tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43094141513742206302024-03-06T03:58:24.107+01:00Process DevelopmentsTom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-45321237923880703862015-09-10T17:44:00.003+02:002015-09-10T17:44:45.553+02:00Workflow For Dataflow?Adrian Colyer is writing some really insightful commentaries on research papers on distributed computing at <a href="http://blog.acolyer.org/">blog.acolyer.org</a>. The latest post <a href="http://blog.acolyer.org/2015/09/10/out-of-the-fire-swamp-part-iii-go-with-the-flow/" target="_blank">Go with the flow</a> is part of the series <a href="http://blog.acolyer.org/2015/09/08/out-of-the-fire-swamp-part-i-the-data-crisis/" target="_blank">Out of the Fire Swamp</a>. It triggered me to share an idea I had some time ago: Using workflow to coordinate microservices as a replacement for transactions.<br />
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When you're implementing a request of let's say a web API, amongst read operations, you also may perform some updates to non transactional resources such as a NoSQL datastore or another microservice. <br />
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What you typically want to provide to the client of your request is all or nothing semantics. So when your server crashes in the middle of your request, you may have performed some, but not all of the updates to your non transactional resources. This can lead to inconsistencies in your domain model.<br />
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In a way, a workflow is a persistent execution flow. It stores the state of the execution so it can be resumed later. Typical workflow engines probably don't do this efficient enough for the use case I'm discussing here. But I believe a workflow engine can be tuned for this use case of consistency.<br />
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Imagine a request to create an invoice that performs 4 request to other services in a flow like this:<br />
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The new request implementation can first perform some reads and than replace the four individual updates with a single update that creates the workflow instance. The workflow engine can ensure that the workflow instance is persisted in a single atomic update. Afterwards, the workflow engine ensures that progress is persisted before and after each activity. In case of crashes, the workflow engine can then resume in case of crashes based on the persisted execution.<br />
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The actions performed should be idempotent because it's typically not possible to guarantee exactly once execution semantics in a distributed system.<br />
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This workflow would add the guarantee that once the workflow is started, you know that at some point it will be completed. Typically it's not necessary to block the request till the whole workflow is completed although this is technically possible. <br />
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This idea really looks close to the <i>event</i> store as described in Adrian's blog. I wonder if this could be relevant a piece in tomorrow's distributed computing puzzle.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-79202316957077583322014-09-11T11:57:00.000+02:002014-09-11T11:57:22.007+02:005 Types Of Cloud WorkflowLast Wednesday, <a href="http://blog.box.com/2014/09/introducing-box-workflow/" target="_blank">Box Workflow</a> was announced. It was a expected move for them to go higher up the stack as the cost of storage <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/04/as-box-matures-it-resists-becoming-your-parents-content-management-platform/" target="_blank">“races very quickly toward zero”</a>. It made me realize there are actually 4 different types of workflow solutions available on the cloud.<br />
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Box, <a href="https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=workflow_examples.htm&language=en_US" target="_blank">Salesforce</a>, <a href="http://www.netsuite.com/portal/platform/developer/suiteflow.shtml" target="_blank">Netsuite</a> and <a href="http://blog.asana.com/2013/08/sections/" target="_blank">many</a> <a href="https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Workflow" target="_blank">others</a> have bolted workflow on top of their products. In this case workflow is offered as a feature on a product with a different focus. The advantage is they are well integrated with the product and that it’s available when you have the product already. The downside can be that the scope is mostly limited to the product.</div>
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Another type is the BPM as a service (aka <a href="http://www.quora.com/Business-Process-Management/Whats-the-difference-between-BPM-PaaS-and-cloud-enabled-BPM-platform" target="_blank">cloud enabled BPM</a>). BPM as a service has an online service for which you can register an account and use the product online without setting up or maintaining any IT infrastructure for it. The cloud poses a different set of challenges and opportunities for BPM. We at <a href="http://www.effektif.com/" target="_blank">Effektif</a> provide a product that is independent, focused on BPM and which is born and raised in the cloud. In our case, we could say that our on-premise version is actually the afterthought. Usually it’s the other way round. Most cloud enabled BPM products were created for on-premise first and have since been tweaked to run on the cloud. My opinion ‘might’ be a bit biased, but I believe that today’s hybrid enterprise environments are very different from the on-premise-only days. Ensuring that a BPM solution integrates seamless with other cloud services is non-trivial. Especially when it needs to integrate just as well with existing on-premise products.</div>
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BPM platform as a service (bpmPaaS) is an extension of virtualization. These are prepackaged images of BPM solutions that can be deployed on a hosting provider. So you rent a virtual machine with a hosting provider and you then have a ready-to-go image that you can deploy on that machine to run your BPM engine. As an example, you can have a look at <a href="http://vimeo.com/94436217" target="_blank">Red Hat’s bpmPaaS cartridge</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/swf/" target="_blank">Amazon simple workflow service</a> is in many ways unique and a category on it‘s own in my opinion. It is a developer service that in essence stores the process instance data and it takes care of the distributed locking of activity instances. All the rest is up to the user to code. The business logic in the activities has to be coded. But what makes Amazon’s workflow really unique is that you can (well.. have to) code the logic between the activities yourself as well. There's no diagram involved. So when an activity is completed, your code has to perform the calculation of what activities have to be done next. I think it provides a lot of freedom, but it’s also courageous of them to fight the uphill battle against the user’s expectations of a visual workflow diagram builder.</div>
