In this section, each of the 16 decomposition and composition objects identified in the Chapter on A New Way of Thinking are examined from the perspective of how they are supported with eXtended BPMN Notation. Examples are illustrated using the iGrafx process and enterprise modeling applications in a call center example.
1. Within the business model of any organization, one will find the relevant business competencies being identified and calling upon their respective processes.
By exercising its business competencies, the business delivers value internally and externally, e.g. value is delivered through business tasks, business functions, and services within a competency to those that benefit from the value created.
Competencies may be essential to compete, in which case they are described as “core competitive”; or they may differentiate the business for its customers, in which case they are “core differentiating”; or they may simply be necessary for the functioning of the business. The ability to categorize competencies as either “core differentiated”, “core competitive”, or “non-core” is missing within contemporary process modelling and process architecture practice. The inability to categorize competencies is the very reason why process experts and process architects have no insight as to which
processes are a part of an organization’s competitive aspects and which are not. This is also why they are not able to take into consideration the design target of a process and therefore ensure the process performs to its requirements.
As it is necessary to relate processes to the value and performance drivers of the organization and therefore shape the design of the process with these considerations in mind, this insight is critical.
The link between the organisation’s competencies and process execution provides the means of identifying ways to appropriately reduce cost, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, or conversely to support revenue growth. Without this context there is no means to judge the “goodness” of a particular process or process design. It is for example not possible to detect that a process does not contribute value, thus is best done is the cheapest way possible, or that it produces great value to business, therefore warranting features to maximize value to the organization. With the eXtended BPMN standard an organization can not only capture the business
competencies, but relate them to the organization’s specific Value and Performance Drivers; providing significant context to process owners, designer, and to the organization as a whole.
In Figure 3: Example of relating Competencies to Performance Drivers; we see how the Service Call Center (group) is identified as requiring a Communications competency, and the Communications competency is fulfilling 2 KPIs: Average direct cost and average employee cost per incoming phone call.
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Figure 3: Example of relating Competencies to Performance Drivers in iGrafx®.
2. Businessstrategies will dictate the purpose and goals that set the direction for an organization’s processes. Business Process objectives, performance expectations, and performance indicators, and therefore the extent to which the desired direction is achieved, is measured and linked to strategy through Process Performance Indicators (PPIs).
In the context of LEADing Practice Modelling principles, a strategy is a defined goal that an organization wants to achieve to make its strategic execution succeed. These goals guide and shape the application of Strategic Business Objectives (SBOs) and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) to the relevant business competencies. Contrary to older approaches to strategic thinking, in this model it is understood that an
organization can simultaneously pursue multiple strategies and goals. For example an organization can pursue both high growth and profits by defining unique critical success factors that break the conventional value-cost trade off by simultaneously pursuing both differentiation in the market and low cost in its operations.
An example of how strategic business objective, critical success factors and the organizational competencies they are related to might be something like this.
Business SBOs CSFs Business Competencies
Improve Competitiveness
Improve Responsiveness Business Assets
Shorten Time-to-Market Business Development Strengthen Innovation Product management Improve Customer Interaction Sales & Service Improve Partner
Collaboration Business Assets
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In this example the strategic business objective, Improve Competitiveness, is an
organizational objective. The factors that the organization has identified as critical to the success of this strategy are its CSFs, which are allocated to specific business competencies within the organization; the competency “Business Assets” will focus on “improved
responsiveness”, and need to develop processes that improve its responsiveness, while simultaneously finding ways to cut the cost of processes that cannot add to its improved responsiveness. A similar model and decision choices can be made by each other competency within the business. The result is, where processes make a difference to the competencies’ ability to perform in a manner that differentiates enterprise performance, its processes will focus on doing things well. Where no such contribution is possible, but the process must be done, the goal will then be to execute for as little cost as possible.
As there is always an element of uncertainty about the future, strategies, goals, and objectives in essence create a set of "strategic choices" that need to be related from the strategic level to the relevant business competencies, which are then responsible to align their execution in order to realize the planned value.
In Figure 4: Example of relating the Strategic Business Objectives and Critical Success Factors to the responsible owner (RACI),who will be measured by the degree to which he / she achieves two goals, the average direct costs per incoming phone call, and the average employee costs per incoming phone call.
