VOSibilities

The topic for CTO Tuesdays, the BPMS podcast, for Tuesday, March 30, 2010 is “Email-based approvals in a BPMS.”

One of the most common tasks in business processes is to request that something be approved or denied. In some cases, it is appropriate to request approvals by email rather than require that the approver log into a task management system. This talk will show how to include such approval tasks in business processes.

Register to join us live at http://www.activevos.com/ctot.

What is CTO Tuesdays?

CTO Tuesdays is about the technology of BPM. Because Active Endpoints believes that people need to change the way they do things, it’s up to us to help them understand what they need to in order to have them welcome that change. BPM technology is a new thing for many people…and we have an obligation to educate users about this new way of thinking and doing. So, each week we tackle a single topic in some depth – but limit the technical discussion to 30 minutes or so. The idea is to give people enough to tickle their curiosity and allow them to explore more on their own. 30 minutes is about right because, once you strip away the novelty, BPM concepts are just not that hard. The BPM technical talk is followed by a lively panel Q&A. CTO Tuesdays is not an ActiveVOS commercial – though when we illustrate a concept in the podcast, we obviously use ActiveVOS.

We are very pleased to present a replay of a webinar we hosted featuring Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Principal Analyst Randy Heffner and Michael Rowley, CTO, Active Endpoints, Inc. titled SOA, BPM and building your digital business.

Originally recorded on March 25, 2010, this webinar explains what a digital business is and describes the technological approaches that are possible to achieving digital processes using SOA and BPM. A demonstration of the ActiveVOS BPMS is given to illustrate some of the concepts of a digital business. A stimulating Q&A with attendees follows.

There are multiple formats attached to this post, including a Flash version that can be streamed from the blog.

 VOSibilities podcast #46: SOA, BPM and building your digital business [78:55m]: Download (403)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #46: SOA, BPM and building your digital business [78:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (442)

 VOSibilities podcast #46: SOA, BPM and building your digital business [78:59m]: Download (132)

Episode 17 of CTO Tuesdays covers BPMS support for long-running business transactions and compensation. Michael Rowley compares and contrasts BPMS support for transactions with that of transaction managers and describes how compensation can be applied to business transactions.

This episode is the second of two on persistence and compensation. If you haven’t seen the previous episode, you might find it interesting to review before watching this one.

Four files are attached to this post. Three are video recordings of the podcast in different formats; the fourth is a PDF of the slides Rowley presented.

Please be sure to sign up for our next CTO Tuesdays, scheduled for March 30, 2010 at noon ET. The topic will be “Handling approvals by email in business processes.”

 

 CTO Tuesdays #17: How BPMSs support long-running business transactions: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (295)

 CTO Tuesdays #17: How BPMSs support long-running business transactions [48:32m]: Download (462)

 CTO Tuesdays #17: How BPMSs support long-running business transactions [48:29m]: Download (431)

 CTO Tuesdays #17: How BPMSs support long-running business transactions: Download (179)

Read about BIRT reporting in ActiveVOS in this story from a recent issue of Perform Magazine. Our Sr. Director of Products, Luc Clément, was interviewed for this story. Luc describes how BIRT reporting leverages a BPMS’s capabilities to deliver visibility into business operations.

You can see ActiveVOS in the BIRT marketplace here.

 Perform Magazine: Using BIRT in ActiveVOS: Download (312)

Please believe me when I say, I am not trying to use $5.00 words just because I can.

But one I read recently in the paper that had me running for a dictionary– shibboleth — got me to thinking about one of the biggest, most often repeated fictions in BPM. What am I talking about? The idea that end users can, will and want to create their own executable process models.

Wiktionary defines shibboleth as “A common or longstanding belief, custom, or catchphrase associated with a particular group, especially one with little current meaning or truth.” WordNet at princeton.edu is even more blunt in defining shibboleth: “A favorite saying of a sect or political group.”

Both definitions capture the wishful thinking, IT-bashing and counter-organizational thinking inherent in the dogma that business process management suites (BPMS) will somehow “free” end users from the chains of IT and enable them to build enterprise-class, bet-your-entire-business processes by themselves. The WordNet definition, in particular, reminds me of the triumphalism one hears from some industry analysts who insist that this is really happening in the real world.

Uhhh, ’scuse us for interrupting the feedback loop, but we don’t think so.

