1. Workflow and related tecnologies
From project to implementation
Corso di formazione gratuito organizzato da
Firenze Tecnologia
Azienda Speciale della CCIAA presso Incubatore Firenze
nell'ambito delfinanziamento
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze
http://www.firenzetecnologia.it
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2. Workflow and related tecnologies
"Corso di formazione gratuito organizzato da Firenze Tecnologia -
Azienda Speciale della CCIAA presso Incubatore Firenze nell'ambito del
finanziamento Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze" -
http://www.firenzetecnologia.it
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3. About us
● Studio Associato di consulenti indipendenti attivi nel campo del
Knowledge Management e del Workflow
● Tutta la nostra attività è basata su Zope (Free Software Web
Application Server) e Plone (Content Management System).
● Supporter tecnologici di e Zope Solution Providers e Large Zope
Accounts (Università, Centri di Ricerca, ...)
● Sviluppatori di Zope 3 (workflow group), sviluppatori Plone.
Rilasciamo come software libero la maggior parte dei tool e dei
prodotti che sviluppiamo (Reflow, OpenSPI, PloneProject,
PloneWorkflows, etc.)
● Unici membri Italiani di Zope Europe Association e membri del
Plone Business Network.
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4. BPM
Business Process Management
● From “data-aware” information systems to “process-aware”
information systems.
● To support business processes an enterprise information system
needs to be aware of these processes and their organizational
context.
● Business Process Management (BPM) includes methods,
techniques, and tools to support the design, enactment,
management, and analysis of such operational business processes.
● BPM can be considered as an extension of classical Workflow
Management (WFM) systems and approaches.
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5. BPM
Business Process Management
● BPM systems can be used to avoid hard-coding the work processes
into tailor-made applications and thus support the shift from
programming to assembling applications.
● Moreover, process orientation, redesign, and organic growth are
supported. (For example, today’s WFM systems can be used to
integrate existing applications and support process change by
merely changing the workflow diagram.)
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6. BPM:
Historical perspective
● From applications built around data to applications built around
processes
● Today there were more fundamental problems: a unified way of
modeling processes was missing and the systems were too rigid to
be used by people in the workplace.
● Most of the technical problems have been resolved by now.
However, the more conceptual problems remain. Good standards
for business process modeling are still missing and even today’s
WFM systems enforce unnecessary constrains on the process logic
(e.g., processes are made more sequential).
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7. BPM lifecycle
Process design
● Any BPM effort requires the modeling of an existing (“as-is”) or
desired (“to-be”) process, i.e., a process design. During this phase
process models including various perspectives (control-flow, data-
flow, organizational, sociotechnical, and operational aspects) are
constructed. The only way to create a “process-aware” enterprise
information system is to add knowledge about the operational
processes at hand.
System configuration
● Based on a process design, the process-aware enterprise
information system is realized. In the traditional setting the
realization would require a time-consuming and complex software
development process. The traditional software development
process is replaced by a configuration or assembly process.
Therefore, we use the term system configuration for the phase in-
between process design and enactment.
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8. BPM lifecycle
Process enactment
● The process enactment phase is the phase where the process-
aware enterprise information system realized in the system
configuration phase is actually used.
Diagnosis
● Process-aware enterprise information system have to change over
time to improve performance, exploit new technologies, support
new processes, and adapt to an ever changing environment.
Therefore, the diagnosis phase is linking the process enactment
phase to the a new design phase.
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9. BPM Benefits
Company
● cost and performance measurement
● quality control
● confidentiality and access control
● adherence to procedures
Client
● response time
● information on case status
● service quality
● agent accesibility
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10. BPM Benefits
Agent
● clear picture of the tasks
● information 'at agent' fingertips
● automatic access tools
● information on context of tasks
Manager
● just in time display of tasks
● just enough informations
● warning system
● measurement and tracking of quality
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11. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
What is reengineering?
“Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical
redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements
in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost,
quality, service and speed.”
Hammer,M., Champy.J., (1993), Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution.,
Harper Collins, London.
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12. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
● Prepare for reengineering
● Map and Analyze As-Is process
● Design To-be process
● Implement reengineered process
● Improve continuously
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13. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
● Prepare for reengineering
● Is BRP necessary? There should be a significant need for the
process to be reengineered.
● Consensus on the importance of reengineering (Build Cross
functional team)
● Planning for organizational changes (Develop Strategic Purpose)
● Understand the expectations of the involved persons (Identify
Customer driven objective)
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14. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
● Map and Analyze As-Is process
● Create Process and Activity Models
● Evaluate time and resource cost of each activity
● Identify disconnects (anything that prevent the process to
achieving the desired results)
● Identify value adding processes
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15. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
Design To-be process: produce alternatives to current situation
● Benchmark processes
● Design To-Be processes
● Validate To-Be processes
● Perform Trade-off Analysis (to choose the better implementation)
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16. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
Implement reengineered process:
● Remove all oppositions
● Prepare a transition plans
● Initiate training programs
● Implement transition plan
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17. BPR Business Process
Reengineering
Improve continuously
● Initiate On-going measurement
● Review performance against target
● Improve process continuously
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18. Workflow Paradigms
Workflow Definition:
● The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during
which documents, information or tasks are passed from one
participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural
rules.
