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)

Summary


This has been a whistle-stop tour of process analysis and improvement techniques. We have seen all the major tools in the process analyst's kit bag, with a view to creating a deep understanding of the process we are seeking to systematize in our BPMS.

There is much more to this than we can squeeze in one chapter, and there are plenty of sources for further information. For more detail and practical examples read the incomparable Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development by Alec Sharp and Patrick McDermott (ISBN 978-1-58053-021-7), or The Reengineering Revolution by Michael Hammer (ISBN 978-0-88730-736-2).

In this chapter, we have considered the following deliverables of this phase of our BPM project, and we have seen worked examples of each where it has been appropriate:

  • Project initiation document

  • As Is:

    • Flowchart

    • Activity flow diagram

    • RACI matrix

    • Process metrics analysis

  • To Be:

    • Activity flow diagram

    • RACI matrix

    • Implementation plan