You can find there a letter from Paul Harmon with more information about how the original domain was lost and plans for the future.

In this post I wanted to share with you some real life (or nearly real life ) examples of Process Architecture which are publicly available.

In case you would like to learn more about creating a Process Architecture – please take a look at related posts:

Interview with Roger Burlton – How to build a Business Process Architecture

Marcello La Rosa shares best practices of building Business Process Architecture

Building the Business Process Architecture with PCF – APQC Interview

4 tips how to build a (mini) process architecture on a shoestring budget

Fundamentals of BPM – Part 1: Process identification and discovery (Process identification)

So, how can a process architecture look like? As you know (or can check above) there are many approaches to this topic. One of the most popular frameworks is APQC Process Classification Framework.

Not only it is available as a free download, but it can also be provided by tool vendors (I was amazed how friendly and helpful APQC is when I prepared PCF models for ADONIS users several years ago). You can also find lots of useful resources showing how PCF can be used in practice.

Top level map with 13 process categories can look like this:

Each chevron representing a process category would lead to more detailed map with more processes, which in turn could lead to detailed BPMN diagrams.

Apart from the cross-industry version of PCF, there are also versions for banking (newly updated), automotive, healthcare provider, education and many more.

Interesting feature of PCF is that there are 2 groups for processes on level 1 process map: one is for the operating/core processes and other for both management and support processes.

You can find similar approach in a graphic below. However it is based on LEADing Practice approach and comes from one of the most admired companies in the world: LEGO Group. You can read more about their BPM journey in a very interesting case study.

As already mentioned more common approach is to have 3 main groups for the processes on your level 1 map: management, core, and support processes.

Example below comes from ADONIS Community Edition models and shows (fictive) ADOmoney Bank process architecture top level.

Another interesting example of a process architecture comes from Imperial College. Image below shows how you can move from a top level map to more detailed diagrams (created in Universal Process Notation).

As you could see, names of the process groups can differ. UC Berkeley names them respectively: Strategy and Integral Processes, Value Chain Processes, and Enabling Processes. Roger Burlton suggests: Guiding, Core, and Enabling.

In his awesome article Roger shares an example of (fictive) consumer bank for which a process architecture could look as follows:

Please note that for core processes also level 2 is shown (chevrons inside parent chevron). It is also worth noting that there is no generally binding rule assigning a process to a given group. Of course we can expect that Product or Service (P or S) related processes will be core processes. However while providing IT services would be a support/enabling process for many organizations, for others it could be a core process.

Another example showing two levels of a process architecture comes from a great book “Reimagining Management” by Roger Tregear. You can also download the free chapter about a process architecture from Leonardo Consulting website.

Hope those examples will be useful for you! You can share more in comments.

As you probably noticed from other posts I work with BPMN a lot and had a chance to see many areas where it can be helpful, while I rarely see DFDs being currently used (of course except education).

Both BPMN and DFD are mature notations. DFD notation was created in the 1970s and popularized by few legends of software engineering including Edward Yourdon and Tom DeMarco. BPMN 1.0 was published in 2004, while current version 2.0 has slightly over 10 years (counting from beta release). While BPMN is still being extended and improved (e.g. by BPMN MIWG), I am not aware of any ongoing activities regarding DFD notation.

There are some differences regarding goals of those notations. BPMN charter (taken from BPMN.org) is as follows: “A standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) will provide businesses with the capability of understanding their internal business procedures in a graphical notation and will give organizations the ability to communicate these procedures in a standard manner. Furthermore, the graphical notation will facilitate the understanding of the performance collaborations and business transactions between the organizations. This will ensure that businesses will understand themselves and participants in their business and will enable organizations to adjust to new internal and B2B business circumstances quickly.”

For DFD focus is different. As the name suggests data flows are of utmost importance. BABOK v3 states the purpose of DFD in a following way: “Data flow diagrams show where data comes from, which activities process the data, and if the output results are stored or utilized by another activity or external entity.” It’s interesting to compare it to Yourdon’s statements from “Just Enough Structured Analysis”: “This is important to keep in mind: DFDs cannot only be used to model information-processing systems, but also as a way of modeling whole organizations, that is, as a tool for business planning and strategic planning.”

Both notations have strong theoretical background meaning they are not just pretty pictures. DFDs are based on a graph theory. BPMN can also be analyzed using formal methods.

