Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures PDF
Preview Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures
Business Process Management Mathias Weske Business Process Management Concepts, Languages, Architectures Second Edition MathiasWeske HassoPlattnerInstitute(HPI) UniversitätPotsdam Potsdam,Germany ISBN978-3-642-28615-5 ISBN978-3-642-28616-2(eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-642-28616-2 SpringerHeidelbergDordrechtLondonNewYork LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2012938099 ACMClassification(1998): J.1,H.4.1,D.2.2 ©Springer-VerlagBerlinHeidelberg2007,2012 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.Allrightsarereserved,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialis concerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation,broadcasting, reproductiononmicrofilmorinanyotherway,andstorageindatabanks.Duplicationofthispublication orpartsthereofispermittedonlyundertheprovisionsoftheGermanCopyrightLawofSeptember9, 1965,initscurrentversion,andpermissionforusemustalwaysbeobtainedfromSpringer.Violationsare liabletoprosecutionundertheGermanCopyrightLaw. Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,etc.inthispublicationdoesnotimply, evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelaws andregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) For DJET Foreword BusinessProcessManagement(BPM)isa“hottopic”becauseitishighlyrel- evantfromapracticalpointofviewwhileatthesameitoffersmanychallenges forsoftwaredevelopersandscientists.Traditionallyinformationsystemsused information modeling as a starting point, i.e., data-driven approaches have dominated the information systems landscape. However, over the last decade it has become clear that processes are equally important and need to be sup- portedinasystematicmanner.Thisresultedina“wave”ofworkflowmanage- ment systems in the mid-nineties. These systems aimed at the automation of structured processes. Therefore, their application wasrestricted to only afew applicationdomains.However,thebasicworkflowconceptshavebeenadopted bydifferenttypesof“process-aware”informationsystems.BPMaddressesthe topic of process support in a broader perspective by incorporating different types of analysis (e.g., simulation, verification, and process mining) and link- ing processes to business and social aspects. Moreover, the current interest in BPM is fueled by technological developments (service oriented architectures) triggering standardization efforts (cf. languages such as BPMN and BPEL). Given the huge interest in BPM it is good that Mathias Weske took on the challenge to write a comprehensive book on BPM. The textbook covers the broad space of BPM in-depth. Most books on BPM are rather superficial or closely linked to a particular technology. In this book the topic is viewed from different angles without becoming superficial. Therefore, it is a valuable contribution to BPM literature. The book “Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, and Ar- chitectures” is motivated by practical challenges and is grounded in both computer science and business administration. The subtitle of the book ade- quately describes its scope. Unlike many other books in this space the focus is not on a particular notation or XML syntax. Instead the book focuses on the essential concepts. Different process languages are described (Petri nets, EPCs, Workflow nets, YAWL, BPMN, etc.) on the basis of these concepts. Moreover, the different languages are characterized and related using meta models. This is very important because it provides a view on the essence of VII VIII Foreword business process models and prepares the reader for new languages and stan- dards that will emerge in the future. Interestingly, the book also contains a chapteronprocessanalysis.Heredifferentsoundnessnotionsrelevantforpro- cessverificationaredescribedandrelated.Thelastpartofthebookisrelated toarchitecturesandmethodologies.Twocriticaltopicsarediscussedindetail: flexibilityandservicecomposition.Processflexibilityisveryimportantforthe application of BPM in less structured domains. Through service composition abridgeisestablishedbetweentheservice-orientedarchitectureandworkflow technology. The book provides an excellent introduction into BPM. On the one hand, the book covers many topics and links concepts to concrete technologies. On theotherhand,thebookprovidesformaldefinitionsandrelatesthingsthrough meta modeling. This makes it a superb textbook for students in both com- puter science and business administration. Moreover, it is also a very useful book for practitioners since it provides a comprehensive coverage of BPM in- dependentlyofindustryhypesaroundworkflowmanagement,businessprocess management, andservice-oriented architectures. Therefore, Iexpect thatthis book will help organizations in addressing the BPM topic in a more mature way. Eindhoven University of Technology, Prof. dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst July 15th, 2007 Preface to Second Edition Sincethefirsteditionofthisbookwaspublishedinlate2007,thebusinesspro- cessmanagementareahasenjoyedanamazingdevelopment,bothinindustry and academia. To organize change and to achieve higher degrees of automa- tion, more and more companies and public administrations put processes in the centre of their attention. Whilechangingbusinessrequirements,pairedwithcostandtimepressure are the driving forces of this development, important factors are dependable standards, sophisticated tools, and well educated people. Many young profes- sionals graduating in computer science, business engineering, or related fields haveenjoyedaneducationinbusiness processmanagement, focusingoncom- plementary topics that range from technical aspects to business aspects. The business process management area is also fueled by the BPM Aca- demic Initiative, which provides a professional process modeling and analysis tool free of charge for users in teaching and academic research. Today more than ten thousand students, lecturers, and researchers use this platform. I thank my colleagues in the core team for their involvement, namely Wil van der Aalst, Frank Leymann, Jan Mendling, Michael zur Mu¨hlen, Jan Recker, MichaelRosemann,andGeroDecker.Alsointhenameoftheplatformusers, a special thanks to the Signavio team for providing this service to the BPM