The Interaction of Process Modeling with Process Execution

Many folks I have talked to are confused about where to model a process. All the BPMS vendors have modeling baked into them and the stand alone modeling tools have been popular with the IT architects. We find business analysts using either for modeling their processes.

So what is the answer to “When should I use a specialized modeling tool and when should I use the modeling capabilities inside a BPMS”? The answer is: It depends. I would like to run through a few situations where it is crystal clear and others where it is rather foggy. Rather than use reason, people sometimes use the tool that happens to be in their shop just because it’s paid for.

Modeling for Context Correctness: (Modeling Tools Only)

When an organization is trying to model their processes in the context of other process models, corporate goals, organizational structure,and maybe even an inventory of existing applications, it is clear to me that a modeling-only tool will suffice.

Organizations that have a planning culture are attracted to modeling-only tools. The goal here is not to have the model execute in production, though one can bridge to an execution tool through XPDL, proprietary bridges/interfaces and/or proprietary XML. A new and difficult shared-repository modeling structure called BPDM is new option that, to date, few have attempted to use..

Modeling for Process Improvement Opportunities: (Both Apply)

Sometimes business professionals just want to model a process to find “quick-and-dirty” improvements that might mean combining job functions, moving work to other functional areas, or just streamlining the number of steps.

There may never be any automation of the steps and/or the work as it flows from one set of skill specialties to another. Quite often we see business professionals using Visio or using what ever process modeling tool happens to be around as long as it is easy to use and easy to access.

This is what I call opportunistic modeling. This can be done by the modeling-only tools, and a select number of BPMS vendors who offer lighter-weight modeling capabilities. If this becomes habitual in an organization, then the versioning and and merging features become desired and Visio is usually abandoned for process improvement, but continues its life in other forms of usage.

Modeling for Process Correctness: (Both Apply):

Some people would say, “The only way to make sure a model is correct is by actually running it in the real world”. While trying to reach perfection, there comes a point where execution and change become expensive. I would like to suggest that simulation really shortens the time to achieve enough correctness for “time-to-market” results.

This is a tricky balance, but about 25% of folks that I have talked to are now employing simulation. One has to be careful as to how much correctness is needed (good enough or perfection). Good BPMS tools and modeling-only tools have this capability. However, one has to be careful not to fall for the simulation demos that look sexy, but do not check for correctness in reality. Consequently, there are few vendors with simulation capabilities that work on large and complex processes.

Model and Execute Processes: (Both apply, but a BPMS is better)

One would expect that only the BPMS tools would be able to model and execute, but there are ways of providing bi-directional bridges between modeling tools and BPMS capabilities. This is generally very tricky work as the information that gets passed back to the modeling tool is limited and one has to have a flexible process context to accept the results.

Though it can be done, many organizations do it once and give up because of the difficulties of keeping a logical and physical process model in synchronization, much less keep it in a complete business context. With new business agility features and the advent of indeterminate processes (process snippets dynamically bound) for knowledge workers, this becomes a near impossible job, with modeling-only tools linked to process execution tools. It just changes too fast.

Execute Processes: (BPMS Only)

When it comes to executing the process, it is obvious that this is the arena for the BPMS. It becomes painfully obvious that the BPMS is the best place for organizations that feel their process must be agile, plus manage people activity along with automated transactions that are leveraged from the legacy-purchased and hand-crafted applications.

If an organization is interested in simulating with real results and optimizing in near real-time, the BPMS shines in this context. Some people feel that the BPMS represents the real world; not a modeled world, but those people might not like animation movies either.

Bottom Line:

It is important to start with process modeling for quick ROI, but it is also important to project how modeling will be used down the road in your organization. There is overlap in where these two kinds of process functionality can be used. Your culture will contribute to how this decision will be made.