Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN

Transcription

1 Synchronizing Business and IT Process Views with BPMN Hagen Völzer Joint work with Jochen Küster and Cédric Favre 2012 IBM Corporation

2 Introduction: A Business Rule in IBM WODM Uses connection to a repository of business objects (and their attributes) 2 Hagen Völzer

3 Agility through Artifact Separation Business IT Business Rule (Textual Requirement) Implementation of rule (Code) yesterday IT System today Business Rule Rules Engine IT System Advantages: Change- and maintenance friendly Less development effort What you see is what you execute 3 Hagen Völzer

4 When is such an approach successful? Characteristics of (such) business rules: Rules are meaningful to business Can be read/created directly by business in a way that is understood by a dedicated engine Rules change frequently 4 Hagen Völzer

5 Can this be done for other artifacts/aspects as well? Characteristics for rules: Rules are meaningful to business Can be read/created directly by business in a way that is understood by a dedicated engine Rules change frequently Other artifacts: Forms / UI Process / control flow (main business behavior) KPI / monitoring data Business events Data model / information structure / business objects? How successful / realistic is the idea for these artifacts? 5 Hagen Völzer

6 Outline The Business-IT gap problem for process models A solution approach: The Shared Process Model (work in progress) Basic solution design Recorded demo of a prototype Our notion of consistency Discussion 6 Hagen Völzer

7 The Case of Process Models Business Business Model Business Process Model Process Engine IT Model Process Engine Theory IT System IT Practice IT System Disadvantages: Models, being maintained independently, quickly get out of sync (inconsistent) What you see is not what is executed (audit failures, ineffective operations, misinterpreted monitoring data) Not change friendly 7 Hagen Völzer

8 Road Block 1 (yesterday) Example from a bank Different languages and tools on business and IT level BPMN / ARIS BPEL Transformation from Business to IT is possibly automated No bidirectional transformations Inconsistencies quickly occur and cause problems Today: Can use BPMN 2.0 as common language for business and IT

9 Road Block 2: Different Concerns and Levels of Detail Current Practice: Companies use multiple models Is this necessary? Case study [Branco et al., Uni Waterloo] 70 model pairs from a single bank 23 interviews (business and IT) Study differences in model pairs (business IT) Identified change patterns and their frequency Other findings regarding consistency (later) In addition, we talked to other BPM practitioners and architects Business Model IT Model IBM Corporation

10 Business and IT want different models/views (1/2) Business Model IT Model IT model has compared to business model: Complementary implementation detail (data, services, communication) Formalization and renaming (task/event specialization, condition formalization) no alteration of flow Contd. 10 Hagen Völzer

11 Business and IT want different models/views (2/2) Business Model IT Model IT model has compared to business model: Behavioral refinement and refactoring Hierarchical refinement / subsumption Hierarchical refactoring (for maintenance and performance) Added IT tasks Added behavior (e.g. technical exception handling) => Organizations use multiple models of the same process (The difference between them is technically more than just omitting some details ) 11 Hagen Völzer

12 Multiple models get inconsistent Scenario 1: IT Refinement / Implementation IT may change business-relevant aspects, resulting in inconsistency with business view, because: Business view is incomplete (frequently) Business view contains inconsistencies (frequently to occasionally) Business view contradicts some IT requirements, e.g. order of tasks (occasionally) Business view does not anymore faithfully represent the actual business process (rarely) Scenario 2: Business Change Business makes changes to the business view due to new business requirements (Case study: roughly 2 fixes per project per year) Scenario 3: Technical Change New IT requirements cause change of the Technical view E.g. upcoming IT infrastructure changes require changes in executable process models Some changes may affect business-relevant aspects 12

13 Inconsistencies cause problems Shipment delays, business disruptions, audit failures From the case study: E.g. some functionality was deleted inadvertently from IT model because there was no correspondence in the business model IT implementation was outsourced Discovered after process was in production Running instances had to be canceled and recreated E.g. similar scenario but now inconsistency between audit model and running process caused audit issue and a fine 13 Hagen Völzer

14 Outline The Business-IT gap problem for process models A solution approach: The Shared Process Model (work in progress) Basic solution design Recorded demo of a prototype Our notion of consistency Discussion 14 Hagen Völzer

