BPMN Enables Business Process Management (BPM)

BPMN is a core enabler for a new initiative in the Enterprise Architecture world – Business Process Management (BPM).
BPM is concerned with managing change to improve business processes. BPM is unifying the previously distinct disciplines of Process Modeling, Simulation, Workflow, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Business-to-Business (B2B) integration into a single standard.
The fact that Business Process Management is a new initiative might lead you to believe that business processes have not been managed previously. This is of course not true – many organizations have modeled and managed their business processes for years, using an eclectic mixture of tools and techniques.
These techniques have only been partially successful, or failed outright, because there has been a lack of standards and a complete lifecycle to control and guide the design and execution of business processes. Managing the process of change cannot be an ad-hoc process – it requires management to exercise control over the discovery, architecture, design, and deployment of processes. For management to understand the architecture, design, and deployment of processes, you need business modeling and business execution language standards.

BPMI.ORG Created to Establish BPM Standards :
The Business Process Management Initiative has been established to promote and develop the use of Business Process Management (BPM) through the use of standards for process design, deployment, execution, maintenance, and optimization of processes.
• BPMN, as a standard for modeling business processes,
• Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), as the standard business execution language, and
• Business Process Query Language (BPQL), a standard management interface for the deployment and execution of e-Business processes

Rigor of the BPMI.ORG Standards :
A very crucial and fundamental distinguishing feature of BPMI standards is that they have been developed with a solid mathematical foundation. The Pi-Calculus branch of Process Calculi has been used. This is a formal method of computation that forms the foundation for dynamic and mobile processes. This makes BPMI standards analogous to the mathematical foundation of relational theory that underpins relational database management systems (RDBMS’s). It means that business processes designed using the BPMN standard can be manipulated directly and executable language created and made available for immediate execution. Again, this is analogous to the functionality of relational data models and the generation of SQL/DDL statements. The business process modeling language (BPML) is designed by BPMI.org to be a Pi-Calculus-based standard description of a business process.

BPMN Maps to Business Execution Languages :
What’s more, BPMN has been specified to map directly to the BPML standard, and any other rival business execution languages that are introduced, such as BPEL4WS, developed by BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and others.

BPMI.ORG Works with OASIS for e-Business Standards :
OASIS is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces.
Both BPML (from BPMI.ORG), and BPEL4WS (from Microsoft, IBM, and others) have been submitted to OASIS, which has formed a technical committee to create a Business Process Execution language standard. The output from this committee is currently called Web Services – Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). BPML’s current status is that it is submitted as an influencing specification to the WS-BPEL committee.

BPMN Models Web Services :
Making web services work is a four-stage process, as follows:
1. Design the processes using BPMN.
2. Simulate the processes and modify them for efficiency.
3. Make the services available by publishing them using a Business Process Execution language.
4. Orchestrate the web services into end-to-end business flows by assembling them and coordinating their behavior. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are employed for this stage.
The OASIS WS-BPEL requires the development of new BPMS technologies where these functionalities will reside and be executed from.
We will examine each of the steps above in this whitepaper, beginning with a first look at the new BPMN standard. Finally, we’ll take a look at BPMN in relation to a popular industry standard for systems analysis, the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Effective planning and action-oriented information :
Making a decision and following through with appropriate action is easier when
your employees have a goal or strategy in mind. Action-oriented information is
essential when setting clear goals for individuals or businesses.

Focus on goals and actions :
Help ensure that strategic processes become a natural part of every employee’s
daily work and get the most value from your resources. Create a shared
understanding of the organization’s focus and goals.

Flexible action management :
Business Process Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX helps users establish
and manage actions. When you set up actions, the program automatically helps
ensure that your employees follow a standard structure, with follow-up as a
natural part of action planning. Using the structured and intuitive tools of
Business Process Management, your employees can focus on what’s important,
by defining personalized actions, setting their own priorities, and selecting and
sorting various types of information such as action status, responsible persons
and date intervals.

Accelerate business performance :
Align managers and employees with your business strategy and improve
accountability by directly linking the daily work employees to the company’s
strategic goals, and plainly show each employee how their efforts contribute to
company results.

Increase transparency in your business processes :
Increase your employees’ motivation and productivity by letting people at all
levels openly see the measures that matter to them. You can still help maintain
the security of your business information because managers have the ability to
control access to sensitive data.