Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Process Management
Unpredictable Environment
Executive Summary
Business process management (BPM) promises to help organizations orchestrate their
people and systems in order to conduct business more efficiently and effectively.
BPM can deliver improved process efficiency as well as better visibility into business
operations. Organizations that have invested in BPM methodologies and technologies
see rapid return on their investments and derive greater value from their existing
systems. In fact, of TIBCO customers responding to a recent survey conducted by
Intercai Mondiale:
In addition, more than 80% of respondents reduced operating costs and IT costs,
increased productivity, and improved their quality of service beyond their expectations.
The results above, while impressive, only scratch the surface of what can be achieved
with BPM. Many of these results represent the “low-hanging fruit,” benefits that were
realized due to automation of fairly simple processes. In order to extract value from BPM
initiatives over the long term, organizations need to be able to model and execute highly
complex business processes that evolved in response to a highly unpredictable business
climate. This can be difficult to accomplish using traditional BPM approaches that lend
themselves better to more static processes and provide visibility only at the highest level
of the process. Instead, organizations need to adopt a new approach to building business
processes: goal-driven business process management.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
• The agility to fix more problems as they occur rather than after the fact
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
Introduction
Today’s business climate is notoriously unpredictable. Businesses prepare for one type of
weather, and a different type materializes. The cost of preparing – or not preparing – for
inclement weather can be extremely costly.
Business process management (BPM), both the management practice and the software
tools that facilitate it, evolved to help organizations address this constantly changing
environment. BPM has helped organizations:
But, as with anything else in business, there is no completely evolved state for a business
process. It must continue to transform to help enterprises meet the newest demands of
the market. The market is rarely satisfied for long. Quickly and inevitably the old refrain
returns: newer, faster, better.
What more can be done? There are already a myriad of technologies and best practices
to help organizations act quickly on up-to-the-minute information. However, as more
organizations adopt these solutions, previously cutting-edge technologies quickly
become a baseline cost of doing business. The most responsive and competitive
companies now need more if they are to satisfy their customers and stay ahead of
the competition.
Part of the problem is that organizations are able to act on up-to-the-minute information
only in so far as the possible action is already built into the process. Greater process
flexibility is needed if these organizations are to become truly responsive – to move from
reactive to predictive. It is imperative to shift from inherently static processes – processes
that are discoverable and understandable, evolving relatively slowly over time – to
processes that are complex, dynamic, and predictive – actually evolving during execution
to meet previously unknown requirements.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
Goal-driven BPM is an approach that makes the development and identification of
business processes a more intuitive and natural activity. The world is goal driven; we
organize our lives, both personal and professional, around goals. When these goals
are large, we break them down into sub-goals that take us a step at a time to our final
objective. Often we work back from the goal to our current position in order to identify
the best route to that goal. For any scenario, there are likely a variety of “best” options,
the actual best depending on the variables of the situation. Goal-driven BPM treats
processes in the same manner. When managed and deployed appropriately, goal-driven
BPM provides today’s most competitive organizations with the flexibility and visibility they
need to win.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
Figure 1. Different colors
on the path represent the
standard techniques
(processes) that can be
reused in similar situations
to achieve different goals
By organizing processes around goals, that is “what is to be achieved” rather than “what
is to be done,” goal-driven BPM helps organizations achieve needed flexibility. Breaking
down business processes into sub-goals is critical to this flexibility. The collection of
discrete sub-goals makes up the building blocks available to a process designer. Just as
the mountain climber increases the number of mountains she can climb by expanding her
skill set, so expanding the set of sub-goals increases the number of new processes that
can be created by combining a number of different sub-goals. Creation of a process that
achieves a goal out of existing sub-goals requires no new effort. The processes needed to
create each of those sub-goals are already defined. In the context of this paper, they will
be referred to as process components.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
BETTER CONTEXT FOR PROCESS MONITORING
In addition to making the creation of new processes quick and painless, a goal-driven
approach to BPM makes it possible to monitor processes at a level with adequate visibility
to act on problems and change course in a timely manner. Breaking down processes into
logical discrete sub-goals makes it possible to monitor processes at the sub-goal level.
Monitoring a process at this level can be more valuable than monitoring the process either
at the step or overall process level. This is because if a milestone such as a sub-goal is
missed, it can mean that the entire process is in jeopardy of being completed on time.
On the other hand, late completion of a single step may not impact the timely completion
of the goal. If real-time visibility only gives us information about whether an entire process
finished behind schedule, it is alerting us to a problem that is already beyond our control.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
THE END STATE: DYNAMIC, ADAPTIVE BPM
In its most revolutionary incarnation, a goal-driven approach to BPM makes it possible to
do all of this automatically, based on rules. For example, when a work order comes in, the
appropriate process components are selected to create the process, based on rules. If, at
a later point, a milestone is missed, an alert is triggered. Predictive simulation identifies
that the missed milestone will result in a delinquent process, and rules dynamically identify
the best course of remediation, dynamically selecting the required process components.
