Book Image

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM

Book Image

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM

Overview of this book

JBoss jBPM is a free, open-source, business process management solution. It enables users to create business processes that coordinate people, applications, and services. A business process is a sequence of activities triggered by a certain input that results in a valuable output. Business Process Management is about analyzing those activities in a structured way and eventually supporting their execution with a workflow application. This allows for the following results: Better management visibility of their business: improved decision making Low cost of inputs: de-skilled labor requirements, less waste, standardized components Better outputs: consistent quality, more customer satisfaction Businesses have always tried to manage their processes, but software such as jBPM brings the methodology and management theory to practical life. JBoss jBPM offers the following key features: Graphical process definition Flexibility to integrate code into the graphical process definition A customizable web-based workflow application that runs the process you’ve defined Easy programming model to extend the graphical process definition A process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of process definition languages and Java. Easy to integrate with other systems through the JBoss middleware suite.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Setting up the project


It is very tempting at the outset of an exciting new project to just jump in straight away and start the analysis work, or even just start building. It is very worthwhile, however, to spend some time setting up the project properly first, so that everyone involved in the project understands:

  • Exactly what we plan to do

  • Why we are doing it

  • How we plan to get there

  • Who will do what

  • When we are planning to do it

A cliché that is often bandied around on technology projects is the axiom "People, process, and technology". Typically, an IT project is good at addressing the process and technology bits, but all too often, the people element gets left behind as an afterthought for training and the nebulous area of "change management". The people element of the project needs to be considered at the very beginning, and concrete actions taken throughout to ensure everyone is buying into the project.

The very first thing that we can do to ensure we are taking our people with us, is set...