Ashraf Galal wrote:
Dennis
Here you go:
The SOA approach to business process automation relies on the
process-by-process approach. We *identify the business process* that we
would like to automate. (focus on the business value, visibility,
..etc)
I guess you're not talking about a high-level business process, because
they are rarely possible to automate in full, rather it's a small part
of a business process or a workflow. Anyhow, you first need to create a
process map and detail it to a suitable level before you're able to
identify the process that you would like to improve. The improvment may
incorporate automation of some part of the process. I fail to see what's
service oriented about this?
We also asses the real value of process automation and possible
optimizations.
I would argue that you should do it the opposite way. Start by
identifying which process improvements and optimization you're able to
do. Process automation will follow from that.
Then we model the process using BPMN. The process modeling for SOA has
to be done in detail. It is important that we model the process in
detail so that we identify individual activities that are atomic from
the perspective of execution. It is also important that we model the
exceptional scenarios.
Next, we map the BPMN process model into PBEL, then connecting PBEL with
services.
Is this what the "SOA approach" brings to the table? Some process
activities are promoted to services?
The step-by-step approach to optimization is much more efficient and
friendly to the people involved in the processes. People do not like to
change their behaviour. Therefore, it is much wiser to implement changes
in phases. This is sometimes called the *evolutionary approach to
business process optimization*.
Sure, small steps is a common approach to changes, but small steps
brings small improvements. If an organization believes in a process
oriented approach then they're inevitable in for some big changes in the
structure, governance and management of the whole organization.
I guess you're point is that this "step-by-step" approach hasn't been
used before SOA? I don't agree. The path to business process
improvements has essentially been the same, but we've seen improvements
in the technology platforms. Even before SOA it was quite common to use
EAI and other integration and process platforms for automating parts of
a process. Is SOA only an improvement of the legacy technology platforms?
The SOA approach has *another important advantage*. As we have automated
the process, we can obtain some measurements about the different process
activities, and how long in average they need to execute. Such
quantitative metrics, which are calculated automatically by modern SOA
platforms, can provide valuable information that can be used to decide
where to start process optimization: we can focus on activities where we
can gain the largest improvements. Gathering quantitative data about
process activities is called *Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)*. The
SOA approach is iterative and incremental and delivers results in
relatively short intervals.
BAM isn't specific for SOA. Measurement has always been a very important
aspect for every process improvement initiative. Most BPM platforms have
this and I don't see why a BPM tool should be classified as a "SOA
platform" (whatever that is). Even with all this help from technology,
we still need to do some real hard work to actually measure the
improvements of a process. Customer surveys is a common example of
necessary measurement activities when we improve customer centric
processes. But again, what is service orientated about this?
This way, the whole company will recognize that IT delivers useful
results. This can improve the position of IT, particularly if IT has not
been efficient enough in the past.
If *we do not have existing services*, we will also need to *implement
the services*, where we have three options: to implement new services,
to expose the business logic from existing applications, or to use user
tasks to delegate the activities to employees, and possibly automate
these tasks in the future.
If I've understood this right, you're describing an approach that
basically is a process orientated methodology, and then you promote some
activities to services, and you have a Service Orientated Achitecture.
Right?
// Dennis Djenfer
All the best
Ashraf Galal
Dennis Djenfer wrote:
Ashraf,
Could you please explain what you mean by "SOA takes a different path"
when it comes to optimizing and modelling business processes and how it
avoids a big-bang approach?
// Dennis Djenfer
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