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)

Process analysis and improvement


The upfront process improvements, systemization, and automation we have already made is really only half the story. Once you have your BPM system integrated into your organization, you have really only scratched the surface of the process benefits you can expect to achieve. Higher quality analysis resulting from real and accurate process metrics can lead to much more important process improvements as time goes on. It may take several years for these improvements to emerge, but an investment in a business process management system is the gift that goes on giving.

Track process metrics

So how do we realize these extraordinary promises? Well, the key starting point is our process metrics. Now that the system is bedded in, and we can see the kind of data that is coming through, we can assess how important the process metrics we chose to track really are. Are we giving our management team the right tools to make business decisions, or are there other KPIs we should...