As for the symbols, situation is more interesting. BPMN is a standard, so you can easily see which icons should be used for which object types. However, for DFD notation there are several variations, so icons proposed by Yourdon and DeMarco differ from those proposed by Gane and Sarson. Needless to say – while you can easily interchange BPMN diagrams between various tools it is not the case for DFD since there is no standard interchange mechanism.

An additional difference relating to symbols is their availability. In DFDs you have 4 elements (Process, Flow, Store, and Terminator/External entity). In BPMN you have many more symbols. On the one hand, it means that DFDs may be easier to read (especially by people with no training). However, on the other hand, it also means that BPMN allows you to show more aspects in your diagrams (e.g. process flow versus data flow).

Since many people had to start working from home I thought it may be useful if I share some tools that I use with success for some time. Some of those tools help me in my work as a consultant at BOC Group, others are very useful for remote work with a team of volunteers in an NGO and the rest help me run this blog.

1. Tools for coordinating the work

It is very difficult to coordinate work on a basis of e-mails only if you do not have face to face contact with others. Of course in a perfect world you would be using some cool BPMS/workflow applications coordinating your processes, apps built using low code solutions which would allow you to work from anywhere or bots doing most of the work for you, but most likely your organization is not there yet and you need something fast.

A) Slack
Slack is an awesome tool which allows you to share messages and files with your team members in a context of channels or threads. This way you can have a quick overview of what is going on and finish projects without hundreds of e-mails. You can also have voice or video calls from Slack.

NGO where I am involved uses free tier of Slack which has a limit of 10 000 messages, so I can confirm that it works perfectly for small to mid-size team and if your team is bigger commercial plans should also work for you.

B) MS Teams
Teams offers very similar functionalities to Slack. You can share messages, files, have voice or video calls. It was available as a freemium for some time already, but in recent days Microsoft kindly increased support for users of free version. You can use Teams at work or at the university for remote classes (there is a special free plan for education).

2. Tools for planning the work

If you need to change the way you work it is a good idea to plan it in such a way that others can see what needs to be done and easily post updates. There are many tools for task and project management, but below you can find my favorites.

C) Trello
This is a brilliant tool for managing tasks and projects, which I use daily. It uses kanban approach and organizes your tasks as cards which can be extended with lots of additional details (responsible people, due dates, links, checklists and many more) and placed on boards to provide better visibility of the status.

Trello is only one of several great tools offered by Atlassian. So if you need something for a small team (up to 10 people) to collaborate with others on documents (Confluence) or track issues or projects (Jira) check their free offer: https://www.atlassian.com/software/free

D) Asana
Asana is also a great tool for managing tasks and projects. It has lots of cool features and I was their happy user for years.

3. Tools for video meetings with others

Sometimes you need to have a meeting with people outside your organization and show them something. If you need something more reliable than Skype, here are my suggestions.

E) GoToMeeting
Whenever I need to make an online session with a customer GoToMeeting is my first choice. I am normally using commercial version, but the free one should be sufficient for a start. GTM is rock-solid and very easy to use.

F) Zoom
When I was doing video interviews for BPM Tips online summit few years ago I used Zoom very often and this was a great choice. It allows you to run small webinars too (up to 100 participants and 40 minutes) apart from unlimited 1 on 1 meetings on a free plan. Zoom also has a very useful feature of switching backgrounds if you do not want to show your messy room

4. Tools for screen recording

If your job, like mine, requires explaining something to others probably you do not enjoy writing long instructions nobody reads. But there is a better way: very often one short video can save you hours of back and forth communication.

G) Loom
For years I was using desktop application for screen recordings and then uploaded the recordings, so that people could watch them. It was slow and cumbersome. With Loom it literally takes seconds from finishing videos to sharing it. You can also cut unnecessary parts or even use animated GIF as a video preview.

5. Tools for measuring time

One of the difficult aspects of working from home is knowing how to divide time between work and other tasks. If you want to make sure you know how much time do you spend on work and how long did you need to finish given tasks time trackers come to the rescue.

H) Toggl
There are lots of various time trackers on the market, but my favorite one is Toggl. It is super easy to use and you can integrate it with many other applications.

Hope some of those tools will help you stay productive and safe during this time! If you have any ideas of what could be helpful for you from my side let me know in comments or via e-mail!

If so, I may have 2 interesting things for you.

1) I recently published the first version of a course “Process automation – workflow, RPA, and beyond” on Udemy and want to share it with my readers.