Through this process of sense-and-respond incremental improvement, goal-driven BPM
makes it possible to create the most dynamic, agile, and responsive processes.
Sub-goals represent the management of the items of interest to the business. Once
identified, each of these “items of interest,” or sub-goals, can be managed as a service,
a discreet entity without dependencies and able to be reused as required by any part of
the business.
The key to correctly identifying the items managed by a business is to identify all of the
tangible and intangible items directly or indirectly involved in the day-to-day running of the
business. Lists of intangible items may include such things as contracts, policies, or services.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
Incident events, such as a withdrawal, a claim, a trade, a crash, or a holiday, may also be
of interest. Figure 3 provides examples of tangible and intangible items of interest.
Figure 3: Examples of
managed items involved in Intangible Items Tangible Items
a securities trade
• Regulations • Employees
• Trade • Customer
• Price • Departments
Tangible items are generally easier to identify as these are the physical items involved in
the day-to-day running of the business. For example, for a telecommunications provider
they could include products, employees, customers, test equipment, wiring, departments,
and so on. This is illustrated in Figure 4.
Business analysis techniques, such as business conceptual and structural modeling, can
help with the identification of the tangible and intangible items likely to be managed
by business processes. When an exhaustive list of managed items has been identified,
it is then possible to optimize this list by pruning those items that are only tangentially
involved in the business process and by identifying suitable abstractions that cover whole
classes of the items identified. Care should be taken not to over-optimize this list, lest the
managed items be abstracted into generic uselessness.
Each goal or sub-goal then manages a single item or a set of highly cohesive related
items. This results in discrete processes that are cleaner and more likely to be reusable.
Because of the discrete nature of these “process components,” it is also possible to
expose them as “services,” with simple, clean interfaces.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T
IDENTIFYING SUB-GOAL CANDIDATES FOR REUSE
Goal orientation of business processes is a powerful concept. Its value is further magnified
by the possibility for greater process reuse. This is possible due to the encapsulation of
items significant to the business as services that are available for reuse.
Business is organized around two main axes: vertical business segments, within which
end-to-end business processes exist, and horizontal, business-spanning functions that
cross these segments. This is illustrated in Figure 5.
Figure 5: An example of a
logical business organization
Goal-driven BPM allows for the identification of the sub-goals associated with end-to-
end business processes. Once sub-goals are identified, it is easy to identify those that
are common across vertical segments or horizontal functions and therefore candidates
for reuse. Frequently, the items managed by the horizontal functions participate in the
achievement of many of the organization’s goals for the vertical segments. Reuse of goals
is most likely with the more generic horizontal functions (such as the financial function in
the example above), but other reuse is also possible.
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FORMULATION OF END-TO-END BUSINESS PROCESSES: ACHIEVING GOALS
Once process components are identified, they can be assembled into groups of
components that achieve a desired business goal. The components are then sequenced
and scheduled in an order that facilitates the completion of the goal or process. To
achieve the greatest flexibility, it is important that the constituent process components
have no dependencies such as loops or conditional parts. For example, if the process
were building a house and two process components were laying the foundation and
building the walls, whereas the foundation must be built before the walls, what constitutes
the foundation should be irrelevant to building the walls.
Key to the success of this approach is the adoption of a suitable concept or metaphor that
makes the combination of process components understandable to the business analyst.
The project plan provides such a metaphor. Tasks in the plan represent the independently
defined process components. The tasks are then sequenced appropriated, as in the
example above, where the foundation must be completed before the walls of the house
are erected.
• BPM reuse is restricted: Goal-driven BPM software can enforce many of the process
attributes that are necessary for reuse. Without checks for less optimal process
design, organizations will find fewer opportunities for reuse.
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software, business process development is usually a technical activity, beyond
the ability of most business users.
For software to effectively facilitate goal-driven BPM, it must provide support for the
following activities.
• Determine sub-goals required to achieve the desired end goal: Identify the
required sub-goals by working back from the end goal one step at a time to the
starting point or current position. The current position can be defined by many
things, for example: number of outstanding deals, credit status of the subject
customer, and so on.
• Allow the end goal to change part way through its fulfillment: For a business to
achieve the required level of agility it must be possible to change direction or
adapt goals quickly. For example, a customer status may change while a process
is in motion.
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Figure 6: Processes organized
as services
Simple, dynamic sub-processes are not sufficient to solve this problem as the process
itself would still need to determine the sub-process to invoke at runtime. Though
this reduces the degree of dependency, it does not eliminate it. It is still likely that
an overarching process will need to be modified when a new sub-process capable of
providing one of its required services is made available. In any case, the process itself is
made more complex by the requirement that it orchestrate its own required services.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T 13
It is not expected to be the standard process for execution plan generation, as
it can be time-consuming. The required process components are selected from
a library; the dependencies, temporal or otherwise, are defined; and the various
alarm values are assigned to each task.
