Performing Business Processes Knowledge Base Gianmario Motta
[email protected] Giovanni Pignatelli
[email protected] Manuela Florio
[email protected]
Abstract This paper presents a joint project of Systems and Information Department (University of Pavia) and BIP, that has the aim to design and implement a Knowledge Management System to design the performance of business processes. The project includes (a) a metamodel of processes and performances, (b) a design methodology and (c) a software tool for modelling. The novelty of the approach come from integrating the performance dimension in the design of business processes, based on the assumption the analyst should not only design processes but design good and sustainable processes. The metamodel merges (a) the HIGO framework that define business process performances and stakeholders returns (b) the compass model of MIT Process Handbook that enables the creation and navigation on process structures (c) the framework of Service Level Agreement by which performances objectives are planned, agreed and controlled. Specifically the design methodology includes various steps, namely the definition of process structure, the association of performances to the process structure and the design of a individual process performances by inheritance methods. Finally, the Business Process Performance Knowledge Base, a web-based application on Web 2.0 paradigm, enables to create business process models in a collaborative way and also assists the user in navigating existing models by industry and by case examples. Case examples allow also the user to identify and to relate performances. The navigation model is designed with the Interactive Dialogue Model (IDM) that increases the user-experience and it is implemented on AJAX technology.
1 Introduction In the global economy, the definition of service is a fundamental concept. This trend is known as Service Oriented Economy (SOE). To support this new economic model a new discipline called Service Science [14][15] is born. In this new business approach, two competitive factors are rising: service [12] and business process seen as a service chain[20]. This paper presents a collaboration project between University of Pavia and the consulting group Business Integration Partners (BIP) to engineer a Knowledge Management System (KMS) of business processes. Our objective is to develop a tool to support the definition of business processes that allow acceptable performance to a wide range of stakeholders (Performing Processes) and the spread of knowledge about business processes in complex organizational context. To get these objectives our KMS integrates concepts of Quality of Service (QoS), Stakeholders and Process Structure definition. The KMS target users can be identified in: 1
• • • •
Consulting Group, to design and improve business processes Software Vendors of open source IT solutions, to map their solutions on best practices Academic and Research Organization, interested in collecting the knowledge about business process Business Organizations, interested in spreading knowledge about their own Business Processes and in measuring the related Performances
Our system is conceived to create an integrated environment based on open source and copy-left principles. The first section presents a brief State-of-Art analysis focused on tools, standards, reference model and frameworks used the design of performing processes. The second section presents the Knowledge Base System (KBS) to support the performing processes design. In particular we present the meta-model and the design methodology to design Performing Processes by applying the meta-model. Finally we present the Knowledge Base System used to support the design methodology and to navigate the informations about performing processes.
2 Designing Performing Processes: State of Art The design of Performing Business Processes involves the following three domains: Processes, Performances and Sustainability. In this context we have identified several contributions due to the vastness of the involved domains: • •
•
Proprietary Suites for the integrated design of business processes that include workflow and organizational variables Workflow modelling languages and related open modelling suites supported by BPM Iniziative (www.bpmi.org) and WfMC (www.wfmc.org) [2] that follow the modelling of business processes from the informal design to the modelling with executable languages Business Processes Reference Models like MIT Process Handbook [13][16][25] that defines an universal taxonomy (including the SCOR model) that uses the Software Engineering principles (aggregation, specialization and reuse) Models for the definition and management of the business processes performances like Service Level Agreements (SLA) schema [23] and HIGO® [20] framework that defines a models for the business processes performance by crossing Performances and Stakeholders' perspective
The state of art analysis has showed the limits of these approaches. In particular the open source modelling suites do not cover management aspects while the proprietary ones offer integrated solutions focused on proprietary software solutions. Anyway, both solutions do not integrate either general business process taxonomy or business process performance measuring system.
3 Concept of the Knowledge Base System The Knowledge Base System (KBS) is conceived to create a unique environment where to collect, organize, manage, increase and distribute the knowledge about business processes and performances. In this context, major activities are finalized to: a) Define a Meta-model to describe performing processes b) Define a methodology to design Performance Process by applying the Conceptual Metamodel 2
c) Engineer the Knowledge Base System supporting the design methodology and the fruition of the informations In the following Section we present the key point and the main evidence of these activities.