Assuming these were the performance measures of the Service Call Center, a process analyst now has a meaningful context for any process design and could look for ways within the Service Call Center Design to achieve those goals. For example, in our scenario, with only these measures, the process would not consider customer satisfaction, etc.
Figure 4: Example of relating the Strategic Business Objectives and Critical Success Factors to the responsible owner (RACI), in iGrafx®.
3. Business Process tasks and services create, use, and/or deliver (parts of) business, information, and data objects, thus giving substance to the process. Within LEAD, the way of working with objects requires that the expert or architect identify if the item of interest is a business, information, and/ or a data object. Identifying and classifying the
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different objects is very relevant as it provides the means to use process notations for the realization of executable applications and software solutions. This includes relating the objects to the organization, roles, rules, and compliance aspects, as well as,
business and information flow. The set of rules and modelling techniques associated with identifying, designing, and relating business, information, and data object types allows one to fully describe the different relevant object’s behavior and representation. Understanding this behavior might include an analysis of the business function, roles and services it delivers. Additionally, its interaction with the business process and activities (input and output and the associated flow), information (objects, flow), applications (function, task, service and flow) and data (objects, entities, data services, and data flow) is needed to produce accurate and useful process and service models. Figure 5 presents an example of such an eXtended BPMN diagram. This example contains business, information, and data objects; identifying “issue”, “caller info”, and “survey”, respectively.
Figure 5: Example of business, information, and data objects.
The ability of having a link between the models of understanding e.g. the process models and thereby the BPMN diagrams and the models of executions e.g. in software development it would be UML and if an ERP system exist it would for example be SAP. Such a link between the BPMN diagrams and SAP solution manager include linking/redocumenting information / data flow in SAP SolMan, includes mapping the business/data/information object artifacts to bindings in interface scenarios in SolMan. In order to drill down the various topics that may arise, the main aspect is to identify the matching fields in SAP Solution Manager. It must be clear, research and development starts whether SAP Solution Manager and the SAP Gateway supports addressing the data.
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Related topics:
In order to do this the process tool needs to be able to model and handle the Business Objects, Information objects and Data Objects as hierarchy. This enables the ability to synchronize with the modeling client and the process repository, the order of the Workproducts offered by synchronization will be as follows:
Step 1) Define the Business Objects, Information objects and Data Objects as hierarchy
Figure 6: Example of business, information, and data objects in a hierarchy.
Step 2) make sure that the hierarchy of the Business Objects, Information Objects and Data Objects also exist in your process hierarchy
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Step 3) Check the hierarchy of the Business Objects, Information Objects and Data Objects in your process diagrams:
Figure 8: Example of business, information, and data objects in the BPMN/process diagrams.
4. Different owners can be allocated within a business process; however, broader aspects of ownership within and around a process need to be considered and related, for example:
Owners with responsibilities for the strategy and objectives
Owners with responsibilities for measurements
Owners with responsibilities for business functions
Owners with responsibilities for business processes
Owners with responsibilities for services
Information owners in terms of being responsible for the reports, scorecards, dashboards and/ or cockpits etc.
All owners have responsibilities for their specific area in terms of meeting different
performance and/ or value demands/outcomes. What output should this business function, process or service produce? What impact should the output have on the organization? The various owners are for the most part measured through performance dimensions. These performance dimensions also serve as the basis for assessing employee performance of the roles involved in different owner’s areas. The ability to link the multiple areas together, from strategy to execution and to identify where the possible gaps are, enable an entirely new approach for strategy execution and tracking.
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While Figure 4 earlier showed the linkage of a role to a performance measure, Figure 6 portrays a map showing how specific SBOs, CFSs, and KPI are each allocated to a responsible role. It is this role, or owner, who is responsible for the performance of the specific processes and is the one who is measured on the total performance each process they are responsible for. The latter figure shows that the CFO and Call Center Manager are jointly responsible for the “cost per minute of handle time”.
Figure 6: Example of Ownership relations, including Strategy, CSF, KPI and RACI relations.
5. One of the challenges in working with process flows is that many organizations and practitioners do not recognize their unique characteristics; they mistakenly believe that a process flow is the same as an information and/or data flow. While the process flow interacts with several different flows, it is vital to understand that it has its own identity and is not the same as the business workflow, the information flow, or the data flow.
