My friend deals with telecom processes. There is a specificity that I covered before: a lot of coordination between systems and relatively little human participation.

Anyway, he was interested in BPMN and wanted to assess it with a test case. Here is the case as I’ve got it; if you found it incomplete or contradictory, that’s fine and normal for a real-world cases.

A case based on the Star Wars: two space cruisers are on alert to repel a possible aliens attack.

a) Ship paths are plotted centrally and synchronized on the basis of data obtained in real time, aiming at maximum security and full dangerous zones coverage.

b) The appearance of an alien object on the radar is recorded and replicated to the mate ship’s tracking system - this way each target receives its own individual id. When it’s lost by both ships the target obtains lost status - there is no means to differentiate a new target from a target that once has been tracked and then lost.

c) The system that assigns targets to one cruiser or another is centralized and works on the basis of priorities (no matter which ones). The system may transfer a target from one cruiser to another if priorities have changed - that is, each target is marked with 1 or 2, indicating to whom it is assigned at any given time.

d) A command to open fire is displayed on a touch screen display and the operator makes a decision by pressing the button. Even at this moment the system may reassign the target to another cruiser.

e) If the target is hit then the workflow ends, otherwise the failed attempt is logged and the process continues. It’s assumed for simplicity that the laser weapon is used and the outcome of a shot is determine promptly enough.

It’s assumed that the whole process runs continuously.

Rather unusual domain for BPMN, right? So the questions arise:

• Can the task be solved with a help of BPMN?
• Is it worth it?
• Well, the solution itself, if any.

Hope you found the case interesting; I was intrigued.

My version of the BPMN diagram (click to open in a new window):

» read the rest

Unfortunately, the question “how to model human decisions in BPMN” isn’t frequently asked.

“Unfortunately” because the intuitive answer is wrong. This is not a fork but a parallel execution:

After exiting the “Approve Claim” task the process will continue in parallel on the outgoing flows whatever is written on them.

Valid BPMN diagram looks like this:

It’s implied that the process has a boolean attribute “Approved”. User sets this attribute at the “Approve Claim” task, the gateway checks its value and the process continues in one of the flows.

As you can see, BPMN authors didn’t provide a special construct for human decisions but implemented them rather artificially: a special attribute that must be set by a human and checked in the gateway immediately after.

The user interface for the task where the decision is made may look like this:

When “Done” button form is pressed the task is completed.

I agree with Keith Swenson that BPMN misses explicit support of human routings.

Firstly, human-based and automatic routings look alike at a diagram. Yet this is an important aspect of the process.

If it was my decision I’d introduce explicit support of human routing into BPMN. Since first diagram above is actually more intuitive than valid BPMN, I’d leverage on it:

The existing flow types - Control Flow, Conditional Flow and Uncontrolled Flow - are extended by Human Controlled Flow here, marked with a double dash.

Another issue are screen forms like the one above which provoke user mistakes: it’s tempting to press “Done” and get rid of the task without paying attention to the attributes.

If a decision is requested from a human then the form should look like this:

The buttons could be generated automatically from the process diagram above.

Yet it’s possible to utilize this technique for standard BPMN, too:

“Done” button is replaced by “Approve” and “Deny” here, each of them being bound to two actions: set the attribute value and complete the task.

Now I’m going to use this occasion to appeal to BPMS vendors: please give the opportunity to create more than one button completing the task and bind them to attributes. If you didn’t do it yet, of course.

Cross-functional is a process involving several upper-level departments (or “functions”). From a process methodology perspective a BPM initiative should ultimately aim on such processes because handoffs between departments is usually the biggest source of problems and hence the greatest potential for improvement. Departmens use to rate their internal targets above the targets of the business as a whole as soon as hierarchical organizations reach certain size limit.

This idea ain’t new: “breaking down the walls between departments” is the re-engineering call of the early 90’s. An implementation proposed at that time - single radical transformation - wasn’t quite successful but it’s another story. Modern BPM got new ideas about how to reach it but the goal remains the same.

The «functional silo» metaphor is commonly used to illustrate the cross-functional problems. The analogy is following: after a hay silo is mounted one can only get a small portion of that wealth - the upper layer. Likewise, resources, information, knowledge and procedures in hierarchical companies are buried in the functional units - much of these asstes are not available to consumers from other areas and does not contribute effectively to the goals of the company as a whole.

A functional unit tends to come to the wrong view of what is “our business” and what’s not. For example it’s natural for accounting/finance to assume that accounting and reporting is their main business while invoicing is really someone else’s (e.g. sales) and for accounting core activities it’s a nuisance. Yet from a business standpoint the opposite is true: billing is part of the “Order to Cash” business process, most important in terms of value for the customer while accounting and reporting are auxiliary activities. We can’t avoid it because of the governement requirements and our own planning needs yet it does not create value and hence its cost should be minimized.

Accounting is just one example. New product development, building a commercial proposal, customer order fulfillment - there are lot of things critical to the client and hence for the business that can’t be assigned to a single business unit.

Cross-functional business processes are usually illustrated like this:

Fig. 1. Functions and cross-functional processes.

However the picture above produces a badly wrong idea of how to resolve issues located at the borders between departments. It leads to a vulgar idea of the business process as a simple sequence of steps: “do this - do that - proceed further - then stop.” Businesses does not work this way.

