Practical BPM: Typical BPM Solution Architecture

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By Rashid N. Khan

The second part of this two-part "Practical BPM" column explains what you need to understand about "typical" BPM architecture. Part one focused on the business process lifecycle.

The architecture of a contemporary (business process management) BPM solution is illustrated in Figure 1. It shows the tools that are used in the various stages of the process lifecycle, and the relationship of these tools to each other. The architecture is a classic, three-tier architecture that separates the information, the logic and the presentation or user interface into each separate layer.

• The information tier consists of the databases that are used in the business processes and to define and control these processes.
• The logic tier consists of the BPM server that interprets the business definitions, the roles and the rules to control and manage the processes.
• The presentation tier is the BPM client or user interface that enables users to interact with the BPM system and participate as players in the business processes.

Figure 1: Typical BPM Solution Architecture

The organization chart is a tool used to define roles and relationships in an organization. Some BPM solutions provide a simple roles table or scripting capability to define roles and relationships. These roles tables can be cumbersome to work with, and thus are often maintained by IT staff who do not control these roles and relationships as they work at the behest of others, such as the human resources staff. Some BPM solutions, on the other hand, provide full-fledged, graphical organization chart tools that can be used by non-technical staff in the HR departments or other business units where the decisions about roles and relationships ultimately belong. Such advanced tools facilitate separating the business and technological aspects from each other, giving business units the ability to directly maintain their own definitions of roles and relationships.

The process modeler is used to design, document and model business processes. This tool is, therefore, used in the first stage of the business process lifecycle by business process owners to define and document processes. It is important to understand that processes are owned by business units. BPM systems are managed and maintained by IT departments that own the IT infrastructure on top of which the BPM solution operates – the IT staff does not own the business processes that run under the control of the BPM system. The process modeler is the tool that brides the gap between those who own business processes and those who own the technology infrastructure that enables the automation of these business processes.

The BPM developer is a software tool that enables IT professionals to convert business processes created using the process modeler into executable process software that automates the process. Every business process deals with databases, electronic forms, documents, business rules and variables. The execution of operational business processes relies on the facilities provided by application servers, websites, portals, authentication, security and data integrity software. All of these are technology issues that are outside the domain of typical business process owners who are the consumers, rather than providers, of technology. The combination of the process modeler and BPM developer enables process owners and IT professionals to excel in their areas of expertise without being burdened by the technologies or concepts from areas that are outside their primary focus and expertise. Connectors and adapters are software components provided by BPM systems that enable processes to integrate with desktop and enterprise applications.

The administrator consists of the tools needed to deploy and administer business processes. Common functions of such tools include installing new processes, upgrading existing processes by installing new versions, controlling access rights and privileges of participants, handling exceptions by reassigning tasks to other users and the overall maintenance and management of the BPM server.

The BPM server is a black box whose function is to control and process live business processes and related tasks such as notifications and alerts. Since it is black-box software, it has no direct user interface except for the administrator. The BPM server is event triggered; it waits for specific events generated by the actions of process participants, including human actions and those of computer applications involved in the process. When an event occurs, the BPM server uses the process definition, the current state of the process saved in the BPM database, the nature of the events and the user data to make decisions about the actions that are to be executed next. The BPM server then activates other steps, aborts steps or performs other activities to support the progress of the business process until it reaches completion.

The BPM database is used to store information necessary to manage and control the operational business processes. It is the memory of the BPM server and contains information such as the definition of every business process, as well as the rules and roles, the state of each instance of a process, the list of all tasks assigned to each user or application, and the metrics associated with each step. The BPM server uses this information to make decisions and take actions to pro-actively push for the completion of each process instance. The structure and content of the BPM database (also called the schema), is established by the BPM software vendors since it is designed primarily for the benefit of the BPM server. However, many BPM system providers expose the schema to enable business analysts to gain access to the metrics and state information in the BPM database to generate performance-related reports. On the other hand, writing to the BPM database could be very dangerous since it may cause the integrity of processes to become corrupted. Therefore, some BPM systems provide read-only access to the BPM database.

The user database is any other database that is used in the business process. One of the main benefits of BPM systems is that they collect information for subsequent use. Such information can be disseminated to make decisions and take actions based on those decisions. A properly designed BPM solution integrates user databases to facilitate seamless interaction between the live business process and corporate information. The user database is owned by a business unit. Therefore, its schema is controlled by the business unit and not by the BPM system. A BPM solution must provide a seamless method for the business process to interface with the user database without interfering with its schema. Furthermore, it is important to provide access with appropriate security mechanisms so that only those who have access rights can view or change specific types of data.

The client is a software component that allows users to participate in active business processes. It is essentially an electronic inbox that lists the tasks the user has to perform, as well as the status of tasks and other functions that make it easy for users to participate in the business process.

The reports module allows business managers and analysts to generate metrics reports for measuring the efficiency of the overall process, its steps or participants. This data can then be used to adjust resources or optimize the process.

Conclusion

BPM systems must provide scalability in ways extending beyond the traditional definition that uses transactional volume as the sole measure of scalability. Ease of developing modeling, automating, integrating, using, administering, measuring and optimizing business processes are also important factors that will dictate the wider adoption, or scalability, of the solution. By combining workflow and EAI, and by providing a means of extending business processes to employees, customers and partners, BPM systems will continue to require robust transaction volumes.

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

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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