Special Edition: Data-Driven Process Excellence

This Custom Mini-Book was developed to highlight the WfMC Workshop in addition to showcasing the knowledge and expertise of the WfMC presenters. These five important chapters present valuable background information on not only the workshop agenda, but also new content on ground-breaking technologies to support knowledge workers, intelligent business operations and more.

Workshop Agenda

Data-Driven Process Excellence: Leveraging Big Data, Analytics, Process Simulation and BPMN Modeling for Measurable Optimization Results

In this fast-paced, high-touch and informative 3-hour workshop, participants learn how to understand and leverage emerging technologies with process modeling and improvement methods to enable data-driven excellence. An integrated approach to process improvement is shown, combining BPMN with LSS Process Mapping and other methods, supporting simulation, big data, analytics, and optimization technologies.

Taught by co-authors of “The BPMN 2.0 Handbook” and the forthcoming “LEAN BPMN” as well as leaders of the Business Process Simulation Working Group, the materials and take-aways combine recognized best practices and actionable techniques, as well as standards-based modeling methodology and analytics.

Recent publications by co-authors are included in this important Mini-Book.

Presenters and Collaborators:

• Nathaniel Palmer, Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition and CTO, Business Project Management Inc.
• Keith Swenson, Chairman, Workflow Management Coalition and SVP, Fujitsu America
• Lloyd Dugan, WfMC Public Sector Leader and CEO BPMN4SCA
• Denis Gagné, WfMC BPSim Committee Leader and CEO & CTO, www.BusinessProcessIncubator.com
• Robert Shapiro, WfMC Chair Technical Committee and Chair, Process Analytica

Part 1: Empowering Knowledge Workers

These chapters following are excerpted from the book:

Empowering Knowledge Workers describes the work of managers, decision makers, executives, doctors, lawyers, campaign managers, emergency responders, strategist, and many others who have to think for a living. These are people who figure out what needs to be done, at the same time that they do it, and there is a new approach to support this presents the logical starting point for understanding how to take advantage of Adaptive Case Management (ACM).
ACM is ultimately about allowing knowledge workers to work the way that they want to work and to provide them with the tools and information they need to do so effectively.
This important book follows the ground-breaking publications, Taming the Unpredictable, How Knowledge Workers Get Things Done andMastering the Unpredictable and provides important papers by thought-leaders in this field, together with practical examples, detailed ACM case studies and product reviews.

Where is ACM Today? Realities and Opportunities

Nathaniel Palmer, Business Process Management, Inc.

Today, more than a half-century after Drucker first coined the phrase “knowledge worker” (in 1959) the share of the workforce represented by this group has grown considerably, to as much as half of all workers by some measures. So, too, have grown investments targeting knowledge worker productivity. Yet despite this, we remain far from realizing the level of improvement seen in manual labor over the course of the last century.
Nathaniel Palmer shares highlights from his intensive research on how knowledge work is performed and how to bridge the gap between controlled and ad hoc ACM. He explores work patterns applicable to case management and how the emergence of Adaptive Case Management represents the paradigm shift from adapting business practices to the design of IT systems, to building systems that reflect how work is actually performed.

Innovative Organizations Act Like Systems, Not Machines

Keith D Swenson, Fujitsu America

The author asks - do you conceptualize your organization as a machine? If so, you may be led down the wrong path for optimizing business processes. Machines are complicated, but truly complex systems, like an organization, a marketplace, an ecosystem, are not like machines. Evidence for this is both familiar and surprising. It is the “Enlightenment Bias” which blinds us to the true nature of organizations. For an organization to be innovative, you need to design it to be self-controlling, but not constrained to fixed predefined patterns. A new generation of tools is coming to support organizations in this manner. Antifragility is a quality that emerges from an adaptive system. While it sounds crazy, there are adaptive systems all around us, and a human organization is one of those. We need to think of an organization as a system which includes both the people and the information technology.

Part 2: iBPMS: Intelligent BPM

Excerpted from the book:

iBPMS: Intelligent Business Process Management Systems is the next generation of enterprise BPM, leveraging recent technological advances to attain a degree of operational responsiveness not possible with yesterday’s business process platform. Today, companies of all types want faster and better insight into their operations. This growing demand for operational intelligence has given rise to a new, "smarter" variety of business process management suites (BPMSs).
Dubbed ‘iBPMS” by Gartner Group, who describes the intelligent BPM Suite as including the following core components:

• Active analytics (sometimes called continuous intelligence)
• On-demand analytics

Smart Tools and Visual Analytics

Robert Shapiro, Process Analytica, USA

Smart tools of PA Optima support fast optimization by simulation and analysis using only that subset of the analytics required by the particular optimization technique. They are rather ‘autistic’ and focus on efficiency rather than interaction and generality. So far two such tools are available: Smart Resource Allocation and Smart Productivity Improvement. We briefly describe Smart Allocation because the optimization algorithms in it are also used in Smart Productivity. The Smart Productivity Improvement tool is novel and different from all other components of Optima. It goes one step beyond identifying potential improvement. It combines functionality of existing applications for cost/benefit and return-on-investment analysis with the Visual Analytics power of PA Optima; it facilitates the quick assessment of proposed improvement measures.

Part 3: BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition

Excerpted from the book:
Authored by members of WfMC, OMG and other key participants in the development of BPMN 2.0, the BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition assembles industry thought-leaders and international experts. Following the ground-breaking body of work in the BPMN 2.0 Handbook First Edition this book is greatly expanded with substantial new content and chapters updated to the latest advances in this important standard.
The authors examine a variety of aspects that start with an introduction of what’s new and updated in BPMN 2.0, and look closely at interchange, best practices, analytics, conformance, optimization, choreography and more from a technical perspective.
The authors also address the business imperative for widespread adoption of the standard by examining best practice guidelines, BPMN business strategy and the human interface including real-life case studies. Other critical chapters tackle the practical aspects of making a BPMN model executable and the basic timeline analysis of a BPMN model.

Addressing Some BPMN 2.0 Misconceptions, Fallacies, Errors, or Simply Bad Practices

Denis Gagné, www.BusinessProcessIncubator.com

Business process modeling using BPMN requires at least two corpus of knowledge: Modeling knowledge and BPMN knowledge. BPMN knowledge, without an understating of basic modeling concepts and principles, will likely lead to less than useful business process models, while improper knowledge of BPMN rules and best practices, will not lead to any more useful process models.
This chapter addresses the question: what are models? Broadly speaking, we use the term model to refer to any structured knowledge that accurately reflects and/or helps us to make sense of our surrounding context (the term “world” rather than “context” is more often used in formal discussions). Models exist both internally as mental models and externally as artifacts. These artifacts can take many forms: written texts, spreadsheets, equations, diagrams, etc. While these different kinds of models vary greatly in their form and function, they all share certain desirable properties.

Making a BPMN 2.0 Model Executable

Lloyd Dugan, BPMN4SCA, USA, and
Nathaniel Palmer, Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition and CTO, Business Process Management, Inc.

The very notion of an executable BPMN model can generate very different reactions. On one hand, BPMS vendors and implementers may agree, since the majority of BPMS platforms run models represented by BPMN. Yet their agreement belies the significant use of embedded business logic and proprietary extensions to make models executable. Process modelers, however, may question whether making a BPMN model executable is even worth pursuing. They might argue that the proper use of BPMN surrounds other purposes than simply creating BPMS applications. Yet this position often stems from a lack of appreciation for what makes models executable, which involves technical concepts perhaps of little interest to modeling purists. What is often missed in the “pure model” versus “executable model” argument, however, is that the same techniques that make BPMN models executable can in fact make models better.