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Then there is <a href="https://ifttt.com/" target="_blank">IFTTT</a> and <a href="https://zapier.com/" target="_blank">Zapier</a>. These are in my opinion iconic online services because they define a new product category. At the core, they provide an integration service. Integration has traditionally been one of the most low level technical aspects of software automation. Yet they managed to provide this as an online service enabling everyone to accomplish significant integrations without IT or developer involvement. I refer to those services a lot because they have transformed something that was complex into something simple. That, I believe, is a significant accomplishment. We at <a href="http://www.effektif.com/" target="_blank">Effektif</a> are on a similar mission. BPM has been quite technical and complex. Our mission is also to remove the need for technical expertise so that you can build your own processes. </div>
Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-30793639012051964072014-03-10T09:26:00.000+01:002014-03-10T09:26:07.655+01:00Personal Workflow<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">How much government is ideal? How much should be organized by the community? Each country answers that differently. In some countries a lot is organized by the community. In other countries, more freedom is left to the citizens and less aspects are managed centrally. </span>I’ld say that Business Process Management (BPM) doesn't have any such balance yet. At the moment, BPM is limited to top-down initiatives. This would be similar to only having government initiatives and no freedom or initiatives from citizens. </div>
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Corporate executives start by analyzing how work gets done in an
organization. This analysis is often
challenging as people doing the work optimize their piece of the puzzle. To get a complete understanding how people actually
collaborate is not that easy. It’s even
hard for employees that get interviewed to explain all their knowledge that
goes into tackling a given task.
Therefore, the procedures that result of such BPM initiatives are often
incomplete. That uncertainty creates risk for the people driving a BPM initiative. They have the power to change things, but they don't have all the detailed knowledge that goes in to the tasks. And this approach doesn't scale very well as there is usually just a single top down BPM improvement initiative at a time.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Still these centrally lead initiatives can
lead to the biggest gains in efficiencies as top down initiatives can create the necessary momentum and executive buy-in to change things. And the efficiency improvements are
multiplied by the number of times these procedures have to be
accomplished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine you can bring down
the average time spent on handling a damage claim in an insurance company from
3 hours to 2h30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For an insurance
company dealing with thousands of damage claims per day, these savings add up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In countries with less government, self-interest
is an important driver and motivation to take initiatives. That’s an angle totally missing at the moment
in BPM and a very interesting one if you start thinking about it. </div>
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What if employees could start automating
their own repetitive and tedious work patterns without having to think
globally. As an example, think of Jack's tasks like this: For every invoice email that
he gets from Supplier XYZ, he extracts the attachment and uploads it to Google
Drive, then passes a link to the document on to Jane in procurement. What if Jack can build a workflow by himself for his own repetitive work. He can start improve his own work without requiring any change to be discussed between colleagues. Since people keep working as they work before, it's really easy and fast to start automating these process snippets. That really reduces the risk and makes it a much faster approach. All the fine details of how work is done, what's important and what not doesn't have to be talked through. Instead, employees can just build workflow snippets directly themselves. </div>
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Personal workflow adds an interesting approach next to top down BPM initiatives. Picking the low hanging fruits like that is easy and scalable. Imagine all employees creating their own workflows. This doesn't require meetings and decisions that take months. Instead it takes 5 minutes to get going. And all employees can start doing it simultaneous. Just like societies require a good mix of centrally controlled government and self-interest initiatives, I think that both personal workflow should complement top down BPM initiatives to harvesting those low hanging fruits.</div>
Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-22330362166795267072014-02-20T10:43:00.000+01:002014-02-20T10:43:23.345+01:00Cloud governance and partner ecosystem<a href="https://twitter.com/sfrancisatx">Scott Francis</a> is a distinguished member of the BPM community. Recently I demoed Effektif and tried to convince him that it was easy to use. His blog title <a href="http://www.bp-3.com/blogs/2014/02/effektif-spelling-it-is-harder-than-using-it/">Effektif: Spelling It Is Harder Than Using It</a> seems to indicate he's convinced :-)
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Scott highlights some really interesting points like this one:
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<i>I think the most difficult point for Effektif, and the tools it is inspired by, is adoption by mainstream businesses. ... when you get out of startup mode and into enterprise mode (even as a single user within the enterprise) there are rules for what kind of data can be transported from one cloud environment to another. I may not be allowed to use my personal Salesforce credentials to expedite transiting data from Salesforce to some other cloud-based tooling. Enterprise IT gets involved, HIPAA comes into play.</i></blockquote>
Right on. I agree this is the challenge. Companies have switched on-premise software solutions for cloud based SaaS alternatives. This trend continues and accelerates. Some conservative CIOs will try to ignore or even forbid this from happening, but eventually it's unavoidable. In the next decade, companies will use a mix of on-premise and cloud solutions. My advice to CIOs is to embrace that fact, get involved and learn how to control that mix.
