Business Process Technology - A Unified View on Business Processes, Workflows and Enterprise Applications

Foreword

Author’s Preface

Contents

List of Figures

Listings

1 Introduction

1.1 Relevance of Business Process Technology

On the Role of Business Processes in an Enterprise

Establishing Business Process Technology

Beyond Business Process Management and Technology

1.2 Need for Flexible Business Process Technology

1.3 Outline of the Book

2 Business Process Excellence

2.1 Business Process Reengineering

2.1.1 Strategic Nature of Business Process Reengineering

2.1.2 Power Shifts Triggered by Business Process Reengineering

2.2 Business Process Optimization

2.2.1 Combining Jobs and Naturally Hosting Work

2.2.2 Decision Making

2.2.3 Parallelism in Business Processes

2.2.4 Versions of Business Processes

2.2.5 Reducing Control

2.3 Business Process Benchmarking

2.3.1 Benchmarks in IT Governance

2.3.2 Organizational Learning

2.4 Business Process Management

2.4.1 On Business Process Management Lifecycle Models

2.4.2 Six Sigma

2.5 Business Continuity Management

2.5.1 Threats onto Business Processes

2.5.2 The British Business Continuity Management Standard

2.5.3 IT and Business Continuity Management

2.6 Information Technology as Mission-Critical Asset

2.6.1 Flexible and Adaptive Information Technology

2.6.2 Enterprise Application Integration

2.6.3 Total Cost of Ownership

2.6.4 Total Benefit of Ownership

2.6.5 On Client-Server Computing

2.7 Quality Management Systems

3 Research Opportunities in Business ProcessTechnology

3.1 Business Process Platforms

3.2 Executable Specification of Business Processes

3.2.1 Means of Business Process Automation

3.2.2 Inter-Organizational Business Process Automation

3.2.3 Executable Specification Communities

3.3 Component-Based Development

3.3.1 Sub Industry Aspect of Component Technology

3.3.2 Infrastructure Aspect of Component Technology

3.3.3 Large System Construction Aspect of ComponentTechnology

3.4 Exploiting Emerging Tools for BCM

3.5 Integration of Business and Production Processes

3.5.1 Automatic Shop Floor Control

3.5.2 Manufacturing Execution Systems

3.5.3 Current Automation and Business IT Initiatives

3.5.4 Industrial Information Integration Backbone

Arguments for Separation of Automation and Business Systems

Arguments for Integration of Automation and Business Systems

3.6 Integration of Business Processes and Business Intelligence

3.6.1 The Origin of Today’s Data Warehousing Architecture

3.6.2 Marrying Transactional and Analytical Schemas

Application Separability

Completely Crosscutting Information Backbone

Information Backbone Compared to Data Mart Architecture

4 Semantics of Business Process Models

4.1 Global and Local Views on Business Processes

4.1.1 Business Process Definition

4.1.2 Business Process Supervisory

4.1.3 Business Process Automation

4.1.4 Business Process Supervisory in the Presence of Business Process Automation

Dynamic Redefinition of Workflows

4.1.5 Business Process Instances

4.2 Transformation of Goods and Information

4.2.1 Specifying Item Flows

4.2.2 Global State Transformations

4.2.3 Things and Data in Structured Analysis

4.2.4 Specifying Physical Processes and Data Processing

4.2.5 On Real World Modeling

4.3 Exploiting a Business Process Definition

4.3.1 Business Process Definitions as Documentation

4.3.2 Business Process Definitions in Simulation

4.3.3 Business Process Definitions as High-Level Programs

4.4 Events in Business Process Modeling

4.4.1 Strictly Interchanging Functions and Events

4.4.2 Using Events for Expressing Decisions

4.5 Semantics of Events

4.5.1 Persistent and Ephemeral Event Effects

4.5.2 A Detour on Ordinary Language Specification

4.5.3 Managing Ephemeral Event Effects

Attempts to Grasp Ephemeral Event Effects

4.6 Synchronization in Business Process Models

5 Decomposing Business Processes

5.1 Motivation for Decomposing System Descriptions

5.1.1 Getting Complexity under Control

5.1.2 Atomic Activities

5.1.3 Leveled Data-Flow Diagrams

Example Decomposition with Single Entry and Exit Points

On the Notation of Business Process Abstraction

5.1.4 Process Hierarchies versus Process Abstraction

Strictly Stepped Hierarchies

Recursion in Business Process Decompositions

Expressive Power of Recursion for Business Domain-Oriented Modeling

Presentation Issues of Recursion in Business Process Hierarchies

Refinement Hierarchies

