental
organisations (ex. EU bureaucrats:)
● "Smart" SMEs
○ Smaller companies, where efficiency matters
Where do we find BPM?
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● XX BC Division of labour
● Beginning of 20th century
○ Bata, Ford
● 80' – Total Quality Management
○ Toyota
● 80'/90' – Workflow management
● 90' – Business Process Reengineering
○ Davenport etc..
● 2002 – Business Process Management
○ First BPM technologies Pioneers of BPM
● 2009 ++ AI in process mining, Social BPM
● 2015 Case Management, Low code apps
● 2020 Processes in cloud ecosystem
History of BPM
Picture downloaded from http://www.what-is-bpm.com/bpm_primer/bpm_primer.html
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Definition:
Series of logically related activities or tasks (such as
planning, production, sales) performed together to
produce a defined set of results.
-- Business Dictionary
A repeatable sequence of logically related activities,
which contributes to fulfilment of one or more business
objectives
-- Jiří Kolář in scope of PV207
Business process definition
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1. Customer creates an Order
2. Order is reviewed by Sales
2.1. If price of the Order is lower than 40 000$, it
is accepted
2.2. If price is over 40 000$ it have to be
confirmed by Financial department
2.3. Order can be rejected by the department
3. Otherwise the order is processed
Process Example: Order
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Business Process Management
Management discipline for systematic
definition, execution and measurement of
processes in organizations
Picture downloaded from http://www.what-is-bpm.com/bpm_primer/bpm_primer.html
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BPM adoption - definition
A change in target organization towards the
establishment of a process-driven management
model.
This can, but does not necessarily have to, lead
to the automation of some processes in a
process-oriented Information Systems.
Such systems can be eventually based on
a Business Process Management Suite
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What is BPM adoption in practice
● Organisational and management changes
towards a process-oriented approach
○ Rengineering
○ Efficiency & quality measurement
○ Certifications, standards & legal compliance
● Tailoring organisation's Information Systems
towards process-oriented principles
○ Business integration (direct link business <-> IT)
○ High level technologies
○ Integration of legacy systems
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BPM adoption drivers again
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● Know-how codification
○ Value of processes as a know-how is increasing in
today's knowledge economy
○ Less vulnerability caused by employee fluctuation
● Performance and costs measurement
● Better business-change management
○ Changes can be performed easier
○ Impact of change can be measured
○ Important to choose good level of process rigidity
● Increased transparency
● Outsourcing and business services integration
○ Measurement of outsourced services quality
● Increase of quality
○ Better error detection and exception handling
○ Detection of bottlenecks & weak points of
organisation
○ Compliance with ISO standards (2000X, 9001)
● Better organisation of work-flow /process
○ Higher efficiency = reduction of costs
○ Early detection of problems
BPM adoption drivers again (cont.)
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Organization impact
● Flattening organisation's
hierarchy
○ Elimination of "silo effect"
○ Horizontal job character
Picture downloaded from http://www.what-is-bpm.com/bpm_primer/bpm_primer.html
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BPM adoption drawbacks :(
● High initial costs
○ Technologies & tools are expensive and not widely
available
○ Change is always expensive
● Change in people's mindset is necessary
(it hurts ;)
● Changes in organization structure
○ Fear of the change
○ Fear of job loss
● Agreement of all major decision-makers is
crucial (not so easy)
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Potential risks of BPM adoption
● Loss of business flexibility
○ Too high process rigidity
● Demotivated/Annoyed employees
● High investments in BPM solution
● Inefficient management changes
● Technological overkill
● Non-realistic process definitions
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Questions?
Break 10mins
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Full BPM Adoption
(Including process automation)
● Define Business strategy
● Define and model processes
● Automate processes with a SW
● Optimize automated processes
Typical Scenario:
Mixed human and “machine” inputs
entering a workflow over longer period of
time
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Basic roles in BPM adoption
● Organisation's stakeholders (Owners,
Management, Customers, Partners etc.)
● Business analyst
○ Identifies and define processes that fulfil goals
● Process specialist
○ Model and implement processes, design service
integration
● System developer (Integration specialist)
○ Implements services and underlying system
components
● Process participants (Business workers)
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Full BPM lifecycle
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Define
Monitor
Execute
Implement
Optimize
Model
Business
Process
analyst
Process
developer
Process
participant
● Roles identification
● Business Goals definition
● Objectives definition
● Identification of existing processes
● Process architecture (relationships)
● Reengineering of existing processes and
definition of new ones
● Metrics/KPI/KRI definition
(Key Performance/Result Indicators)
for Goals/Objectives
0. phase:
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
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Identify/define valid and measurable processes
○ Which objective is being fulfilled by the
process?
○ What is the value created by the process?
○ What are Inputs and Outputs of the
process?
○ Which metrics should be on the process?
○ Who is Process owner?
○ Which roles participate on process?