(WFMC Definition)
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20. Workflow Entity Based
● A workflow in which the process is centered around a document,
that represents the task to be completed.
● The task are assigned by role.
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22. Workflow Activity Based
● A workflow in which the process is constituted from a set of
activities (tasks), these can involve a document exchange or
informations, and can be executed in parallel.
● An activity is assigned to a specific user.
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24. Workflow Activity Based
categories
● Pure WFM systems
● WFM components embedded in other systems
● Custommade WFM solutions
● Hardcoded WFM solutions
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25. Workflow Activity Based
categories
Pure WFM systems
● At this point in time many WFM systems are available and used in practise.
Examples of commercial systems include Staffware Process Suite, FileNET BPM
Suite, iFlow, FLOWer, WebSphere MQ Workflow,TIBCO InConcert, and open
source systems are Henhydra, OpenWFE, YAWL.
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26. Workflow Activity Based
categories
WFM components embedded in other systems
● Many software packages embed a generic workflow component whose functionality
is comparable to the pure WFM systems. For example, most ERP systems provide
a workflow component. SAP WebFlow is the workflow component of SAP offering
all the functionality typically present in traditional standalone WFM products.
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27. Workflow Activity Based
categories
Custommade WFM solutions
● Many organizations, e.g., banks and insurance companies, have chosen not to use a
commercially available WFM solution but build an organizationspecific solution.
These solutions typically only support a subset of the functionality offered by the
first two categories. Nevertheless, these systems support the definition and
execution of different workflows.
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28. Workflow Activity Based
categories
Hardcoded WFM solutions
● The last category refers to the situation were the processes are hardcoded in the
applications, i.e., there is no generic workflow support but applications are coupled
in such a way that a specific process is supported. The only way to change a process
is to change the applications themselves, i.e., unlike the first three categories there
is no component that is processaware. Note that in these hardcoded system an
explicit orchestration layer is missing.
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30. Petri net
Definition:
A Petri net is a triple (P, T , F ):
● P is a finite set of places,
● T is a finite set of transitions (P ∩ T = ∅),
● F ⊆ (P × T ) ∪ (T × P ) is a set of arcs (flow relation)
(1) A transition t is said to be enabled if each input place p of t
contains at least one token.
(2) An enabled transition may fire. If transition t fires, then t
consumes one token from each input place p of t and produces
one token for each output place p of t.
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31. Petri net: WFnet
Definition:
A Petri net PN = (P, T , F ) is a WF-net (Workflow net) if and only if:
(i) There is one source place i ∈ P such that •i = Ø.
(ii) There is one sink place o ∈ P such that o• = ∅Ø.
(iii) Every node x ∈ P ∪ T is on a path from i to o.
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32. Petri net: WFnet
Tasks are modeled by transitions and causal dependencies are
modeled by places and arcs. In fact:
A place corresponds to a condition which can be used as pre- and/or
post-condition for tasks.
An AND-split corresponds to a transition with two or more output
places,
An AND-join corresponds to a transition with two or more input
places.
OR-splits/OR-joins correspond to places with multiple
outgoing/ingoing arcs.
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38. BPMN
● A notation that is readily understandable, from the business
analysts to the technical developers
● A standard graphical notation that ensure a common language
● To show the flow of data between activities
● Applicable only to business processes (not organizational
structures, resources, data models and strategy)
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57. Workflow Patterns
● Identify flow of execution control:
● sequence
● choice
● parallelism
● synchronization
● ....
● Patterns as way to compare workflow engines
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58. Workflow Patterns: problems
● Different language semantics
● multiple instances of an activity
● loops with one entry and one exit point
● explicit termination of activity and process
or not?
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60. References
● Business Process Management Demystified: A Tutorial on Models, Systems
and Standards for Workflow Management - W.M.P. van der Aalst
● Workflow Management in the Internet Age - C. MOHAN
● BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING: A CONSOLIDATED METHODOLOGY -
Subramanian Muthu, Larry Whitman, and S. Hossein Cheraghi
● BPMN Fundamentals (slide) - Prepared by Stephen A. White, IBM
● Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
● YAWL: Yet Another Workflow Language - W.M.P. van der Aalst, and A.H.M.
ter Hofstede
● Workflow Management Coalition The Workflow Reference Model - David
Hollingsworth
● Workflow Patterns - W.P.M van der Aalst, A.H.M ter Hofstede, B.
Kiepuszewski, and A.P.Barrose
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61. References
● Yet Another Workflow Language: http://www.yawl.fit.qut.edu.au/
● Workflow Patterns: http://is.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/
● Flash animations of workflow patterns:
http://is.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/flash_animations.htm
● Workflow management coalition: http://www.wfmc.org/
● Business process management initiative: http://www.bpmi.org/
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