We first debunked the BPMS-as-destroyer-of-IT-and-liberator-of-end-users idea with Sandy Kemsley in a webinar almost a year ago. Her “four myths,” stylized in the graphic in this post, remain the most perceptive distillation of what’s wrong with the idea. Her simple common sense (developing process applications is not in most end users’ skill sets) along with an understanding of what end users in business want to do (their jobs, not IT’s work) debunk the “world-as-we-want-it-to-be” thinkers who promote end user-driven BPM over collaboration with IT.

We think ActiveVOS BPMS has been growing rapidly because it strives to bring IT and the business together. We envision collaboration among an extended development team, using an architecturally-correct, standards-based BPM system. Yes, end users are involved. Yes, they “own” the process and the model. Yes, they use the BPMS. But, no, they don’t deploy, manage or operate the BPMS.

BPM has changed the way IT and business people work together. But it hasn’t — and won’t — replace IT.

This time on CTO Tuesdays, the BPMS podcast, we discuss what persistence of state offers process developers and BPM users. Michael Rowely, host of the podcast and CTO at Active Endpoints discusses what persistence is, how it works and what the potential performance costs might be.

We hope you enjoy this podcast. We’d love to hear your feedback on the series. Just email us or leave a comment here.

Remember: sign up for next week’s CTO Tuesdays here. We will be expanding on persistence to talk about BPMS support for long-running transactions.

Update 3/17: in case you missed the second part, you can watch the replay here.

 

 CTO Tuesdays #16: The state of BPMS state: persistence for process [50:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (399)

 CTO Tuesdays #16: The state of BPMS state: persistence for process [50:22m]: Download (184)

 CTO Tuesdays #16: The state of BPMS state: persistence for process [50:18m]: Download (483)

In this episode of CTO Tuesdays (our 15th!), Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley discusses an elegant way of bridging the world of BPEL and the Java world. Then, after the technical presentation, Rowley discusses in the Q&A how, when and why process developers might want to use Java in their processes and warns against “speaking BPEL with an accent.”

There are three formats of the webinar attached to this post. For iTunes and iPod touch/iPhone users, an .m4v is available. A Flash file that can be streamed from the blog and/or downloaded is attached and a Windows Media 9 .wmv is also available.

Please remember to register for next week’s CTO Tuesdays at http://www.activevos.com/ctot

 

 CTO Tuesdays #15: Using Java with business processes [37:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (523)

 CTO Tuesdays #15: Using Java with business processes [37:00m]: Download (177)

 CTO Tuesdays #15: Using Java with business processes [36:51m]: Download (817)

searchSOA.com has just published a story on SCA (Service Component Architecture) which describes some of the benefits that SCA delivers for developers of services-based process applications. You can read the full article here, including the comments of our CTO, Dr. Michael Rowley.

Attached to this post is a replay of a webinar we recently presented with our UK partner, T-Impact. T-Impact has deep expertise in BPM in industries like telecom. In this webinar, they detail their approach to BPM and how they use ActiveVOS to deliver process applications for their clients.

There are three formats attached to this post. First, an iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v. We also have a Flash file that can be streamed from the blog and a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv.

 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:25m]: Download (413)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (362)

 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:30m]: Download (105)

There’s peanut butter and jelly. Noodles and chopsticks. Ducks and water. All perfect together…even made for each other.

That’s how we feel about business process management systems (BPMS) and enterprise content management systems (ECM). These two important technologies are made for each other.

If you have an important business process you want to automate, it’s likely to have people, processes and documents that all need to work together. And, you are likely to want everything to work together based on open, industry-wide standards. We’d go so far as to say, it’s an absolute requirement that the BPMS and ECM be totally based on standards.

That’s what Alfresco and ActiveVOS offer together. The best capabilities; the most openness.

Watch the replay of this webinar — and the absolutely brilliant demo of ActiveVOS BPMS and Alfresco ECM working together — to see how you can quickly, easily and compatibly produce better process applications for your organization.

There are three formats attached to this post, along with a PDF of the slides presented in the webinar. First is an iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v. Second, a Flash .flv file that can be downloaded or played from the blog. Third, a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv is available.

We hope you enjoy this introduction to combining BPM and ECM technologies.

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:55m]: Download (760)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (968)

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:55m]: Download (878)

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications: Download (309)

Sandy Kemsley commented on the XPDL 2.2 effort to support the interchange of BPMN 2.0 model. I agree with her that it is a good thing. It will be a while before the BPMN 2.0 interchange formats are completed and even longer (if ever) before enough vendors support import and export of the format for it to be the lingua-franca of process models.