5.2 Unique versus Multiple Entry and Exit Points

5.2.1 Exploiting Multiple Entry and Exit Points

5.2.2 On the Semantics of Multiple Start and End Events

Building Hierarchies with Closed Semantics

Building Hierarchies with Open Semantics

Relevance of the Chosen Business Process Semantics

5.2.3 On Reasons for the Restriction to Unique Interface Points

5.2.4 Notational Issues of Unique Interface Points

5.2.5 Decomposition by Business Goal Orientation

5.2.6 Duplication of Modeling Elements and its Semantics

5.3 Parallel Abstraction of Activities and Transferred Data

A Detour on Completely Equal Decomposition of Nodes and Edges of a Graph

Typed Transitions

5.4 Towards Parallel Abstraction of Activities and Constraints

5.5 Seamless Business Process and Enterprise Application Modeling

5.6 Modeling Variants

5.6.1 Variants in Software Service Support Scenarios

5.6.2 Product Variants and Versions

6 Structured Business Process Specification

6.1 Basic Definitions

6.1.1 D-Charts

6.1.2 A Notion of Equivalence for Business Processes

6.2 The Pragmatics of Structuring Business Processes

6.2.1 Resolving Arbitrary Jump Structures

6.2.2 Immediate Arguments For and Against Structure

6.2.3 Structure for Text-based versus Graphical Specifications

6.2.4 Structure and Decomposition

6.2.5 Business Domain-Oriented versus Documentation-Oriented Modeling

6.3 Structured Programming

6.3.1 An Example Comparison of Program Texts

6.3.2 Readability of Program Texts

Further Attempts to Improve the Readability of a Program Text

6.3.3 Structured Programming and Denotational Semantics

6.4 Frontiers of Structured Business Process Modeling

7 Workflow Technology and Human-ComputerInteraction

7.1 Two HCI Styles of Workflow Systems

7.1.1 Degree of Parallelism Revealed to the User

7.1.2 Dialogues Realized by Single Form Screens

Terminal/Server-style Realization

Drawbacks of Terminal/Server-style Workflow Systems

Parallelism Revealed by Terminal/Server-style Workflow Systems

Allowing for More Parallelism

Exploiting Windowing in Allowing for More Parallelism

The Windows Metaphor

Root Pane Serving as Worklist

7.1.3 Dialogues Realized by Multiple Screens

7.1.4 Overall Workflow System Design

7.2 Actor Assignment in Workflow Automation

7.2.1 Interpretation of Actor Groups

Parallel Execution of Assigned Tasks

Preemptive Execution of Assigned Tasks

7.2.2 Selection of Actors

7.2.3 On General Actor Assignment in Workflow Automation

7.3 Form-Oriented Analysis

8 Service-Oriented Architecture

8.1 The Evolution of Service-Oriented Architecture

Services as Information Utility

Service-Component Architecture

8.2 Three-Tier Service-Oriented Architecture

8.3 Characteristics of Service-Oriented Architectures

Discoverability of Services

Research Potential in Service-Oriented Architecture Principles

8.4 Web Services based Service-Oriented Architecture

8.4.1 Web Services-based Business Process Execution

8.5 Service-Orientation as Development Paradigm

8.5.1 Designing Services for Reuse

8.5.2 Towards Massive Software Reuse

Iterative Projects

Mega Projects

SOA Governance for Ubiquitous Reuse

8.5.3 Software Use versus Software Reuse

9 Conclusion

9.1 Business Processes and Workflows

9.1.1 Usual Distinctions between Business Processes and Workflows

9.1.2 This Book’s Distinction between Business Processes and Workflows

9.1.3 Tool Support for Business Processes – Business Process Technologies

9.2 Integrating Workflow Definition and Dialogue Programming

9.2.1 An Introductory Example

9.2.2 Typed Workflow Charts

9.2.3 From Client Pages to Immediate Server Actions

9.2.4 From Immediate Server Actions to Deferred Server Actions

The Semantics of Activation Conditions

Worklist Implementation Issues

The Multiple Choice of Deferred Actions

9.2.5 From Deferred Server Actions to Client Pages

9.2.6 The Workflows given by a Workflow Chart

9.2.7 The Interplay of the Dialogue Client and the Worklist Client

9.2.8 Dynamic Detection of Dialogues

9.2.9 Explicit Specification of Dialogues

9.2.10 Synchronization Issues

9.2.11 Benefits of Integrating Workflow Definitions and Formcharts

Conceptual Specification versus Automatic Programming

Flexibility in Restructuring the Workflow and Dialogue Design

Visibility of Dialogue States to Workflow Technology

Flexibility Beyond the Limit of Client Page Interaction

9.3 Towards Integrating Human Activity and Workflow Definition

9.4 On Closing the Gaps in Business Process Technology

References

Index