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When I talk about Effektif being cloud native, most people think it's about map-reduce or horizontal scaling on the technical side. But Scott pointed out the end user concerns of being cloud native. For our customers, those are even far more important then how it's implemented. Being cloud native, Effektif will have to provide that control. Aspects like 3rd party login, OAuth, service accounts, blocking certain data from leaking out of the system, reports on which documents were shared externally, etc are crucial in that respect. That's exactly why I believe that a native cloud workflow vendor is very different from an on-premise solution that is also offered on the cloud.
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The second interesting point Scott brought up is the business model for consulting partners:
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<i>So how to bridge the gap between the startup or personal users, and the enterprise user? Traditionally, this is where consulting partners come in. And the biggest challenge I see to the business models of such firms is the lack of a business model that supports implementation partners. Implementation partners can help create successful references, build out a pipeline of new customers, and innovate on top of the platform. But there has to be a path to making a living, or those implementation partners won’t show up.</i></blockquote>
I understand Scott's question like this: If workflow becomes as easy as GMail or IFTTT, then why would companies get consulting firms involved? For Effektif, that answer is straight forward. We added the simple workflow layer to the app enabling professionals to start automating basic tasks on their own without the need for consultancy. But we didn't remove the more advanced layers that allow for extra flexibility where needed.
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I believe the extra simplicity will increase the demand for consultancy. The companies that will use Effektif self service, would not have used a full blown BPM system in the first place. For example: for all emails that arrive at procurement@example.com, extract the attachment and upload it to /Accounting/Invoices/Incoming on Google Drive. That's convenient and easy. People would not install a BPM system for that. In that sense we compete with non-usage more then with other incumbent BPM systems. But many of those companies that would not have used a BPM system, might eventually expand their usage and then they need consultancy.
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Companies will not loose their appetite for customization or stretching Effektif to its maximum. Workflows are an easier (*far* easier) and cheaper (*far* cheaper) approach then developing custom integration applications. For many use cases, Effektif is the basis of the solution. It's often cheaper and much less risk to extend and customize Effektif in comparison to custom development. So that interest will not go away when we raise the bar for simplicity in workflow. In fact, the opposite is true. As more companies will be able to start with workflow, more people will see more use cases to start using workflow.
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In respect to customization, there is one feature on our mid term roadmap in particular that we're very excited about: Custom actions. Consulting companies or internal developers can extend Effektif by configuring their own custom action types. Other users in that organization can then start using this new action type. As an example, Signavio is adding a state update action to be used in approval workflows for Signavio process models. Separate, another example could be an action that generates a document based on a template and instance data. When using JavaScript to implement the behavior of the custom action, users don't even need their own infrastructure. We also plan to support external action workers. In that case, developers use our open API to know what actions need to be executed and signal when they are done. They can write their code in any language and deploy it anywhere, even behind the firewall inside their organization. This also enables any service provider to offer their features as actions in Effektif. That is going to be so awsome! Can't wait to get it out :-)Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-74623562980129044422013-09-03T17:32:00.000+02:002013-09-04T09:02:17.690+02:00BPM2013The BPM conference series just had its <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">10th</span> 11th (thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/profBPM">@profBPM</a>) edition in Beijing and it was great to be part of it. The conference is the best place to see the most relevant work in BPM research. So I consider it a great honor to be invited to present the keynote of the last day.
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I took the opportunity to share my ideas about BPM in the cloud. The cloud drives a transformation in our sector. The impact on BPM is not so much about the technical underpinnings of elasticity, scale and multi tenancy. But much bigger is the push towards simplicity. In cloud economics, solutions that can bring their value in a simpler way have a significant adoption advantage. The other change driving BPM forward is the addition of ad hoc collaboration. We’re heading to a seamless combination of flexible ad hoc work and repetitive processes.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1-NMKkzybth11Cs0KnqIRjQotjy10cut2KMHEayX8wlfSmBF60jyhO54qBPf1D3uzh1lrfO4V5cr6-ql1jaxZB2XnxDLhGBXWbDz_vOAPNBUYcREhTrn42zp1_cGDewbZ8MkXz-oUlk/s1600/forbidden-city.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1-NMKkzybth11Cs0KnqIRjQotjy10cut2KMHEayX8wlfSmBF60jyhO54qBPf1D3uzh1lrfO4V5cr6-ql1jaxZB2XnxDLhGBXWbDz_vOAPNBUYcREhTrn42zp1_cGDewbZ8MkXz-oUlk/s320/forbidden-city.jpg" /></a></div>
Researchers might be tempted to specialize and work in more complex directions. But to my surprise, my message of simplicity was actually well received. One of the main research themes is process mining. I saw some very nice ideas about how process mining can bridge the gap between ad hoc work and repetitive processes.