3.1 The Performing Business Process Conceptual Meta-Model The Business Process Performance Conceptual Meta-Model is based on a meta-model that integrates: • the HIGO framework that define business process performances and stakeholders returns • the compass model of MIT Process Handbook that enables the creation and navigation on process structures • the framework of Service Level Agreement by which performances objectives are planned, agreed and controlled. The integration of the Processes, Performances and Sustainability domains is got through two semantic relations: • Processes-Performance: inserts in a structure like the MIT Process Handbook the support to performance analysis and to associate the HIGO® framework in a solid and structured business process model • Performance-Sustainability: associates the HIGO® framework to a model for the definition of sustainability levels based on service level and enlarges the range of the indicators used by the Service Level Objectives (SLO) The result is an integrated meta-model for describing performing processes based on three preexistent, good and tested models. In the next figure is shown the meta-model used by our Knowledge Base (KB) where: • Business Model can be defined as “what a company does and how they make money from doing it” [13] • Business Process represents the best practice definition of single business process • Business Case Example represents the model of business processes in a particular enterprise..The case examples are organized by Business Model.
Figure 1 - Meta-model used by the Knowledge Base
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3.2 A Methodology to design Performing Processes We have defined a design methodology that includes the following steps: 1. Definition of the processes structure 2. Association of performances to process structure 3. Definition of the sustainability levels Step 1: Definition of processes structure When we define a business case example we may need to create a new process. We can define a new process or use processes specialized by best practices. In this way we can obtain very complex process structures as shown in the next figure.
Figure 2 - Example of composing a business process
Step 2: Association of performances to process structure The second step consists in associating stakeholders, KPIs and business processes. With the association between performances and process structure we may use derived association between stakeholders and business processes and reuse of KPIs too. Using the business process structure we can use the derived associations between stakeholders and business processes. Derived associations are like transitive property, if a stakeholder is related to a process then he is implicitly related to all processes derived by specialization and to all processes that compose the process considered. This cases are shown in the next figure.
Figure 3 - Derived association between stakeholders and business processes
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Let now consider the reuse of KPIs by specialization. When we specialize a business process there are three scenarios of association: 1. the KPI is the same for both the parent and the child process. The relation between child process and KPI is derived as shown in next figure:
2. the KPI of the child is specialized from the KPI of the parent. The relation between the child process and the child KPI is specialized from the original relation between the parent process and the parent KPI as shown in next figure
3. the KPI of the parent process is not related to the child process the they are not linked
The third scenario shows that the utilization of derived or specialized associations is not a must but an opportunity. Similar considerations could be done for the reuse of KPIs related to a stakeholder. Let consider an empirical example, the “Activation of a phone line”. For this process we have identified two KPIs: Mean Time to Activation and Number of activations out of SLA. This process may be specialized in: • Activation in a big city • Activation in a small town The KPIs of the specialized process “Activation in a big city” are the same of its parent because the organizational structure is defined to manage a large number of activation. The “Activation in a small town” process is based on a different organizational structure and manage low volume of requests. In this case, the parent process KPIs are not meaningful so the specialized process does 5
not inherit them. For this process is more meaningful a newly KPI: “Maximum Time of Activation”. This case is shown in the next figure.
Figure 4 - The "Activation of a phone line" process and related KPIs
Step 3: Definition of the sustainability levels The third step consists in defining the sustainability levels of the processes. The definition is done by the assotiation 1-to-N between SLO and KPIs1 as shown in the following relation. SLO → {KPI1
KPI 2
KPI 3 ... KPI n
}
Through this relation we can easily jump from the “SLO space” to the “KPIs space” and describe the sustainability levels of the KPIs starting from the related SLO sustainability set. In the SLA schema, the offered service level must belong to a range of acceptability as expressed by the relation: Offered Service Level ∈ [ SLO – Tolerance , SLO ] Tolerance = SLO – Minimum Service Level This relation becomes a system that describes the conformity of the KPIs to the related SLO KPI1 KPI 2 KPI3 KPI4
∈ S1 ∈ S2 ∈ S3 ... ∈ Sn
S i = [mini , targeti ] ∀ i = 1,..., n
1
Our model extends the mapping 1-to-1 between SLO and KPI purposed by E. Wustenhoff [26]
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Where Si is the sustainability set of KPIi then the Global sustainability set of KPIs related to a SLO becomes S = S1 × S 2 × S 3 × ⋅ ⋅ ⋅S n Sustainibility Set
KPI 1
Target Minimum Service Level
KPI n
KPI 2
…
KPI 3
KPI 4 Figure 5 - The Sustainability set in the KPIs space
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3.3 The KBS Features In order to support the collaborative analysis, we have designed a web-based application that uses the Web 2.0 paradigm. This choice enables the collaborative creation of business processes models and also assists the user in navigating existing models by industry and by case examples. Case examples allow also the user to identify and to relate performances to business process. To increase the user experience the information-navigation model, based on the conceptual framework, is designed with Interactive Dialogue Model (IDM) [3] starting from the meta-model described below.