This is an early version of a course with content mostly covering workflow/BPMS tools. I will be adding more videos about RPA and other tools soon, but to decide what to focus on I would like to hear feedback from people with an early adopter attitude

If this sounds interesting use the link below to join the course for free:
https://www.udemy.com/process-automation-workflow-rpa-and-beyond/?couponCode=EARLY_ADOPTER
and tell me what should I add!

I hope you will find the course useful.

Link is valid until November 11th.

UPDATE: since many of you joined I thought it would be cool to extend the free access till Thanksgiving. This is my way of saying “Thanks” for being my reader
https://www.udemy.com/process-automation-workflow-rpa-and-beyond/?couponCode=THANKS2018

UPDATE2: You can join the course for a lowest Udemy price (9,99 USD) using this link: https://www.udemy.com/process-automation-workflow-rpa-and-beyond/?couponCode=BPMTIPS

2) Do you want to learn more about various aspects of intelligent automation from the leading companies? AI EMEA Live online summit is currently running. You can still register to get access to all recordings on:
https://ai-intelligent-automation-emea.vfairs.com/en/#about

However according to the quote often attributed to Sun Tzu “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

Deep down we all feel that organizations need to make their strategies actionable if they want to succeed.

To show you how to approach this topic and why is it important for all BPM efforts I invited for an interview Adrian Reed.

Below you can listen to the interview.

Are you a visual person? This interview was recorded as a part of BPM Value Summit 2016, so I have a video for you too.

About Adrian Reed

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. Adrian is President of the UK chapter of the IIBA and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed.

Social Links

WWW: http://www.adrianreed.co.uk
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @UKAdrianReed

Additional resources

“Strategy the Crucial Enabler” — Recording of Adrian’s presentation at BBC conference 2015 http://www.adrianreed.co.uk/2015/12/28/strategy-the-crucial-enabler/

Book “Be a Great Problem Solver!”
http://www.problemsolvingbook.co.uk/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Be-Great-Problem-Solver-2/dp/1292119624/

Adrian’s newsletter “BA Digest”
http://eepurl.com/bEnfuL

One of those hot topics is Decision Management and a new standard from OMG: DMN (Decision Model and Notation).

Next week I will have something really interesting for you on this topic, but in the mean time I would like to share with you two ways you can learn more about DMN: bpmNEXT 2016 conference and MOOC “BPMN meets DMN: Business Process and Decision Modeling”.

bpmNEXT 2016
bpmNEXT conference is the brainchild of Bruce Silver and Nathaniel Palmer. bpmNEXT 2016 will be fourth annual event, showcasing of the best in “what’s next for BPM.”.

Apart from 4 presentations on DMN there will be plenty of other interesting topics (you can check the 2016 program here), so if you have free time on April 19-21 and you want to see the future of BPM you should seriously consider registering.

MOOC “BPMN meets DMN: Business Process and Decision Modeling”
Last year you could read on my site about BPM-related Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC).
First course I plan to participate in this year is MOOC “BPMN meets DMN: Business Process and Decision Modeling” by Mathias Weske.

Below you can find more information from organizers:

Start: April 11th 2016
Duration: 6 weeks
Course Language: English

Course Summary
Business process models play a central role in describing, analyzing, improving, implementing, and monitoring business processes. They serve as a communication vehicle for professionals with different background and expertise, ranging from business administration, quality management, and organizational development to process improvement, systems architectures, and software development.

Recently, there is a strong focus on operational decisions in business processes, since they influence the process flow, its performance and quality. Decision models complement process models by representing concrete, operational decisions, both with their structure and their decision logic.

This online course introduces concepts of business process modeling using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). Participants will learn the elements of process models and their precise meaning. Based on a thorough understanding of business process models, the last part of the course covers decision models using the recent standard Decision Model and Notation (DMN).

The course covers concepts to describe and analyze business processes and decisions. It does not cover methods on how to model, improve, monitor or implement business processes. Still, a deep understanding of business processes and decisions is a useful basis for these activities.

To help you decide if you should consider adding it to your BPM toolbox, I invited Clay Richardson from Forrester Research for an interview.

Clay shares many great insights on topics like Customer Journey Mapping and aligning it with BPM, Lean Startup Techniques, Low-Code Application Development and much more.

Interview

Quotes

“Competitive advantage is no longer driven by automation and efficiency. It is now driven by customer engagement.”