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The networking was great and it happened in a <a href="http://ewh.ieee.org/conf/ius_2008/lu_images/plenary_06_stage_de_he_yuan_summer_palace.jpg" target="_blank">magnificent scenery</a>. I even had the chance to do some sightseeing at the forbidden city and discover the chinese lightweight approach to toilets :-)
Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-68817238830788705802013-09-02T09:50:00.000+02:002013-09-02T09:50:19.173+02:00Creating An Enterprise Community<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Earlier today</span> Last week I got into this twitter conversation (couldn't publish earlier from inside China):
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Comindware">@Comindware</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/passion4process">@passion4process</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/tombaeyens">@tombaeyens</a> I didnt know it was that complex - lots of people struggle because they think it is about software<br />
— Derek Miers (@bpmfocus) <a href="https://twitter.com/bpmfocus/statuses/372280507171483648">August 27, 2013</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/tombaeyens">@tombaeyens</a> Dont disagree - just most of the complexity of <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BPM&src=hash">#BPM</a> comes from the program and politics - not the tech <a href="http://t.co/R61aFotteE">http://t.co/R61aFotteE</a><br />
— Derek Miers (@bpmfocus) <a href="https://twitter.com/bpmfocus/statuses/372305926721503232">August 27, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
It’s a condensed conversation deserves some elaboration. When the term BPM is used, always bear in mind that there are 2 sides to that coin: A management discipline and a type of software system.
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Here’s the basic context of BPM as a management discipline so that everyone is on the same page: At first, some desired result must be achieved. A manager typically breaks down the tasks to be done and delegates them to employees. That’s essentially a business process.
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When people repeat those tasks, they learn and start to optimize locally. For example, they experience that they get faster response from that particular colleague, or they find easier ways to get to the same result. The participants in a process optimize their tasks. After a while, the overview can get lost on how the result actually is achieved. Then, inefficiencies can creep into the overall process.
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So being a manager, it’s useful after a while to get an overview of how work gets done to achieve results. Analyzing and documenting these processes typically shows a number of obvious inefficiencies.
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Now take that idea and apply it to the executive management of large corporations. For them to know the details of how things get done is a big challenge to say the least. That basically requires interviewing people on how they do things. And at the same time, these people have their own way of dealing with their part of the process. So they often see this as intrusion and unnecessary overhead. It even gets more difficult for them when they are asked to change they way they do their work.
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Originally, BPM systems have been developed to support the line of thinking sketched above. In a BPM initiative that is overseen by executive management, processes are documented and analyzed with diagrams in a BPM system. After these models are documented and approved, the BPM system drives the implementation of the software system to support those processes. That’s the stage when IT gets involved. IT has a head start, because the BPM system can already execute the diagrams and contains a task list for the tasks that people have to do. The only thing IT has to do is add the integration with the existing systems. But still, it’s easy to see that this whole waterfall approach leads to relatively long implementation cycles.
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If I understand Derek correctly, that is the context behind “most of the complexity of #BPM comes from the program and politics – not the tech” I totally agree with Derek on that part.
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But this could be read as: Compared to the management aspect, the BPM system software is almost irrelevant. And as we’re about to change the nature of that game, I obviously feel the necessity to clarify to those that interpreted it that way ;-)
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The traditional to-down approach is great, but only one part of what can be achieved. I’ve spent the last 10 years in open source development building communities. And that has thought me a very important lesson: Many people don’t need to be told what to do. They are very capable to make their own decisions. Without instructions on how to do things, they often surprised me and came with the brightest ideas.
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A similar trend is happening in enterprises today. The IT revolution has created tremendous opportunity for literally all people in the company to get informed and stay up to date. More people then ever in the organization are totally capable of adding great insights to which processes should be created and how they should be improved.
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In the same spirit, sufficient social features often (definitely not always!) remove the need for tight authorization control. Employees want to build a reputation and so they will not want to mess up things.
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This means that the tight command and control patterns applied before need to be enriched with social tools that empower the enterprise community. Employees want to move the company forward and get those results. The new, responsible knowledge worker will look beyond his own responsibilities and be open to input from above and below.
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Think about this: There are many people like this in each organization. Together, they have a ton of ideas to improve the business. Many of those ideas will turn out to be giant leaps for the company. And as a side effect, the employees will see more of the knowledge they gained being translated into improvements for the company. The new social fabric in enterprise solutions will give them due credit. That is a serious motivator, even if not all of their ideas will be realized.
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Imagine the scale of all those people spread over all those layers in the organization thinking and improving simultaneous. And compare this to one top-down BPM initiative.
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The cloud has even accelerated the options for people to become informed, collaborate and show responsibility. Of course, the higher in the hierarchy, the more power people have. So changes coming from the executive level still have the biggest potential impact. This applies both in the positive and negative sense.