Figure 6 - The Information-Navigation model obtained from the meta-model
Major KMS Functionalities are the following: 1. Design: a. New processes design by specialization/generalization, composition/decomposition of pre-existents processes, the same concept is applied to KPIs and Stakeholders b. Workflow drawing with BPMN (OMG Standard) that can be implemented with execution languages like BPEL & BPEL4WS or XPDL c. Drawing of business process structures and organizational structures d. Mapping between open source IT solutions and process workflow 2. Fruition: a. Navigation of business processes by industry or by functional affinity. This kind of navigation is conceived to develop the best process configuration through the “reuse” of “best in class” solutions b. Benchmarking on process performances organized by industry and by functional affinity c. Graphical navigation on process structures, workflows, organizational structures d. Documental repository (AS-IS analysis, interviews) associated to the contents 3. Administration services: 8
a. Definition of an editorial model for creating and modifying contents of the Knowledge Base. This model is granted by a fine-grained user profiling by the definition of the permissions on the contents stored in the KB The KMS release will follow the roadmap shown in the next figure.
Figure 7 – The project roadmap
In the next figure is shown a screenshot from the proof of concept tool. The figure shows a Business Case Example, an image describing the organizational chart and the related document.
Figure 8 - A screenshot of the Performing Business Processes Knowledge Base
Finally, the defined software architecture configuration is characterized by: • Three-tiered architecture with a Fat Client configuration • Server-side application composed by three logical levels: o DAO that grants a transparent data access 9
•
• • •
o Business that supports the IDM model o Action that manage the users’ permissions Client-side application developed on Single Page Application (SPA) paradigm using “The Dojo Toolkit” an open source framework for the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) AJAX-Based XML as data exchange format between client and server XSLT to transform XML data in HTML CSS to presentation of data on the client-side application
This architecture configuration is modular,easily scalable and maintainable. It supports multiple data sources, the multi-channel fruition of the contents and the future changes of the meta-model. It separes the role of developers, graphics, domain experts, etc... In the next figure is shown the using scenario of the KB underlining the architecture and the actors involved in the developing and maintenance of the tool.
È oggetto dell o 1:n
Nome della Misura Obiet tivo Min imo Tolleranza Responsabilit à del fornitore Richieste del cliente Eccezio ne{Tipo di eccezio ne, Azione}* Report{Data,Destinatario,Tipo di report}*
Contraente{Nome,Ruolo,Contatto*}* Stakeholder Aggiuntivo {Nome,Ruolo,Contatto*, Commento}* Contesto{Descrizione,URL Documento+} Scadenza{Data,Tipo di scadenza(Inizio, Fine,CheckPoint ),Azione}*
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Figure 9 - The tool architecture with the actor involved in maintaining and developing the KB
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4 KMS Scenarios of Application The main scope of the KB is to support the continuous improvement of process know-how that can be defined as methodology, innovation and ability to re-adapting best practices models in new scenarios. A possible application of the KMS can be supporting a Business Process Reengineering/improvement project in a consulting context. Managing a Business Process Reengineering project , as described in Figure 11, means to develop a “Best Fit Model of Processes” able to realize Customer objectives in terms of performance. The Best Fit Processes Model is based on the analysis of market Best Practice and As-IS context. The implementation of the Best Fit Processes Model implies to individuate gaps between AS-IS and the model in terms of processes, organization and IT solutions and related action of improvement ( Action Plan).
Figure 10 - The contribution of the KB in a process improvement project
In this context the KBS has • a strategic value because it grants a single repository of the experiences about performances and processes in order to define a competitive best practice • an operating value because it contributes to the major paradigm of consulting project which requires to manage activities “On time, on budget, on quality”. The KBS contribution to the management of the project on quality is due to the aim of the KB that is turned to design performing processes while the on time and on budget management is due to: o the process – SLO interrelation that individuates the critical issues of a process to get the target objectives o the performances benchmarking that simplify the analysis and process reengineering activities and enables the selection of the solution closer to the client’s requirements
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5 Conclusion and Future Work In this paper we have presented an integrated framework to design performing processes. This result is achieved by the definition of a Meta-model that defines the semantic relations between processes, performances and sustainability levels. The meta-model structure is due by the integration of three pre-existing meta-model (MIT Process Handbook, HIGO and SLA). To generate models metamodel compliant we have defined a design methology that is focused on best practices reuse. Starting from the Meta-Model and the related design methodology we have designed a tool to support the creation of models by the navigation of a repository of reference process structures and workflows. The navigation supports the design of innovative processes through the integration and the reuse of experiences (best of breeds). The release of the KMS will be organized in two steps as described in the project roadmap described below. In synthesis, our KB of business processes presents the following innovative aspects: • A free collaborative tool that can be extended by the virtual community with a wiki-like mechanism • A guide to the design of competitive and sustainable processes on which define open source IT solutions through an innovative design methodology • A tool that supports a lego-like design of IT solutions by the integration of existing applications and new ones. This feature enables the analysis and the informatization of every activity of a business process • A full support to the lifecycle of IT solutions, from the context analysis to the executive design of business processes
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6 References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
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