Let’s consider the “Order to Cash” process as an example. In case of production to order it’d contain the following steps: accept order - produce - deliver - obtain payment.

1. Process begins when sales department receives a customer order.
2. After processing the order sales transfers it to production.
3. Production starts to fulfill the order.
4. Manufactured goods are delivered to the customer.
5. Finance department obtains the payment.

Fig. 2. «Order to Cash» cross-functional process, workflow version.

Imagine a manufacturing workshop being empty, dark and silent. Now the client’s order comes, the workshop manager switches the power on and everything starts running. Nosense? Sure. But the naive diagram above implies just this!

Now how it really works:

1. Sales places customer’s order into production queue.
2. Production planning starts periodically (e.g. daily), scans the orders queue and schedules production.
3. Orders are processed one by one in accordance with the schedule and after each order is fulfilled the corresponding client order process is notified that the goods are ready for delivery.

Or graphically:

Fig. 3. «Order to Cash» cross-functional process, BPM version.

We’ve got two processes here communicating via data (the orders database) and messages (order execution notice). It’s fundamentally impossible to implement it within a single pool (single process) because the “Purchase Order” and “Production” have different triggers: receipt of an order from a client and timer, respectively.

Same story with delivery and payment: they can hardly be implemented within “Purchase Order” pool. So technically there would be even more than two processes (pools).

Workflow, BPM, and multithreaded programming

As the example above shows, cross-functional processes can’t be implemented with a simple workflow: the boundaries between busines units can’t be ignored because they different units operate at different rhythms and utilize different routines. These boundaries can’t be eliminated simply by depicting the flow of work from one unit to another as shown in Fig. 2.

Technically, the cross-functional processes are implemented by inter-process patterns one of which is shown in Fig. 3. Getting back to the methodology, the picture shown in Fig. 1 should be drawn like this:

Fig. 4. Cross-functional process as a coordinator of functions.

The workflow only covers work within a single function. Once we go beyond it i.e once we aim at cross-functional processes and deal with handoffs between units, the interaction between workflows must be utilized.

Switching from workflow to inter-process communication means switching from single-threaded to multi-threaded programming.

Unfortunately in many cases it’s a tough barrier.

• Some people doesn’t see this barrier. They hit it but doesn’t realize what’s the problem really.
• Others instinctively bypass the barrier by implementing BPM pilot projects aiming at processes like “Vacation Request”. A pilot like this is going to be successful but does it have any value for business?

I believe this is the sources of most of the disappointment in BPM: those who narrow it down to the workflow end up with predictable failure.

Technically, multithreading is what distinguishes BPM from workflow. Remove the interaction between asynchronously executable processes via data, messages and signals and what you’ll get would be “workflow on steroids”, not BPM.

Unfortunately, this is the case with many software products marketed aggressively as BPMS. For me, the main BPMS criterion is the support of BPMN-style messages. There are other criteria indeed but this is the most useful at the moment. Everything else - graphical modeling, workflow engine, web portal, monitoring - is implemented ususally, better or worse, but many products totally miss inter-process communication. Most likely not because it’s that difficult but rather because no one has explained how important it is.

Yet saing “get used to the multithreaded programming of processes” is easier than following the advice. Complains about BPMN complexity are common: “who invented these damned 50 different BPMN events!”.

The name of complexity is business, not BPMN!

Whoever promises a simple solution to business issues, whether it’s BPM or something else - do not believe it. Business is a human competition by nature: smart people are competing for living better than others. Therefore business has been and will remain a complex matter.

The complexity of BPMN isn’t excessive, it’s adequate to the complexity of the business. Students of my BPMN training have no question about why there are so many events: no one is excessive. And by the way, note that BPMN 2.0 is practically no different from 1.x at workflow part - the standard evolves in supporting more sophisticated multithreaded programming: choreography, conversation.

The business can only be programmed as a multithreaded system.

BPM and the ACM

Here I deliberately step on the slippery ground because ACM (Advanced/Adaptive Case Management) fans may respond: “A-ha! We have always said that business can not be programmed!”

Maybe it can, maybe cannot … most likely, in some cases it’s possible but not in others.

They say the percentage of knowledge work vs. routine work is constantly growing. But exactly where is it growing? Mostly at US companies that offshore routine activities to Asia. A predictable observation for analysts located in US. But as soon as the amount of knowledge work grows at one place, the amount of routine work grows in another. And managing routine procedures running on the other side of the globe is the best task for BPM that one can imagine.

I would like to ask ACM enthuziasts that cricize BPM: are you sure you’re criticizing BPM and not wokflow? Aren’t the object of your criticism BPM projects either trying to solve business problems with workflow or having no business agenda at all?

If this is the case then the failure is quite predictable but it doesn’t mean that BPM points the wrong way, it just means the need to more thorough work.

ACM is a good thing indeed but only as an extension to BPM, not as a replacement. Besides ACM today is less mature than the BPM so those who make mistakes with BPM are likely to make even worse mistakes with ACM.

To be continued…

…with the major patterns of interprocess communication and a word of warining about the opposite extreme - excessive usage of interprocess communications. Stay tuned.

• Part 2: Cross-Functional Patterns
• Part 3: Cross-Functional Process Optimization

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