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The other cloud factor is simplified user experience. Cloud services target viral adoption. Therefore, they need to be simple. Making the scope of the service smaller makes it easier to be simpler. Dropbox is a good example of that. Cloud technologies have made it cheaper then ever to build a software company. In Silicon Valley and in tech hubs around the globe a massive amount of startups is trying every thinkable combination. That leads to incredible pace of innovation.
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On the one hand, BPM systems will have to reinvent themselves to capture that full potential of the responsible, informed knowledge workers. On the other hand, there is the huge amount of inspiration coming from all the cloud startups with unprecedented simplicity. So now is a great time to leverage the inspiration build the next generation BPM systems.
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With this context I‘ld like to add that the relevance of next generation BPM systems will be crucial to bring out those otherwise hidden innovations that are not subject to program and politics.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-60832849651149193352013-08-21T14:23:00.001+02:002013-08-21T14:23:54.237+02:00Lean Startup, The Easy WaySix months into building <a href="http://www.effektif.com/">Effektif</a> and I’m still confident we are in <a href="http://www.wamda.com/2013/02/90-percent-of-tech-startups-fail-infographic">the 10% that won’t fail</a>. While I am very aware that startups have a high failure rate, I’ll share some insights as to why Effektif is in a luxurious position.<br />
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First of all I’m excited cause we’re on schedule. We’re about to finish our MVD (Minimal Viable Demo :-) and it rocks. The big new thing for me with Effektif was to build a product for end users instead of a technical component for developers. It’s a new experience, but I love it. The <a href="http://theleanstartup.com/">lean startup</a> has totally worked for us in this initial phase. As a developer, I had always had an excuse to avoid user testing. The book convinced me to expose the product early and often to real users. It has been a great help to fine-tune the user experience and even pivot on some of the concepts.<br />
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The simplest aspect actually was the technology. On top of the experiences gained from building jBPM and Activiti, I only had to incorporate a new level of scalability on the backend. On the user interface side, Willi Tscheschner is an HTML 5 rockstar. He’s been driving Signavio’s web based BPMN editor and knows a thing or two about how to build great user interfaces in the browser.<br />
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Being the CEO is also new. Earlier this year I got totally inspired by In The Plex, the book that brings the story on how Google went from ambition to changing the world. There’s a big gap between being a new CEO and the inspiration in that book ;-) That’s where Gero Decker and Torben Schreiter come in. They take up their role as coaches very serious. They are co-CEO’s of Signavio and an important reason why Effektif is in such a good situation. They started Signavio 4 years ago and turned it into a global, fast growing cloud business without requiring venture capital. Kudo’s to what they have build. I appreciate a lot them sharing their experiences to help accelerate Effektif.<br />
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Together with Gero and Torben, we tuned our strategy and market position. The current BPM systems are far too complex. Effektif will make it orders of magnitude simpler for large and small organizations to connect people workflows with their existing enterprise systems. We actually <a href="http://www.effektif.com/news/cloud-forces-bpm-to-become-easy/">take more inspiration from new cloud services like Trello, Wufoo and Ifttt</a> then from the existing BPM vendors. The base pricing will of Effektif will be pay-per-use and come a lot cheaper then typical BPM products. For those with budget constraints, we also will offer a version with a guaranteed maximum.<br />
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The really luxurious part of Signavio’s investment in Effektif is their sales force. With their help, Effektif will reach to much more customers and at a much faster pace then normal startups can.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-74446189735163091322013-05-14T11:41:00.000+02:002013-05-14T11:59:51.401+02:00The Case For CasesLast year, the data produced in the world would fill DVD stack reaching from the Earth to moon and back. And it's growing exponentially. What does that mean for the enterprise? Piles of data do not always result in more information. On the contrary.<br />
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Especially for people performing knowledge work, it means it becomes harder to sift through vast amounts of information sources and share the right information with the appropriate people. It's not only time consuming, it's also risky. Tweets, Google+, Facebook, Blogs and Press articles are abundant and have typically a low signal-to-noise ratio. On top of that employees have to keep track of what's happening in their CRM, document management and many other enterprise systems. This means a greater exposure to loads of data that becomes on average less relevant. Procrastination never had an easier job looking for susceptible victims. <br />
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<a href="http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/aha-soft/business/256/Brief-case-icon.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/aha-soft/business/256/Brief-case-icon.png" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_case_management" target="_blank">A case management solution</a> is a fancy word for a system to share and discuss important topics in an business environment. It's function is to bring people together on topics like eg introducing a new sales strategy or an important customer that may cancel a big order. A case is the most efficient instrument to share related documents, links and tasks for topics like that. In other words, a case is a social collaboration space for a specific topic.<br />