“Companies that obsess about delivering great customer experiences create obsessed customers.”

“BPM’s role is to drive better experiences, greater convenience, ease of interaction.”

“[Customer journey] is the glue that ties experiences that customer has with operational processes.”

“Every part of the company has a role to play in customer experience.”

“For BPM teams the most important part is to connect the different states of the journey with the underlying processes.”

“How to convince people to use lean startup techniques? I would give them three names: Borders, Uber, Airbnb.”

“Today, we are fooling ourselves if we think we know what the customer wants.”

“You want to make sure you are building products and services that customer want, not just building to build.”

“BPM is in a major transition. This does not mean we jettison everything we have learned about BPM over the last ten years. It means we need to augment and expand our process toolkits.”

“The main technique I recommend to BPM teams is to focus around defining the customer lifecycle and customer journey.”

“In BPM we are notorious for using vanity metrics.”

Resources mentioned in this episode

“Can Customer Experience Management Technology Help You Govern CX?” TJ Keitt, Clay Richardson
https://forrester.com/Can+Customer+Experience+Management+Technology+Help+You+Govern+CX/fulltext/-/E-res122556#AST1019678

“Design For Disruption: Take An Outside-In Approach To BPM. Embrace Design Thinking To Drive Customer-Centric BPM Initiatives” Clay Richardson
https://www.forrester.com/Design+For+Disruption+Take+An+OutsideIn+Approach+To+BPM/fulltext/-/E-res91465

“Architect For Extreme Uncertainty. Use Systemic Design To Deal With The Unknown Unknowns” Clay Richardson, Brian Hopkins
https://www.forrester.com/Architect+For+Extreme+Uncertainty/fulltext/-/E-res103461#AST970419

“Organizing Your Digital Future. What Type Of Organization Do You Need To Become A Digital Predator?” Nigel Fenwick
https://www.forrester.com/Organizing+Your+Digital+Future/fulltext/-/E-res124281

“Lean Startup” Eric Ries
http://theleanstartup.com/book

“The Four Steps to the Epiphany” Steve Blank
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank-ebook/dp/B00FLZKNUQ/

Forrester website
https://www.forrester.com

“The Business Process Management Playbook”
https://www.forrester.com/The+Business+Process+Management+Playbook/-/E-PLA260

“Disrupt Processes To Build Your Customer-Obsessed Business Model”
http://blogs.forrester.com/clay_richardson/15-06-29-disrupt_processes_to_build_your_customer_obsessed_operating_model

“Vendor Landscape: The Fractured, Fertile Terrain Of Low-Code Application Platforms”, Clay Richardson, John R. Rymer
https://www.forrester.com/Vendor+Landscape+The+Fractured+Fertile+Terrain+Of+LowCode+Application+Platforms/fulltext/-/E-res122549

“The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies-ebook/dp/B00D97HPQI/

“Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential” Carol Dweck
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-How-Fulfil-Your-Potential-ebook/dp/B005RZB65Q/

Clay Richardson’s research on Forrester website
https://www.forrester.com/Clay-Richardson

About Clay Richardson

Clay Richardson is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
He is a recognized thought leader with 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, continuous improvement, business design, disruptive innovation, tech market research and analysis, and public speaking.

Social Links

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsonclay
Twitter @passion4process

OMG’s next Quarterly technical meeting will be held in Berlin, Germany, June 15 to 19. During this event, the BPMN Model Interchange Working Group members will demonstrate BPMN 2.0 in action with 3 different scenarios. This session will take place at 4 PM on Wednesday the 17th (GMT+2).

BPMN 2.0 Diagram Interchange

For the 3rd time, 10 different tools chaining together will design a Business Process, starting from a blank page. In a demo where the tools will work at the same time, it will be shown that BPMN diagrams are indeed interchangeable as of today, in fact for a long time now.

Click here to learn more about the Diagram Interchange demo.

Hidden Attributes Interchange

Not only the drawing is depicted by the standard, BPMN 2.0 also define a full set of attributes that are not visible, but meaningful for Business Process Design. This demo will highlight that any piece of hidden information is moved from tool to tool.

Click here to learn more about the Hidden Attributes Interchange demo.

Execution Attributes Interchange

The Business Process model are made executable by adding execution attributes (could be extensions) since Execution Engines require more details. The demo will show 3 different BPM Suites run the same BPMN file, created with several design tools. Click here to learn more about the Execution Attributes Interchange demo.