With the imminent launch of version 11 of the Trisotech platform, I am happy to announce a new version of my DMN Method and Style training, effective immediately. Previously I offered two courses, DMN Basics and DMN Advanced, in which the focus of DMN Basics was top-down logic decomposition using Decision Requirements Diagrams (DRDs) and the proper use of decision tables, including hit policy. Unfortunately, the features of DMN most important in real projects, including Business Knowledge Models (BKMs), contexts, and FEEL, were left to the Advanced course.
Recently I viewed a DecisionCamp presentation on an application of DMN to a public-facing portal in the Netherlands for what we call in the USA building permits. Here is the link. The scope of the project is impressive, combining regulations defined at the national, provincial, and municipal level, plus those of special districts. The ultimate decision on what kind of permit is required depends on not only the location of the property but the nature of the property improvement.
Here's a thought: What if the greatest opportunity for DMN is not decision management? Over the past year, I have come to this conclusion, and that greener pastures lie in the direction of Low-Code Business Logic. Its addressable market is far larger, and there is less organized resistance among incumbent vendors than DMN faces in its home territory. In fact, I will assert that DMN should be considered the standard for Low-Code Business Logic.
By:
Bruce Silver
February 14, 2022
dmn
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Interest in Business Automation is being accelerated by the thousands of public REST APIs available from countless service providers. Most are available on a Freemium basis - free low-volume use for development, with a modest monthly fee for production use. The Trisotech Low-Code Business Automation platform lets you incorporate these services in your BPMN models without programming. You just need to configure a connection to them using the model's Operation Library.
In BPMN Method and Style, which deals with non-executable models, we don't worry about process data. It's left out of the models entirely. We just pretend that any data produced or received by process tasks is available downstream. In Business Automation, i.e., executable BPMN, that's not the case. Process data is not pervasive, available automatically wherever it's needed. Instead it "flows", point to point, between process variables shown in the diagram and process tasks.
A couple weeks ago my attention was called to a LinkedIn post, one of those clickbait polls: "Is BPMN the standard? Do you use it? Would you expect it from others?" About 65% said Yes, but naturally the haters clogged the comment thread. Of most interest to me was a comment by Alec Sharp, a respected process modeling consultant, who says... BPMN is what I call a "claimed standard"... in practice rarely followed, at least as intended.
BPMN has an element that looks very much like a subprocess, except drawn with a thick border. Perhaps you have used it yourself... probably incorrectly. Its name is call activity, and it is similar in several ways to a subprocess, but it is not the same. Both elements are important, but valuable for different reasons. This post will explain. Call activity and subprocess share important characteristics. Both are simultaneously a single activity and an activity flow from start event to end event.
Debugging executable processes can be a challenge because, unlike DMN models, you cannot test them in the Modeler. You need to compile and deploy them first, and problems are often reported as runtime errors. Until fairly recently, to zero in on the problem you needed to isolate it in a small fragment of the process by saving various fragments as test processes, compiling and deploying them, and running them with reconstructed input values.
In my Low-Code Business Automation methodology, the first step is something I call whiteboarding - developing examples of the logic created in Excel with an eye toward generalizing the logic to handle any possible example and then translating to DMN. This is actually the hardest part of the project, and the only part requiring subject matter expertise. The rest of it is purely mechanical. In the beta testing of my Business Automation training, some students have complained about the difficulty of doing this.
By:
Bruce Silver
September 30, 2021
dmn
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In recent posts, I have explained why anyone who can create rich spreadsheet models using Excel formulas can learn to turn those into Low-Code Business Automation services on the Trisotech platform, using BPMN and DMN, and why FEEL and boxed expressions are actually more business-friendly than PowerFX, the new name for Excel's formula language. That's the why. Now let's discuss the how. In recent client engagements, I've noticed a consistent pattern: A subject-matter expert has a great new product idea, which he or she can demonstrate in Excel.