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To some extend, the scope of a case could be compared with an email discussion thread. Before you bring it on, let me explain why that is a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+problem+with+email" target="_blank">problem</a>. Email is ubiquitous and serves its purpose as the least common denominator for communication. But using email has major drawbacks when used as the tool of collaboration. First, you have to assume that people always hit Reply-All. Reading a conversation where some people answer inline, some answer on top and some at the bottom is a challenge to say the least. Searching the latest version of an attachment in a conversation is hard and error prone. Involving someone later in an email discussion is hopeless as not everyone includes the whole discussion thread. <br />
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying cases should replace email threads. People will continue to leverage email as a unified inbox for the foreseeable future. But cases provide a much better structure for information that is currently buried in the emails themselves. I think we will see a shift towards email being the unified notification inbox and the content will be stored in dedicated systems like case management systems.<br />
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For organizations larger then 10 people, it's a matter of professionalism to equip employees with a case management system. It's the way to share relevant information in chaotic world with loads of noise and only a bit of signal. People will be better informed and collaborating becomes simpler. These improvements in the internal organization already justify adopting a case management system. The bonus comes from collaborations with external business partners like prospects, clients and suppliers. The advantages are just the same in this situation, and on top you show a professional approach to doing business.<br />
Regrettably, not all solutions use the term case for this concept. Some solutions call it a task and others invent a new name. But it should be clear that every organization deserves a solution for social collaboration and case management is a crucial aspect of that.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-80830076994444965322013-04-05T10:50:00.000+02:002013-04-05T10:50:20.087+02:00BPM And Fruit Ninja<br />
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In <a href="http://www.bp-3.com/blogs/2013/04/the-zero-code-hypothesis/" target="_blank">The Zero Code Hypothesis</a>, Scott Francis observes the contrast between 2 trends in BPM right now. On the one hand there is Camunda explicitly saying the zero coding ambition is broken. Scott comments:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It is kind of a fascinating counter-point to the movement to make BPM “more accessible” to the business, and I think it represents a pretty sizable chunk of the open source market that is in strong agreement.</i></blockquote>
On the other hand, there is the trend to further simplify process design for non-technical people. Several BPM vendors concluded that BPMN is too complex for simple processes and started experimenting with process builders for people that don’t know BPMN.<br />
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<i>Key passages from their presentation included “Enabling people who normally couldn’t do BPM or BPMN”. BPMN was described as the invisible hand surrounded by UI.</i></blockquote>
Scott concludes that this is a contrast:<br />
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<i>And to think that these sessions were all on day 1 of the same conference – totally different hypotheses on how to approach BPM and BPMN.</i></blockquote>
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It’s a contrast, but I don’t think these two trends are contradictory. To me this is a sign that the BPM sector starts to realize that it’s dealing with two very distinct stakeholders. <br />
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BPM always has been about automating people tasks and combining those with technical system integration steps. As such, BPM serves 1) non-technical business people that work out concrete steps how the organization should accomplish larger goals. And 2) technical people weaving in the automatic steps and integration with other systems.<br />
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At <a href="http://effektif.com/" target="_blank">Effektif</a>, we take those two stakeholders as the starting point, and both types of users must get a tailored user experience.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQOBt-dHphTZsRFKL_VIzRCTIOTlsz5Esa_pZITk8XEsDJuUymiSpQcBQrxdMrMIl4xm2sB7fAUN1vvDJyVpy3uNP2Rh1jtKi1e_sfGk3uU5tx70YyxHvuTMMwLVod2-AKd4f9k3hp7xo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-04-05+at+10.40.59.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQOBt-dHphTZsRFKL_VIzRCTIOTlsz5Esa_pZITk8XEsDJuUymiSpQcBQrxdMrMIl4xm2sB7fAUN1vvDJyVpy3uNP2Rh1jtKi1e_sfGk3uU5tx70YyxHvuTMMwLVod2-AKd4f9k3hp7xo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-04-05+at+10.40.59.png" /></a>In my opinion, it only takes a well-aimed Fruit Ninja move from the vendors to slice BPM so that both stakeholders are served well. Meaning, with the right approach both business people and technical people can be served properly.<br />
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Slicing BPM becomes obvious if you consider all people related aspects separate from the technical aspects. All people aspects in a process can be configured by non-technical business people. Things like sending simple notification emails and filling out a form to complete a task don’t require technical knowledge. By default, all processes should have the ability to attach documents, links and have a discussion. With these capabilities, non technical people can already build a broad range of useful processes that don't require technical integrations.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrP56CLDkmj0HdiQO_lQ1vb6QOqRVJHS-I9ghBlh6RsBpfFnseEbDB5PglOf2oUteUVzLD7M-1L0qhxTcZ-JwQETS4BXOGG9Fv58S0jNtG8RaZCdUaNNvFRm4elU6cO3dH_ILDeNNUlM8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-04-04+at+09.59.51.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrP56CLDkmj0HdiQO_lQ1vb6QOqRVJHS-I9ghBlh6RsBpfFnseEbDB5PglOf2oUteUVzLD7M-1L0qhxTcZ-JwQETS4BXOGG9Fv58S0jNtG8RaZCdUaNNvFRm4elU6cO3dH_ILDeNNUlM8/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-04-04+at+09.59.51.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Fruit Ninja precision is required to resist the temptation of adding small technical aspects that enable the next interesting feature. I believe that is where traditional BPM vendors fail miserably. In order to keep simplicity, a BPM system must cut out rigorous any technical aspect from business person’s user experience.<br />