Goal-driven BPM software should be time aware. This time awareness enables it to
monitor service level agreements (SLAs) associated with overall goal achievement
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(end-to-end business processes) and key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with
the process components that make up the end-to-end process.
Process component KPIs are monitored by tracking the timeliness of each process
component. This allows the prediction of fixed milestones that will most likely not be met
and the monitoring of projected completion time of processes that constitute the SLA for
the end-to-end process. Users are alerted to execution plans that are in or near jeopardy.
Action can then be taken to avoid or ameliorate the problem.
For example, Figure 7 shows an execution plan developed with TIBCO iProcess™
Conductor, a component of TIBCO’s BPM suite. The plan provides an intuitive view
of each process component, its dependencies, and current status. The real-time status
of the plan is marked by the light grey vertical line in the center. An example of a
dependency is circled in red, showing that task 2 may not start until task 1 has completed.
The predicted and actual durations of every process component are also shown.
Jeopardy status is intuitively displayed: red areas denote existing problems and yellow
areas potential problems.
Should it be determined that the jeopardy status of task 2 jeopardizes the entire plan,
the user may decide to modify the process in-flight or completely change the goal. If the
company has architected its business processes for automatic execution plan generation,
this plan could also be dynamically reconfigured, based on the pre-defined rules.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T 15
Conclusion
Goal-driven BPM, supported both by an effective methodology and technology,
provides organizations with a new level of agility to support an unpredictable business
environment. It delivers significant benefits, including:
• The agility to fix more problems as they occur rather than after the fact
Goal-driven BPM mirrors the approach we take to goals in our own lives and lends itself to
business user involvement in the creation and management of processes. While intuitive
to implement, goal-driven BPM makes it possible to create highly complex processes with
involved temporal dependencies between process components.
When evaluating technologies to support goal-driven BPM, organizations should look for
a solution that:
• Supports both business and technical users with tools appropriate to their skills
and roles
• Breaks processes down into goals and sub-goals, with an abstraction layer to
minimize dependencies
• Tracks processes at the sub-goal level in order to find and fix problems before
it’s too late
TIBCO has over 15 years experience in providing BPM solutions and has delivered the
value of BPM to over 500,000 users at 800 companies. Contact us to start a dialogue
on how goal-driven BPM can significantly improve process management for
your organization.
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T 16
About TIBCO iProcess Suite
TIBCO iProcess™ Suite software enables business users and IT staff to implement goal-
driven BPM while collaborating on the modeling, execution, and continuous improvement
of business processes that span their organization. It is a rich suite of application modules
with functionality designed to help organizations create business processes of whatever
complexity they require. The components of the suite are: a business process modeling
and simulation tool, a business rules engine, an integration platform, an engine for
executing processes, real-time process monitoring, an end user workspace for process
participants, and an analytics tool for analyzing processes.
Using TIBCO iProcess Suite, organizations can break down processes into discrete,
coherent components that facilitate reuse and fast process design and re-design. These
components map logically to sub-goals that are concatenated to achieve a larger goal.
TIBCO iProcess Conductor, along with TIBCO iProcess Engine, is able to dynamically
combine a set of process components associated with required sub-goals, applying
optimization as necessary and creating real-time visibility at the process component
level. The fact that iProcess Conductor is time-aware means that if deadlines are missed
as a running process progresses, the expected path can be predicted. If the process is
in jeopardy, users will be alerted to that fact and can then adapt the process to avoid or
mitigate any problems.
• Optimal efficiency and effectiveness with goal-driven business processes that can
intelligently adapt to current conditions
• Ability to break processes down into goals and sub-goals, with an abstraction layer
to minimize dependencies
• Better business process design with intuitive tools designed for business users
G o a l - d r i v e n B U S IN E S S P RO C E S S M A N A G E M E N T 17
Appendix 1
Why Sub-Processes Are Not Sufficient to
Enable Goal-Driven BPM
Sub-processes are a powerful facility for breaking down business processes into
manageable chunks. When using sub-processes, a contiguous business process is broken
down into a hierarchical set of sub-processes that can be represented as a tree. For
example, a process to provide a mobile telephony product for a Mobile Virtual Network
Operator (MVNO) could be broken down as shown in Figure 8:
Figure 8: A process to
provide a domestic mobile
telephony product
The “provide voice” and “provide mobile internet” sub-processes are largely generic
(dealing with billing configuration, for example); they invoke further sub-processes to deal
with the specifics of providing the actual service from the provider used by the MVNO.
In this case, these services are GSM, WAP and MMS.
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Figure 9 shows another product provided by the same MVNO. This is a product intended
for business users. It also consists of voice and mobile internet services, but the method
of delivery and the providers that are used are different. Unfortunately the opportunity
for reuse is restricted in this case because the processes are dependent on sub-processes
that provide the wrong specific services. This is not a process versioning issue as both
products are being provided by the MVNO at the same time.
©2006, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, The Power of Now, TIBCO Software, and TIBCO iProcess are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only. 1347.0