Achieving synergy between BPM, SOA and EA

ICEIMT 2009 BLED WORKSHOP, DECEMBER 2009

ACHIEVING SYNERGY BETWEEN BPM, SOA AND EA

Dr Alexander Samarin

www.samarin.biz

WWW.SAMARIN.BIZ

About me

• An enterprise solutions architect– From a programmer to a systems architect – Experience in scientific, international, governmental and

industry environments– Creator of systems which work without me– Practical adviser for design and implementation of

enterprise solutions

• Current specialisation is improving business process management systems

• Book (just published)www.improving-BPM-systems.com/book

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• My “axioms”– Permanent improvement of enterprise efficiency and

effectiveness is mandatory

– Provide for enterprise evolution via a feed-back loop

– To choose the best possible improvement, it is necessary to have good information about the functioning of the enterprise

– To implement a selected improvement, it is necessary to be sure that modifications are feasible

– An enterprise is a complex and dynamic system

• The goal – principles and practices of rational construction of enterprise business systems

The scope

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– top managers– enterprise architects– business line managers– process owners– super-users– normal users– project managers– business analysts– IT managers– IT architects– IT developers

Many internal stakeholders

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• Business artefacts– events– processes– activities– roles– rules– data & documents– audit trails– performance indicators– services

• Technical artefacts

Numerous enterprise artefacts

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KPIs

Processes

Services

Events

Roles Data structures

Documents

Rules

Human “workflow”

Audit trails

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• Dynamic set of artefacts• Artefacts are interconnected and interdependent• We have to anticipate potential changes:

– policies, compliance, technology, etc.

• Implementation of such changes necessitates the evolution of some artefacts and the relationships between them

• It must be easy to modify all artefacts and relationships without causing any negative effects

System architecture view of an enterprise

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• Different estimations of the development/maintenance life-cycle cost ratio

Enterprise business systems need to be adaptive

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95 %

5 %

40 %

60 %

80 %

20 %

1 – Estimated average in the IT industry2 – A real scenario (governmental client)3 – Estimated by an IT staff member

maintenance

development

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• All artefacts must be versionable throughout their life-cycle

• All artefacts must be evolved to become – digital

– externalised

– virtual

– components of clouds

• All relationships between these artefacts are modelled explicitly

• All models are made to be executable

Main principles

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• More knowledge about the functioning of the enterprise

• More predictable results• More rational decisions• More comprehensive optimisation

• Executable models are also– testable

– platform-independent

Advantages of executable models

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• Who (roles) is doing What (business objects), When (coordination of activities), Why (business rules), How (business activities) and with which Results (performance indicators)

• Make these relationships explicit and executable

What you model is what you execute

Business processes are complex relationships between artefacts

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Business Process Management (BPM) is a tool for improving enterprise business performance

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BPM as a discipline

BPM as software:BPM suite (BPMS)

Any process-centric enterprise has some BPM, but how can we industrialise this BPM?

A natural evolution of BPR, Lean, ISO 9001, 6 Sigma

BPM allows you to model, automate, execute, control, measure and optimize the flow of business activities that span your enterprise’s systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond your corporate boundaries

The aim is to have a single description of business processes:

•model in design•input for project planning and execution•executable program for coordination of work•documentation for all staff members

An enterprise portfolio of the business processes as well as the practices and tools for governing the design, execution and evolution of this portfolio

A multitude of tools “handle” processes

BPM is vendor-centric, not customer-centric

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Process-oriented view of an enterprise

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BPM discipline view of an enterprise

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• Definition– architectural approach for constructing

software-intensive systems from a setof universally interconnected and interdependent services (operationally independent functional units)

• Advantages– use of standard and pre-fabricated building blocks

– high level of system flexibility

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

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• BPM, by revealing the artefacts and the relationships between them, provides the necessary context (e.g. granularity) for the definition of services

• SOA provides recommendationsfor the implementation, execution and governance of services

Synergy between BPM and SOA

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• Definition– set of principles, practices, and tools which provides

guidance and practical help for the design and evolution of en enterprise to achieve its vision and strategy

• “Enterprise genotype” (a full nomenclature of enterprise artefacts) – classic EA

• “Enterprise phenotype” (a set of observable characteristics such as performance)

• Formal genotype–phenotype link via “enterprise executable model” – EA enhanced by BPM and SOA

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a tool for the design of future states

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• Main technologies– Business Process Management (BPM)

– Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• Other technologies– ECM, BEM, BI, BRM, MDM, ESB, BAM, ITIL, …

• Organic integration with– Enterprise architecture (EA)

– Project management practices

• Principles for design of flexible systems

Architectural framework – a coherent set of existing technologies

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• Situation (year 1999)– 3 000 complex technical documents per year– Word + SGML/XML + PDF publishing– in-house system: usine à gaz with several repositories– a lot of “manual” integration and coordination work – most of the IT staff are busy with BUG2000

• Tasks– reduce amount of “manual” work – simplify work – make suitable for less-qualified staff members– maintain the same quality– work without classic user specifications– progress via small iterations of new system

Example – a complex production system in place for several years (1)

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• A “BPM” tool– workflow engine from an off-the-shelf product

– mixture of human and automated tasks

– external agents for carrying out automated tasks

– use of a dynamic language (Jython)

• An “SOA” tool– CORBA implementation in Java

– standard interface for most services

– composition of services in Java, Jython, shell

• Externalisation of events (from existing repositories)


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• Architecting for flexibility• Versioning of everything• Coordination of services via forms and processes• Comprehensive and constant monitoring of services


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• Incremental transformation from typical inter-application data flows to end-to-end coordination of services


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• Result– high user satisfaction– faster and better ROI– several times less resources required for maintenance

and evolution– migrations made easy – several successfully undertaken– real agility achieved

• micro-projects – agile implementations of new features• meta-projects – architectural framework governance for the

management of many micro-projects

– in production now for 10 years


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• Situation– 30 different tools in use for electronic publishing

– 2 years of heated discussions without a decision

• Task– define criteria for the selection of a single tool

• Action– modelling of business processes to determine common

services

• Result (after several meetings)– an agreed list of services acting as selection criteria

Example – selection of a single tool

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• Classification of BPM artefacts • A modelling procedure

– four-phase guidance to produce executable models

– diagramming style

– naming conventions

– several practical patterns

• Promotion of joint work between the business and the IT

• Quick iterations for building an operational prototype

Example – prototyping for better understanding

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Example – e-Government implementation

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Government

Partners

Internal existing

application

Coordination and integration (BPM/SOA-based)

e-Government

Collaborative extranet (ECM-based)between partners and government

e-gov service

e-gov service

e-gov service

Internal existing

application

Coordination (BPM/SOA-based)

service service

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• An MIS for a governmental agency • High level of flexibility explicitly required• Budget 4,5 MCHF• About 10 offers

Some contenders:• Classic development – 17 MCHF• ERP hidden under workflow – 4 MCHF • BPM-based – 2,5 MCHF

Example – BPM-based management information system

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• Use of the architectural framework reduces the complexity

• Based on a BPM reference model• Addresses the needs of the most difficult

aspect – people• Use of explicit and executable models• Business process modelling in BPMN• Quick prototyping• Guidelines for usage of different technologies• Link with enterprise architecture

Main advantages of the architectural framework

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Thank you!

Contact information:

Alexander Samarin

[email protected]

www.improving-BPM-systems.com

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