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That slicing between technical and non-technical aspects is applied rigorously throughout the Effektif product. It ensures a superior user experience for the non technical managers automating people processes.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-26305882278582094772013-03-14T11:11:00.000+01:002013-03-14T11:11:30.842+01:00The 4 Best Books I Listened To RecentlyFor some reason or another reading books is just not meant for me. However, when jogging or cycling, I first switched from listening to music to podcasts. Now that really works for me. Here's my favorite podcasts<br />
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<a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/">This American Life</a><br />
<a href="http://www.hanselminutes.com/">Hanselminutes</a><br />
<a href="http://hnpod.com/">HNpod</a><br />
<a href="http://javaposse.com/">The Java Posse</a><br />
<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/">NPR's Planet Money</a></blockquote>
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More recently I got an <a href="http://www.audible.com/">Audible</a> subscription and really enjoyed these books<br />
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<a href="http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002V5HAL4" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG6AWQ5yFfVK9G67i7ItwlTG6RvkI8hyphenhyphenbKKSsOta6F3ObBiIFffOn7UaJOGJTdjHMcxZ44cIiwicJ0tWbLkf03QZ7ul2P4O1zKfIzjkt6EIZ9Axtt8-kEXlPbvxYzFbbeP_9fYciY4mVs/s200/stephen-covey-7-habits-of-highly-effective-people.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002V5HAL4">The 7 habits of highly effective people, by Stephen R. Covey</a><br />
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This should be a mandatory book in high school. Even if you think you're socially skilled, this book will show you whole new dimensions of listening to people and taking a constructive approach in communication. It's actually this title that inspired me to name my new startup effektif.com.<br />
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<a href="http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B004UN8UD2" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRGP1xMlGCyfBHvuGWUTKfEoJLDA8zf9pVprvAGsspRqtYpRWETx6C-LbPnYxTfj6vmqG9VQbrMKKGHaSLcLcQlHu-w3QKhUfiwo7fB1m0LaB4n9GO1_D7OOiv6oda04pyg3hSJg5A-Ek/s200/in-the-plex.jpg" width="125" /></a><a href="http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B004UN8UD2">In the plex, by Steven Levy</a><br />
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This is a very inspiring story with loads of cool anecdotes. You get a peek inside Google when it was booming. It shows that by taking an overdose of ambition, you can look from a different angle at problems then most people do. The ambition that sparks out of the book works really contagious. It made me believe I could actually start a booming business of my own :)<br />
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<a href="http://theleanstartup.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIeOh1Eiho3Of3OYbzUbXdCFc0p8h6fsTehDAZXwP9uliL3og8FiXnjJmcwMWUxzmCalaGJ7JITp8bH5NlPlxiqM430yhDsos5OBxQcZh1-rG6sQkmqnw948cHIFGoYmTNrPp8hc097_4/s200/Screen+Shot+2013-03-14+at+10.36.56.png" width="131" /></a></div>
<a href="http://theleanstartup.com/">The lean startup, by Eric Ries</a><br />
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A classic by now and a must read for everyone that thinks of founding a startup. After the inspiring 'In the plex' that made me dream, this was the perfect counterweight that put my feet back on the ground. It explains that most startups fail and provides a very practical approach to maximizing chances of success.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNWZKpS2RK_SD3sfJLH46vvVFeNjD1PDXTkH_jSrJxtvNQ5E7dhthJcxJ3_MEs6GuZUHUdkmBGu33raFhHFn2_gZ2VW_ricP_8p8ssgHDvE0Ofn2EZvQHAg5M8YMj_9nZAu-q3sy3TGQA/s200/200px-Getting_Things_Done.jpg" width="134" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280">Getting things done, by David Allen</a><br />
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Confession: For this book I actually read the paper version. After my studies, this is one of the only books I've managed to read completely since then. And that's intended as a complement to the book :) It's a practical guide on how typical knowledge workers can reduce stress and get more done. This book is related to the concept of <a href="http://inboxzero.com/">inbox zero</a>. If you are struggling with your inbox, go and read or listen to this book.<br />
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What great podcasts or books do you recommend?Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-61556489187620865022012-09-21T14:25:00.001+02:002012-09-21T14:25:37.121+02:00Activiti Moved To Github<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/wp-content/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="160" width="211" src="http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/wp-content/images.jpeg" /></a></div>
<p>This morning, we moved the <a href="https://github.com/Activiti">Activiti source code to Github</a>. This move was long overdue and it's going to simplify working with the codebase a lot for all involved.</p>
<p>To learn more including pointers about pull requests, check out <a href="http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/2012/09/21/activiti-moved-to-github/">Joram's blog post about it</a>.</p>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-23782669594686309192012-08-10T11:36:00.005+02:002012-08-10T12:13:58.614+02:00Activiti 5.10 Just Got Really FastWe just released Activiti 5.10 and it's another big milestone for the project:<br />