community. Justlikethefirstedition,thisbookdoesnotcontainanyteachingexercises. However, students and lecturers working with this book can register at the BPMAcademicInitiativeatacademic.signavio.comtoaccessacomprehensive set of teaching material related to this book, and beyond. The material is published under a Creative Commons license, allowing lecturers to use and adapt the exercises according to their syllabi. All figures of this book can be downloaded from bpm-book.com. It is interesting to see that the increasing adoption of business process technology poses interesting challenges to the research community. One of these challenges is to closer relate process models with the actual execution of the business processes. Since about a decade, an impressive body of work IX X Preface to Second Edition was done in process mining and business process intelligence. There are fur- ther topics that have emerged as challenges in real-world settings, such as compliance checking of process models, process model abstraction, and the management of process repositories, where issues like behavioural similarity and indexing of process models are investigated. Unfortunately, a text book on business process management cannot cover all these topics. Still, this second edition contains a number of enhancements and modi- fications. The increasing importance of the BPMN in Version 2 is matched by extending significantly the respective section in the process orchestrations chapter.IalsoaddedasectiononBPMNintheprocesschoreographieschapter todiscussthelanguageconstructsforexpressingprocessinteractions,conver- sations, and choreographies. A concrete consistency criterion for process or- chestrations implementing behavioural interfaces is introduced, which makes thediscussionoftheconsistencypropertymoretangible.Intheprocessprop- erties chapter, I extended the section on data in processes, which now also covers properties of a business process with respect to the data objects it works on. To improve the integration of the business process management methodology with the concepts introduced in the first part of the book, I rewrote the methodology chapter. It now discusses the relationships between business processes in much more detail and it also introduces performance indicators for business processes and concepts on how to measure them. Inadditiontotheseextensionsofthebook,therearemanyminorchanges, which, I hope, will increase its readability and soundness. Quite a number of them were triggered by readers, whose feedback I am happy to acknowledge. Thanks to all members of my research group at HPI; your comments and remarksonearlierversionsofthismanuscripthavehelpedimprovingthebook. Special thanks to Matthias Kunze and Alexander Lu¨bbe for their feedback, mainly on the BPMN sections. I would also like to thank the Berliner BPM Offensive for providing me with the stencil set of the BPMN shapes. The shapes are much nicer than I could ever do them, they helped a lot! Potsdam, March 2012 M.W. Preface The extensive ground covered by business process management is divided between representatives from two communities: business administration and computer science. Due to the increasingly important role of information sys- tems inthe realizationofbusiness processes, acommonunderstanding ofand productive interaction between these communities are essential. Due to different viewpoints, however, the interaction between these com- munities is seldom seamless. Business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management that experts will take care of. On the other hand, computer sci- enceprofessionalsoftenconsiderbusinessgoalsandorganizationalregulations as terms that do not deserve much thought, but require the appropriate level of abstraction. This book argues that we need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management addressed by all communi- ties involved. Robust and correct realization of business processes in software that increases customer satisfaction and ultimately contributes to the com- petitive advantage of an enterprise can only be achieved through productive communication between these communities. By structuring business process management, this book aims at providing a step towards a better understanding of the concepts involved in business process management—from the perspective of a computer scientist. If business persons find the book too technical, software people find it too non-technical, and formal persons find it too imprecise, but all of them have a better understanding of the ground covered by our discipline, this book has achieved its goal. The Web site bpm-book.com contains additional information related to this book, such as links to references that are available online and exercises that facilitate the reader’s getting into deeper contact with the topics addressed. Teaching material is also available at that Web site. XI XII Preface This book is based on material used in the business process management lec- tures that the author has conducted in the Master’s and Bachelor’s program inITSystemsEngineeringattheHassoPlattnerInstituteforITSystemsEn- gineeringattheUniversityofPotsdam.Iamthankfulforthecriticalremarks by my students, who encouraged me to shape the content of my lectures, which ultimately led to this book. Many people contributed to this book. First of all, I like to thank my col- league researchers in business process management for developing this area in recent years, most prominently Wil van der Aalst, Alistair Barros, Mar- lon Dumas, Arthur ter Hofstede, Axel Martens, and Manfred Reichert. The chapter on case handling is based on joint work with Wil van der Aalst and Dolf Gru¨nbauer. I am grateful to Barbara Weber for her detailled comments on the manuscript that have led to improvements, mainly in the chapter on process orchestrations. I acknowledge the support of the members of my research group at Hasso PlattnerInstitute.GeroDecker,FrankPuhlmann,andHilmarSchuschelwere involved in the preparation of the assignments of the business process man- agement lectures. Together with Dominik Kuropka and Harald Meyer, they provided valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Special thanks to Gero Decker for contributing the first version of the process chore- ographies chapter. Thelion’sshareofmyacknowledgementsgoestomyfamily,andforemost to Daniela. Potsdam, July 2007 M.W.
The list of books you might like
