Week9 - Process Redesign (2)

Source / Reference: 
1) Business process management with IBM Holosofx
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-holo/
2) IBM Holosofx Modeler  and Moni tor  Products V4.2 Help Moni tor  Complex Business Processes
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/6/897/ENUS202-326/ENUS202-326.PDF
3)Case Study:Workflow Performance Evaluation
http://www.dia.unisa.it/professori/dottorato/TESI/tesi-aiello.pdf


Subject: Discuss Holosofx Workbench

Response:

With respect to process redesign, the five steps are Scoping, Modeling, Analysis, Redesign and Integration.

In lecture 8, the focusing point of process redesign is on Scoping, so in lecture 9, Helen continued to discuss on  the part of Modelling and Analysis. In fact, this lecture teaches us the BPR workflow diagram. The business process will be transformed into a  workflow diagram in order to indicate a clear flow of the processes.

BPR Modelling and Analysis includes five essential steps:

• Building Block #1 - Structural elements of business process flow.
• Building Block #2 - Organizational resource links to business process flow.
• Building Block #3 - Rules of graphical connection.
• Building Block #4 – Methods of conditional concatenation of process parts.
• Building Block #5 - Process performance measurement.

Building Block #1- Structural elements of business process flow

It mainly refers to Activity Decision Flow Diagrams. There are three kinds of objects defined here, they are Activity objects, Decision objects and Flow objects. These objects will be represented by different shapes(Fig.1). The  business process flow will first be transformed into a flow diagram by those structural elements.

Fig.1

Building Block #2 - Organizational resource links to business process flow

Since model is not just a graphical representation, resources have to be linked to the tasks (activities). A defined resource type will then be allocated to the process objects that have already been defined in previous stage. A specification of which resources are linked with which tasks and the length of time is required.

Building Block #3 - Rules of graphical connection

At this stage, rules of the work flow and the inputs and outputs for a task should be defined and then connect all the objects graphically by using time line arrows from left to right so that  the ease of  manipulation can be attained.

Building Block #4 – Methods of conditional concatenation of process parts

Activity path management is important in this stage, the declaration of choices and decisions will be pointed to different paths and activities, so that different cases can be derived under different conditions. The probability of each path will be defined by the input percentage.

Building Block #5 - Process performance measurement

A simulation analysis will be taking part here, the business process performance can be measured by calculating the cycle and process time, cost, resources, probabilities of different cases and the weighted average.

These five essential steps can be realized as the Holosofx Workbench. A typical Holosofx software is the IBM Holosofx. Nowadays, enterprises will use the Holosofx Workbench to help transform the business process content into graphical content and vice versa. IBM Holosofx Workbench provides functionality for process and enterprise modelling, business process analysis and workflow translation. Unlike the other business process modelling, IBM Holosofx Workbench not only provides the flow diagram development or maps processing, it also extends the functionality to the aspects of analysis, redesign, application development and automation. 

An example of using IBM Holosofx Workbench.

In fact, IBM Holosofx Workbench is worked with the IBM Holosofx Monitor and the IBM Holosofx Workbench Server which is used for monitoring processes in real time and to share process information via the internet respectively. This constitudes an IBM Holosofx Business Process Management (BPM) Suite. Holosofx has a very comprehensive integration strategy which creates the following advantages:

• allows the business requirements and system goals to be defined by the software developers and business professionals.
  ài.e.Flexibility
• allows the business-software systems to be modeled in UML
• allows UML models mapped to BPM process models 
  àenhance the maintainability, traceability and scalability of both UML modles and BPM  process modles
• allows transformation of common elements between UML models and business process models
  àsave cost, time and minimize mistakes

To conclude,the Holosofx software helps divide business logic which forms an extensible business-process layer that helps manage the integration, execution, and monitoring of business processes across IT and business professionals and enterprise boundaries.

Case Study:Workflow Performance Evaluation
The main process of granting a certificate of the University of Salerno is representaed graphically by applying IBM Holosofx Workbench.

This is an illustration of the whole processes( request à analysis à control à release)

Please refer to p.117 of the above case for more information.