Comments on: BPM Templates And Patterns

By: Sergey Boev

Sergey Boev — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 00:42:16 +0000

100% agree with “.. Lifting our noses out of the mire of IT we would see that these words are synonyms with a long use as equivalents in fields such as engineering and fitting with your use of ‘template’.
Еще есть “гуру” от ИТ, которые умудряются разделять термины “услуга” и “сервис” - которые так вообще, одно - перевод другого заимствованного слова. Конечно, мы имеем право придумывать свои термины сколько нам влезет (до тех пор, пока не забываем их определить) в рамках любой предметной области, но зачем плодить сущности без надобности?

By: Anatoly Belychook

Anatoly Belychook — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:51:39 +0000

Max

Thank you for the passionate and much-promising input. Can you give an example of such template? A name, target business and few characteristics by your choice but not just a silent hyperlink, please.

I’m confused by your note about the end-to-end process: it’s what creates value for business, everything else is secondary. What’s your point?

A.B.

By: Max J. Pucher - Chief Architect ISIS Papyrus Software

Max J. Pucher - Chief Architect ISIS Papyrus Software — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 13:08:30 +0000

Design patterns are for engineers and templates are for business people. If you are an engineer then a pattern is for you! For a business person? Forget it! A template does neither have to be an end-to-end process nor rigid. A rigid template is definitely worse than a set of good reusable design patterns. But what if templates:

a) can be created by business users by simple assembly,
b) are organized in understandable goals and subgoals that can be linked,
c) contain EVERYTHING that makes the process executable,
d) can be added to a process at any time,
e) can be modified where authorized and necessary at runtime,
f) allows the user to react to unepxected events by adding tasks, performers or goals,
g) are guided and controlled by policies, rules and constraints,
h) and finally, template modifications are reusable by other business users again?

At this point in time design patterns become definitely the lesser choice. A business user now has several times the creative and expressive power over an engineer fumbling with his large library of desgn patterns. The business user works in real-time at real business problems while the engineer is in the dug-in-trenches of process theory! I ask you, which is the better?

By: Anatoly Belychook

Anatoly Belychook — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:18:12 +0000

John

Interesting point. Frameworks and templates have are similar by nature but for me they differ in scale. A template refers to a single process while a framework should cover all processes of the given industry, more or less.

By: John Reynolds

John Reynolds — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:53:33 +0000

After using Lombardi for many years, I finally spend some time with a Pega expert… and I finally “got” the difference - It’s related to the difference between patterns and templates that you’ve outlined.

Pega has many vertical market Frameworks - very much like your Templates. These are “80%” solutions… Fill in or customize the remaining “20%” and you are done.
Lombardi doesn’t have any “Templates”… but there are several “Patterns” that we tend to follow time and time again.
For example, I frequently find myself following a “Hierarchical Approval Pattern” or a “Parallel Approval Pattern” or a combination of the two.

I think of patterns as proven approaches… When I hear the business person describe the process, I think to myself “Ah… I can use pattern X”.

I think of template/frameworks as being purchase differentiators - “We’re in the banking industry, and are processes are pretty standard banking processes”. If you’ve got a good banking template, you have a big competitive advantage.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:36:44 +0000

Anatoly - this is an interesting post.
While the distinction seems subtle, it is important. I, too, have been skeptical of templates (though I have, at times, seen them work well). But it is hard for many people to understand how valuable design patterns are if it doesn’t mean that they can just “copy-n-paste and edit” the pattern as if it were template. Ie, the “re-use” in the design pattern is knowing well how to solve a problem with a pattern that has been proven over time to be a good one. The “re-use” of a template is using existing code with some additional configuration or editing, in my view.

The observer pattern is often one that you can explain to people - the template isn’t that useful because you don’t know exactly what the technical underpinnings of the pattern are (webservice? jms? db trigger? other? ) but the concept is highly re-usable. Notification patterns in general are good examples, I think, for the non-technical audience.

By: Anatoly Belychook

Anatoly Belychook — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:14:34 +0000

David

Thank you for valuable input. I’m not a native speaker and can’t judge on these two terms usage in English. So it’s better to clarify each time “let’s call a template this and a pattern that”. OK then.

Luckily for us, in Russian they are two distinct terms. “Pattern” was borrowed from English not long ago. There were “behaviour patterns”, patterns in image recognition and now we also have “design patterns”.

By: David French

David French — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:59:08 +0000

While I agree that there are two distinct concepts here, trying to separate them by the use of words “template” and “pattern’ is, I think, a mistake. Lifting our noses out of the mire of IT we would see that these words are synonyms with a long use as equivalents in fields such as engineering and fitting with your use of ‘template’. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a suitable alternative for pattern!