A business workflow, is a sequence of business functions, which usually involve multiple tasks and resources that deliver a specific set of outcomes. Simply put, the business workflow consists of a sequence of connected tasks where the
outcomes/output of one serves as input, without delay or gap, to the next task in the workflow.
In a general sense, information is the digital representation of an existing real-world object (people, employees, products, or a sales order, etc.). The information flow therefore represents the sequence of input and output of information objects and the specific tasks that need them to execute. Information objects represent business objects and can be mapped to underlying data objects housed within information systems.
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The data flow is related to the flow of data objects, either in terms of either the logical relations or the clusters containing data related to the same entity.
As shown in figure 7, the eXtended BPMN notation is used to depict business, information and data flows within the processes and sub-processes.
Figure 7: Example of capturing multiple flows within a process.
Each of the flows capture a different perspective of the object and therefore is subject to the application of different modelling principles and skills. It is essential to be able to sort the specific business, information and data objects by roles, tasks, services or rules. This not only enables the identification of duplication, but enables modelling of the business, its information and systems; see Figure 8 for an example.
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Figure 8: Example of sorting of business, information and data objects by roles, tasks, services or rules.
6. The process roles assigned to process steps and activities have to be supported by the business roles of the respective business functions and tasks. In the context of LEAD Modelling, a process role refers to the usual or expected function of an actor, or the participation of somebody or something playing a part in a business process context, e.g. a process owner has a business role that has specific business functions and tasks. An actor may have a number of business process roles and at times constraints are imposed on a role performing some aspect of the process or activity. These constraints are defined by a law, regulation, directive, instruction, or parameter that is imposed via an assertion. The eXtended BPMN notation allows for the identification of duplication of roles within business functions, processes, services, information systems, etc. Figure 9 illustrates how roles can be leveraged within a process model and that the design can even be evaluated in a simulation environment to perform “what-if” analysis and to assess design alternatives. Here, changes to resource utilizations in simulated scenarios generate results that can be compared side by side.
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Figure 9: Example of resource duplication and Cost Cutting scenarios for Resource “As Is” and “What If” – “To Be” Changes, using iGrafx® simulation.
7. Several business process rules, which apply to processes, but may as well also apply to services, applications, data, and security, must be adhered to and embedded in the different phases of the business process lifecycle: planning, creation, realization, and governance. The reality today is that organizations have many rules that must be properly and consistently applied to different business areas, services, and
applications across the business. The eXtended BPMN standard allows for advanced rules modelling in all the aforementioned areas, including modelling rule flow, ruleset, rule script, etc. When dealing with various rules, managing where they need to be applied and in which order the rules are evaluated can become quite complex. Figure 10 illustrates how a Business Rule Flow allows one to specify the order in which rule sets are to be evaluated. Another feature of this approach is that it supports re the reuse of rules components and their natural relations. This allows for rule modelling consistency between the different rule artifacts: rule flows, rule scripts, rule sets, flow rule sets, rules, and decision tables.
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Figure 10: Example of eXtended BPMN: Business Rule Flow.
8. When designing, building, implementing, updating, working with and terminating Business Process tasks, events, and services issue of processcompliance need to be taken into account. Compliance guidance is often found in several places, for example: policies, guidelines, standards, and regulations, but is instantiated within the roles, processes, data, and information objects. Issues of governance controls, risk
management, audits, evaluation, security, and monitoring must also be taken into account in order to be compliant. Compliance reports, as shown in Figure 11, that are built upon relationships in the enterprise model can be leveraged to assess compliance.
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Figure 11: Example of a Compliance Report.
9. An application is specialised software used to automate a set of business processes,
steps, activities, events, and flows. Applications are also used to automate process reporting through the use of system measurements and system reporting. Being able to leverage process notations for application/system implementation requires both the capturing of the detailed information needed for full process automation and thereby application blueprint and software development, and the details of where and in which ways is the organization is unique in creating value.
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Figure 12: Example of SAP Solution Manager which relates process, objects and application aspects together (picture of Solution Manager 7.2, using ASAP 7.2 and the LEAD meta models and principles within Business Blueprint, Application Design & Build, Application implementation/go live and maintenance).
a) A good deal of additional information is needed in order to use eXtended BPMN notation for application blueprinting and software development. In Figure 12 an example of the detailed information needed for an SAP ERP implementation is presented. Without the ability to capture all of the required information within the notation it is not possible to complete the solution design in a manner that is properly