1. phase: DEFINE
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2. phase: MODEL
● Model logical structure of the process
○ Readable by all lifecycle participants
● (BPMN) Business Process Modeling
Notation
○ Graphical notations
○ Portability (Standard)
○ Based on Petri-Nets formalism
● Modeling tools
○ Stand-alone modeler
○ Modeler BPMS component
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3. phase: IMPLEMENT
● Implement human tasks
○ Forms, user interface
● Implement integrations
○ Connect integrated systems
○ Web services ,
○ REST
○ other service tasks
● Implement data model, data structures
○ Connect to data sources (databases)
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4. phase: MONITOR
● Reasons for process monitoring
○ Fault/Error detection
○ Performance measurement
○ Information for process improvement
● Business Activity Monitoring
○ Real-time process monitoring
○ Measurement of process metrics
● Key Performance/Result Indicators
○ Business performance
○ Derived from process metrics
Tracking of business goals fulfillment
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● Reasons:
○ Measured gaps in performance
○ Changes of process in real world
● Continuous process improvement:
○ Detection of inefficient parts of process
○ Bottlenecks, cost inefficiency
○ Design and validation of change (simulation)
○ Process modification
○ Deployment of optimised version
○ Monitoring
○ <> repeat until dead;
5.phase : OPTIMIZE
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Full BPM lifecycle
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Define
Monitor
Execute
Implement
Optimize
Model
Business
Process
analyst
Process
developer
Process
participant
Business Process Management System
“A suite of tools and software components
supporting the whole BPM lifecycle”
Usual BPMS components:
○ Process modeller
○ Process simulator
○ Execution engine
○ Process console (admin interface)
○ Human tasks engine (process user interface)
○ Business Rule engine
○ Business activity monitoring interface
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BPM lifecycle again
Picture downloaded from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-architectural-components-of-a-BPMS_fig3_261489365 33
BPMS Architecture example
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Human tasks
Process activities with necessary human
interaction
● Filling a form with data
○ Notifications, escalations, timeouts, delegation ..
● Common implementations
○ Portal style interface, Web 2.0 form frameworks
○ Proprietary BPMS vendor interfaces
● Often embeddable in other interfaces
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● Rules stored aside from process
● Specific rule language for evaluation
● Evaluated by Business Rules Engine
● Rule + Input data => Output
● Typically IF – THEN
● Rules types
○ Validation rules
○ Transformation rules
● Business Rule Engine often exposed as
an API REST/Web Service
Business Rules
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● Rules decision in Order process:
○ Rule has parameter (40 000$)
○
○
○
○
○
○
○ We change parameter or replace rule
○ Rules can be changed dynamically
Business Rules – Example
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Business Rules Management
system
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http://openrules.com/docs/man_4.html
● Business object: Order
○ id – of an order
○ itemPrice – price of one item of order
○ quantity – quantity of item
● finDirDecisionNeeded – boolean identyfying if CFO's
decesion is necessary
● Rule evaluation language:
○ order_price = Order(eval( quantity * itemPrice ) )
● Rule itself
■ WHEN order_price > 40.000 THEN set
finDirDecisionNeeded = true
Business Rules example:
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Business Activity Monitoring
● Monitoring is important part of BPM lifecycle
○ Monitoring data are inputs for process
improvement
○ Early detection of problems
● Process metric examples
○ Order processing time, Order total price, Order state
● KPI examples:
○ Average time of order processing per day
○ Sum of prices of all Orders for this week
○ Number of cancelled Orders this week
○ Percentage of Orders with delayed payment
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Business Activity Monitoring -
Dashboards
● Monitoring of process data in real time
● Actions triggered when certain metric
value is reached
○ On screen, Email, SMS
Trigger action/process
● Custom set of figures on one page
● Configurable for every user
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BAM Dashboard
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Existing BPMS products
● Proprietary
○ IBM BPM
○ Bizagi
○ Appian
○ Opentext/Metastorm
○ Pegasystems
○ Savvion
○ Signavio
○ TIBCO iProcess Suite
○ Oracle BPM suite
○ ARIS enterprise BPMS
○ ++
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● Open source
○ Red Hat Process Automation
AKA jBPM
○ Activiti / Cammunda
○ PVM based
■ JBPM 3
■ Bonita
■ Orchestra
○ ApacheODE based
■ Project Levi
○ ++
○ BPMN method and style
Bruce Silver, 20099780982368107
○ Business Process Management: Practical
Guidelines to Successful Implementations
○ Business Process Management: A Rigorous
Approach
○ Business Process Management: Concepts,
Languages, Architectures
○ Essential Business Process Modeling
○ Smith, H. and Fingar, P.: Business process
management: the third wave
○ "Schedlbauer, M.: The Art of Business Process
Modeling: The Business Analyst’s Guide to Process
Modeling with UML and BPMN"
Extended books
(beyond course border)
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FIN
Questions?
PV207 – Business Process Management
Jiří Kolář
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