Workflow
I would like to discuss the domain on which I am working more and more these days. I mean management that makes the use of business processes. In many fields of business it is considered as good, efficient and top notch and the best of breed to have the management tailored by business process. It’s true.
First of all, we have to say that it is impossible to automate the chaos. At the first stage we need to describe the business process. We have the instruments that allow us to do it. We need to make a little missing step. We need to make it.
I am going to write about the software that allows us to automate the business processes. I will discuss the particular products as well as broader scope generic technology questions.
To summarize:
• What does it means “the business process”.
• The sample of a workflow.
• The workflow technology in general, the main definitions.
• Contemporary business processes, the scope of application of a workflow, the main advantages of workflow.
• Architecture et classification of the systems workflow.
• The JBoss jBPM with the RUNA WFE as a leading open source implementation of the workflow. The short description of the architecture.
• The methodology of the best usages of the workflow management systems.
What is the business process?
Everything in the business that we are able to write down accurately and to formalize.
It’s really easy. Let consider a simple example:
A mechanic needs to receive a nut to be fitted to an engine. He writes the request, then the request is received by the foreman and this one approves it. Then the information is sent to the storage, the storekeeper prepares the nut to delivery and then the mechanic picks it up. The process of the approving and the decision making can be as complex as one wish. To the process can be attached the nut and engine’s drawings, the safety instruction and in general any document.
Those business processes exist. There is significant number of them. We try to manage these described things. When we have discovered them and have written them down, we should automate them, and continue to maintain them in relevant state.
For this purpose the workflow technology have emerged. Its main goal is to automate the business processes. Here we can observe the situation with the 80/20 ratio. In fact only the 20% of time is spent to get the job done and other 80% are wasted for transmission.
The Workflow Management System (WMS) is targeting the transmission of the information. One of the most important tasks of the WMS is using the process description to push the information through the pipe in the controlled way. The worker on its workplace doesn’t think about where is the origin of the task, and to which direction he/she should transmit it.
Transmission in fact is the very error prone stage. For example if the address was wrong, then the task sent to this address lied some time there, until it has been returned. And if the sender is unavailable (for example he has been sent to the business trip) and then when he is going to understand that he made this destination address mistake we will get our 80% of transmission time wasted. WMS is called to compensate these problems.
We should notice here that the workflow automate the business process, not a business function. The principal difference: the function means the working with the information. The worker goes to the database retrieve some information, process it and put it back. The next worker in the pipe can retrieve the result from the same database. In the Workflow Management System the most important for us is the sequence of the processing of the task. We describe the process we introduce the executors, we associate the executors with the process. It is now crystal clear what the executors are getting and where this information will be sent. So this main difference targets the enhancing of the quality and the throughput of the main production function of the business process.
The second important property of the WMS technology is the application integration. There are a lot of problems with it but you shall be able to see what I am talking about. Every organisation has a lot of different application. This situation is sometimes called “the patchwork automation”. If we would try to implement an ERP system and throw out all existent application we will be face some problems.
The first problem is that ERP systems are the process management systems. The people starts to work in defined sequence, everything is getting transparent. Everybody knows what they are supposed to do. If someone don’t do the assignments it gets clear.
The second problems of implementing ERP are that we have to dispose all usual business applications. The change is not easy for everyone. This way we risk loosing from 10 to 40% of ancient employees. And it’s important that they are effective today. They know the organisation and the processes that take place in it. Sadly they are unable to change their work. So the workflow as kind of intermediary palliative is very good. That’s it, we start working in the new way, in process, and on the other hand we continue to use the old applications.
Several organisations say – we have so much application that we are not ready to get rid of them. We will need to spend big money. And we will get the system of which we need only 10%. It’s not really interesting. The WMS in this perspective are much cheaper than ERP, so this approach is finally worthily.
The scope of usage of the workflow management system.
Let consider a company. It has some production cycle. This is some kind of traditional cycle. It can be analysis of the situation, decision making, execution and control. What we need to get?
• It’s clear that the analysis of the situation must be quick.
• The decision we have to take must be well thought and weighted.
• The decision has to be targeted in order to achieve the clear understandable goal.
• We need the efficient control of the run of the process. Every time we needs to know were the process is, what is going on in this moment, which is the responsible. We need the audit. We need to know who does what.
• All this should be logged. We must be able to get the report in every moment.
The WMS address well the last two needs from the list.
Some words about the technology. The WMS is based on the process approach. There is evident link. We can use every major software tool of process description (such as ARIS or CaseWise Modeller) and configure jBPM in order to use the processes defined by those tools.
Next : What are the advantages of the WMS ?