15 Solution: The Shared Process Model Change Business View Check out Check in (private or common) Start Start A1 A2 A3 A C C B Shared Process Model (Process Model E Synchronizer) D B F D D1 End D2 End Check out Check in (private or common) Change IT View Each view can be changed Common changes to one view are propagated to the other view (but not private changes) Links are maintained between model elements to propagate change propagation 2010 IBM Corporation

16 The Shared Process Model Implementation Approach Change Change Business View Check out Check in (private or common) Check out Check in (private or common) IT View Shared Process Model Maintain internally two separate BPMN models and links between their elements Links are created automatically during refinement through refinement patterns and must be maintained Links are used to propagate changes from one side to the other and to check consistency Advantages of this approach: View creation is simple, export BPMN model, which can be consumed by editors and other tools Generalization to more than two views relatively straight-forward 2010 IBM Corporation

17 Correspondence Links Links are 1:1, 1:m, m:1, but could be m:m as well Some elements are not linked (private elements) 17 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

18 Basic Change Propagation Mechanism Create horizontal diff between IT models (generic model comparison) Translate diff from business to IT using links Apply translated diff to business model to obtain new business model Links need to be maintained 18 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

19 Refined Change Propagation Mechanism Each operation of the diff is applied atomically to create a modified business model and to update the links 19 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

20 Recorded Demo 20

21 Outline The Business-IT gap problem for process models A solution approach: The Shared Process Model (work in progress) Basic solution design Recorded demo of a prototype Our notion of consistency Discussion 21 Hagen Völzer

22 Business-IT Consistency What you see (in business view) is what you execute (in IT) Intuition: Links always represent hierarchical refinements/subsumptions Private elements are `between links (not within) In IT, exceptional behavior may be added 22 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

23 Inconsistency Examples 23 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

24 Business-IT Consistency Dedicated hierarchical refinement actions preserve consistency Common changes preserve consistency For private freehand-editing, consistency can be checked upon check-in Consistency can be checked efficiently because it is on the defined directly on the model Consistency Implies that `business behavior is preserved (but not the converse) 24 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

25 Consistency Management Business conform (i.e. meets business requirements = accepted by business analyst) and valid (i.e. accepted by modeling tool) Shared Model IT conform (i.e. meets IT requirements = accepted by IT architect), valid (i.e. accepted by modeling tool), and executable (i.e. accepted by execution engine) Business View / IT View / / Business-IT consistency (= integrity of shared model, i.e., business view reflects the executable model) Change Management on top of Shared Model based on consistency is desirable (future work) 25

26 Conclusion A single process view is often not enough Multiple views quickly go out of sync Multiple views can be kept in sync with the Shared Process Model i.e., through vertical model synchronization 26 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

27 Outlook to Future Work Extensive practical evaluation Alternative implementation for simple scenarios: Extended meta-model Advanced scenarios: Change Management on top of Shared Model One business model corresponds to multiple alternative IT models More than two views 27 Hagen Völzer 2010 IBM Corporation

28 Can this be done for other artifacts/aspects as well? Characteristics for rules: Rules are meaningful to business Can be read/created directly by business in a way that is understood by a dedicated engine Rules change frequently Other artifacts: Forms / UI Process / control flow (main business behavior) KPI / monitoring data Business events Data model / information structure / business objects? How successful / realistic is the idea for these artifacts? 28 Hagen Völzer

29 References M. Castelo Branco, Y. Xiong, K. Czarnecki, J. Küster, H. Völzer: A Case Study on Consistency Management of Business and IT Process Models in Banking. To appear in Software and Systems Modelling J. Küster, H. Völzer, C. Favre, M. Castelo Branco and K.Czarnecki: Supporting Different Process Views through a Shared Process Model. IBM Tech Report RZ 3823 M. Castelo Branco, J. Troya, K.Czarnecki, J. Küster, H. Völzer: Matching Business Process Workflows across Abstraction Levels. MoDELS 2012: C. Favre, Jochen Küster, and Hagen Völzer : The Shared Process Model. BPM Demos Hagen Völzer