The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard is changing the practice of decision modeling and management. Up to now, it has primarily been used to define model-based decision requirements handed off to developers for implementation in some other rule language. DMN is good for that, and actually most tools that claim to support DMN cannot do any more than that. But DMN is much more than a language for defining business requirements.
[Originally posted on IT|Redux]
The world of BPMS is divided into BPEL-lovers and BPEL-haters, and the thing that BPEL-haters seem to hate most is that the OASIS standard "excludes" human tasks. How can you have a "business process" execution language that cannot accommodate human-performed activities? "Out of scope"?! Are you kidding?
Of course, if you're a BPEL vendor interested in selling to the BPM market, you have to integrate human tasks somehow, and they all do already. It's just that they all do it slightly differently. So last summer IBM and SAP -- two of the biggest BPEL-lovers -- proposed something called BPEL4People, an optional extension to BPEL 2.0 that would at last standardize human tasks in a BPEL process. They published a couple white papers on the subject (here and here), put out a press release, and then went silent. Essentially nothing has been heard from them since.
If BPM is going to be widely accepted as an instrument of business-IT alignment, it has some work to do. IBM developerWorks has an interesting monthly series in the context of SOA. In Part 2: How do I translate business needs into IT requirements?, IBM's panel of "visionaries" mainly seems to agree that the right starting point is a tool called Rational RequisitePro, which IT uses to gather business requirements that can later be fed into BPM modeling tools like WebSphere Business Modeler and IT modeling tools like Rational Software Architect.
Doug Henschen, my editor at Intelligent Enterprise, already has posted an interview with Gartner's BPM guru Jim Sinur, live from their shindig in Opryland. Jim makes some interesting points about the market, but the BPM bloggers on site (e.g. Kemsley, Taylor) seem to be most taken by Gartner's new BPM "maturity model." I'm sure it makes a great Powerpoint slide, but not sure I'm buyin' it. It starts off on the safe side: Most companies, he says, are at stage 1(modeling and measuring) or 2(tweaking and optimizing, using business rules).
[Originally posted on IT|Redux] Edwin Khodabakchian, the brains behind Oracle BPEL Process Manager, posts on a set of possible ?BPEL enhancements? suggested to him by Oracle?s application groups ? eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel? They include: 1. Business Process Outline ? ?Enable business analysts to build the skeleton of a business process, skeleton which can be then implemented by an application composer. The outline view also offers a foundation for self-documenting business process and audit trails.
I'm trying to get deeper into this blogging thing and looking for more interaction with readers, so here's an experiment. There's a new poll widget on BPMS Watch that lets you tell me who which vendors and products you'd like to hear more about. With so many vendors out there, your input will help shape the focus. If the one you like isn't on the list, check Other and say who in a Comment on this post.
James Taylor's blog on ebizq points to another piece on that site which asserts not only, as James paraphrases, that BPM and SOA are no "silver bullet" for the business-IT alignment problem, but that they are at their core no different from all previous attempts to bridge the business-IT gap. Zygmunt Jackowski, PhD, who describes himself as a BPM Specialist with the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, poses the question this way: 1.
Sandy Kemsley wrote a note recently commending the upcoming BPM Think Tank in DC May 23-25, and I want to second that emotion. It's put on by OMG, who absorbed BPMI.org in 2005. If last year's version is any indication, this is the one event where those who really "get" BPM can mingle and argue and generally move the ball forward. Probably as close as we get to "BPM camp." Early bird discount is available until May 1.
I'm off now to do a keynote for Unisys on "The Future of Content and Process Management" at their conference center at St-Paul-de-Vence, outside of Nice. They run their own 5-star hotel in the grand French style for their best customers. I've been there before, and this is really the best gig going for an industry analyst/consultant. After that a couple weeks' vacation in Provence and Sicily. I may not be blogging much until May.
I received an interesting email yesterday re my BPM 2.0 manifesto from a professed "process analyst" I know: Another good one, Bruce? I'd quibble only about the role defs for "business analyst" (a common misnomer in vogue in IT today that should be titled "requirements analyst" since they don't really analyze the business or assist the business in developing strategies, workplace design, etc.) and "process analyst" (being a technically oriented position - when there are already a bunch of process analysts out here and our primary role is doing all that stuff that the business analyst doesn't do?