Practical BPM: Process Variables

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By Rashid N. Khan

The purpose of business process automation is to route the right information to the right resource at the right time, so that the resource can make decisions or take actions. Business process management (BPM) is all about routing information in its many forms. This month's "Practical BPM" column explains the broad categories of variables and provides some insight about what they shouldn't be used for.

Data, documents and images that appear as information externally to individuals are internally represented in a business process as process variables. These variables can contain actual data, pointers to database records or reference numbers to electronic documents, images, voice and video files. A modern BPM solution must be proficient in two tasks:

Routing variables to the various steps where the information contained or pointed by variables can be displayed, manipulated or acted upon.

Providing a mechanism for acting upon the variable values in order to make decisions about the subsequent routing of the process. In other words, the BPM solution must be able to make decisions based upon the value of the variables. This is how an automated business process becomes context-aware and intelligent so that it can make decisions and interpret and enforce business rules without human intervention. Process variables can be categorized into several different types depending upon the routing mechanism used by the BPM solution. The broad categories are:

Local Variables

These are variables that are specific to one step in a business process. They're used for information retention and calculations at the step and aren't transmitted to other steps.

Global Variables

These are variables that are common to the entire business process. They're transmitted from one step to another. At any step they can be ignored, used or updated, based upon the requirements of the step.

System Variables

These are variables that contain information generated by the BPM solution. These may include information such as the name of the business process, incident number, summary and priority.

Status Variables

These are also variables generated by the BPM solution that typically provide information about the status of process steps. For example, at a particular step it may be important to determine the status of another step.

Process variables are sometimes used improperly as repositories for business information that the process is handling. This is improper for two reasons. First, process variables are generally transient and kept in memory in a binary data format that's optimized for speed and not easily accessible to external applications. If process variables are used as the sole repositories for business data, the data may not be readily available in real-time to external applications that could benefit from that data. In case of the failure of a BPM solution, it's possible to lose important business information. Second, the recommended method of saving business information is to use enterprise repositories such as databases, electronic document/image management systems or electronic records management systems that are optimized and designed for saving such information.

Process variables can be linked to content in these repositories so that information can be used, routed and updated during the course of the process and also be available outside the BPM solution in real-time. This information can be also used through process variables to make decisions about routing business processes. The important point is that critical business information should be saved in enterprise repositories where it really belongs and associated with business processes through variables that carry pointers to the information.

Different BPM solutions have different methods of handling variables that optimize the performance of the software and maintain consistency with its design methodology.

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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