<ul>
<li>Serious performance improvements: See Joram's blog <a href="http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/2012/06/28/the-activiti-performance-showdown/">The Activiti performance showdown</a> for the amazing details</li>
<li>Tijs' book <a href="http://affiliate.manning.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=1203_262">Activiti in Action</a> published by Manning came out!</li>
<li>Added support voor bpmn message start event</li>
<li>Added capability for clients to validate a user's rights to start a process</li>
<li>Added support for nested sub-processes and embedded subprocesses in designer</li>
<li>Added support for catching intermediate and boundary message events</li>
<li>Bug fixes and various smaller improvements. Check out the <a href="http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12091&version=18341">Release notes</a> for more details</li>
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Kudo's Daniel Meyer, Frederik Heremans en Joram Barrez for achieving the major performance improvements.</div>
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Big thanks to <a href="http://camunda.com/">Camunda</a> for contributing many improvements and fixes in this release.</div>
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Congrats to Tijs for pulling off <a href="http://affiliate.manning.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=1203_262">the book</a> and the Activiti Eclipse Designer improvements.</div>
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Now it's up to you. You're just 1 free <a href="http://activiti.org/download.html">Download</a> away from the most amazing BPM and workflow experience. Go for it!</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-37418914723850754462012-03-01T11:47:00.002+01:002012-03-01T12:06:09.003+01:00Activiti 5.9 Is A Big Leap ForwardWe're proud to announce Activiti 5.9 is released with some major improvements:<div><div><ul><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Support for Exclusive Jobs and Plugability of the Job Executor Infrastructure</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Persistent event subscriptions (infrastructure)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Intermediate signal throw / catch</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Event based gateway</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">BPMN transaction (cancel end event & cancel boundary event)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">BPMN compensation (compensation catch & compensation throw)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Interrupting error event subprocesses</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">(Multiple) message start events</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Various bug fixes</span></li></ul><div>Find <a href="http://activiti.org/readme.html">the full release notes</a> here.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Special thanks goes to Camunda, and Daniel Meyer in particular for the some great core engine feature contributions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Go <a href="http://activiti.org/download.html">download</a> and taste this grand cru release!</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-79577318031372477282011-10-20T14:01:00.002+02:002011-10-20T14:07:42.444+02:00Activiti 5.8 Adds Asynchronous Continuations<a href="http://activiti.org/">Activiti</a> is the Apache licensed BPMN process engine. We've just released version 5.8 which has following highlights:<ul><li>Asynchronous continations (tech preview)</li><li>Added BPMN inclusive gateway</li><li>Improved Spring support</li><li>CDI integration improvements</li><li>Bug fixes</li></ul>Get an opinion of your own! Go <a href="http://activiti.org/download.html">download</a> and try it out.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-53491567203688770812011-10-10T10:06:00.008+02:002011-10-10T10:20:39.618+02:00BPM In The Cloud<div>Recently the Activiti team started exploring which parts of BPM could be brought to the cloud effectively. The first thing we realized is that on the cloud, a requirement is self-service by professional consumers. This means that end users should be able to manage the apps they use. Up to now, BPM systems were managed by in-house IT departments.</div><div><br /></div><a href="http://www.stormchasers.au.com/Jan04/0130ch01.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px;" src="http://www.stormchasers.au.com/Jan04/0130ch01.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><div>Immediately it became clear that hosting traditional BPM engine on the cloud is a big technical challenge with a relative low value for professional consumers. We have to look for new ways to deliver BPM on the cloud.</div><br /><div>BPM is about combining automatic steps with human task forms. Building task forms on the cloud is a valid concept. Look for example at <a href="http://www.formstack.com/">Formstack</a>. Combining such task forms in a process is a great idea I think. But the generic automatic steps in BPM processes are more problematic on the cloud.</div><div><br /></div><div>What are those automatic steps that people want to do on the cloud? Well there is plenty of choice. Read data from a google spreadsheet, or salesforce account, then build a document that is uploaded to google docs or dropbox. It could be doable to let professional consumers build process descriptions in a web browser.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what is often overlooked is that the data used in processes is too complex for end users. For example, from a human perspective, the data read from the spreadsheet is the same as the data that has to be put in a PDF in some subsequent step in the process. But the building blocks that are used to compose workflow processes have to rely on concrete technical datatypes. There is almost always data conversion and projection necessary between those steps in a process. Specifying technical data type-conversions in a workflow is too complex for professional consumers. </div><div><br /></div><div>We have to make it simpler.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, the trend to Advanced Case Management (ACM) really fits well into the cloud. