Practical BPM: Sub-Process Steps

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By Rashid N. Khan

In many business processes it's often necessary for a parent process to call a child process. There are two reasons for this. First, one process may need to invoke another process owned by a different organization. In the example below, the Purchase Order process has to call a Parts Receiving process that is owned by the shipping and receiving department. Second, a business process may simply be too big. In this case it may be necessary to chunk or break up a complex process into manageable sub-processes.

Figure 1: A process calling a sub-process.

A sub-process step -- the subject of this month's column -- is used in business process management (BPM) to represent and invoke a series of tasks that are performed by a sub-process. The sub-process may consist of one or more processes since sub-processes may call other sub-processes. When a parent process calls a sub-process, a new incident of a sub-process is invoked in response. Data from the parent process is passed to the subprocess that uses it for routing and decision-making. When the sub-process is complete, data from the sub-process is returned to the parent process.

Properties of a Sub-Process Step

Sub-process steps have properties that include the following:

Recipient

This is the name of the sub-process that will be invoked at this step. It must be the name of another valid process.

Type

Sub-processes may be invoked synchronously or asynchronously. If a sub-process is invoked synchronously, the parent process waits at the sub-process step until the sub-process has been completed. In the asynchronous case, the process continues with subsequent steps without waiting for the sub-process to complete. This provides greater flexibility in automating business processes.

Repeat Count

In many cases it's desirable to launch a sub-process multiple times, a feature also called "repeating sub-processes." An example of one such business process is provided below. The "repeat count" specifies the number of instances the sub-process will be invoked by the subprocess step.

Figure 2: Calling a sub-process repeatedly.

A common business process is used to illustrate the use of "repeat count," and there are many examples of other business processes that have the same requirement. Every company has some form of performance review process for all employees on an annual or bi-annual basis. In many companies the normal process is that every month all employees whose anniversaries fall in that month are reviewed. This process actually consists of two separate processes:

1. At the start of the month, a Human Resource staff member creates a list of all employees whose anniversaries fall in that month. This list may have none, one or many employees.
2. For each employee in the list, the performance review process is initiated.

To implement this process requires the use of repeating sub-processes and may be implemented as illustrated in the figure. It consists of two processes: the Monthly Review List process and the Employee Review process, which is invoked by the former as a repeating sub-process. The Monthly Review List process is configured for periodic launch. It starts automatically on the first day of each month. The second step of this process is a Database step. In this step a database query is used to generate a list of all employees whose reviews are due in the current month, pertinent employee information and the name of their supervisors. The third step of the process is a repeating sub-process step. In this step, an Employee Review process is launched for each employee on the list.

Useful Links

This article is an excerpt from Rashid Khan's Business Process Management: A Practical Guide. Order your copy here:
http://www.bpmenterprise.com/yDQ

Ultimus
http://www.ultimus.com

About the Author:

Rashid N. Khan is the founder and Chief Technical and Strategy Officer of Ultimus Inc., a pioneer in business process management and workflow automation. Prior to establishing Ultimus, founded Sintech Inc., a leader in advanced software for mechanical testing. Rashid sold Sintech to MTS Systems in 1989, where he worked for a five years as a vice president and general manager. During this period he took the company through ISO 9000 certification. This experience made him aware of the need for business process management and workflow automation. Rashid obtained two undergraduate degrees from MIT in computer science and political science. Khan is the author of Business Process Management: A Practical Guide, has published numerous articles and spoken at a number of events. Contact Rashid N. Khan at info (at) ultimus.com or visit http://www.ultimus.com.

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