XPDL 2.1 is already supported by many tools, including ActiveVOS, so extending XPDL to support the new constructs in BPMN 2.0 will provide the fastest path for most vendors to achieve some level of interoperability of their BPMN 2.0 models.

Nonetheless, I’ve found that most people who have asked Active Endpoints about model import/export formats have been people who have the wrong idea of how to work with a BPMS. These are people who are trying to hold on to their old waterfall methodology for building software, where there are separate tools for building process models during analysis from the development tools that are later used to create the software. In that world, there is a constant need to translate back and forth between the tools as changes may occur on either side.

And there’s the rub. The roundtrip translation always loses so much information that the effort to keep the separate representations in sync and accurate outweighs the value of using the automatic export / import functionality. Eventually, changes made on the analysis side get redone on the implementation side by hand, and vice versa.

The right way to work is to let the BPMS own the model. Yes, you may want to allow early requirements gathering to use simpler modeling tools, but those tend to be fairly informal flow charts anyway. Once you get involved in real modeling you should use the modeling capabilities of your BPMS. By “real modeling”, I mean that you are at the stage where the precise semantics of the notation used is important, since it is going to drive the actual semantics of the resulting software.

In the early phases, the process models are diagrams where the labels on the diagram are what really matter. For example, the arrows coming out of an activity might formally imply that both directions can be followed at once, but the labels on the arrows have labels that imply that one one of them will happen. This is OK during the early stages of modeling, since it is another human who is going to be reading the model and they can guess what was really meant (or they can ask, if they aren’t sure).

Once you are ready to do real modeling, it is time to get the BPMS involved. That way the process model you create will go the rest of the way through the lifecycle of the project without need for translation, much less round-trip translation. How you get from the informal stage to the formal stage of process modeling isn’t really all that important. Yes, you can use XPDL 2.1, but it doesn’t really even matter if you have to redraw it from scratch. Drawing it is very fast in a capable designer like ActiveVOS, and the person doing the modeling is already going to have to be carefully considering each jot and tiddle of the original diagram to determine how to correctly model what the user really wanted to begin with.

Attached to this post is a recording of a webinar originally delivered on February 3, 2010 that features Dennis Callaghan, principle analyst, enterprise software, The 451 Group. The topic was Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective. Callaghan reviews the consolidation in the BPM marketplace and discusses his predictions of the near-term future for BPM. This is coupled with a demonstration of the ActiveVOS BPMS, which is used to illustrate what is possible in a pure-play BPMS today.

Three versions of the podcast are attached. An iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v, a Flash file that can be downloaded and/or played from the blog and a Windows Media 9-formatted .wmv

 VOSibilities podcast #42: Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective [65:57m]: Download (291)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #42: Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective [65:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (511)

 VOSibilities podcast #42: Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective [66:02m]: Download (198)

Colleen Frye of searchSOA.com has written a very timely article about SOA-based BPMS. Ms. Frye sought out a broad range of opinion; she spoke with us here at Active Endpoints as well as with IBM, Oracle, Forrester Research and T-Impact, among others.

Everyone agrees: for BPM to succeed as a new approach to developing applications, BPMSs need to be based on fundamentally sound application architecture. Today, that means using SOA principles. Here’s a link to this important article.

This episode of CTO Tuesdays features our first guest CTO. John Newton, CTO and chairman of Alfresco Software, joins Michael Rowley to discuss how enterprise content management systems (ECM) can be combined with business process management systems (BPMS) to create compelling end-to-end business applications. ActiveVOS and Alfresco implement the new Content Management Interoperability Standard (CMIS), enabling these two important technologies to work together to produce a new generation of business process applications.

Attached to this post are three versions of the webinar. First is an iPod-formatted .m4v file. Second, a Flash .flv. Third, we have attached a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv. Finally, we have also attached a PDF of the presentation John delivered.

We hope you enjoy this episode of CTO Tuesdays. We hope, over time, to have additional guest CTOs on the podcast to talk about complementary technologies. And we’d love to hear your suggestions for topics as well as your comments and feedback.

 

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (419)

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together [47:28m]: Download (210)

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together [47:22m]: Download (456)

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together: Download (242)

We are very pleased to announce that John Newton, CTO of Alfresco Software, will be our guest on CTO Tuesdays this week. Details are in the media advisory attached to this post. Register for the webinar at http://www.activevos.com/ctot

 Alfresco CTO to present on "CTO Tuesdays": Download (319)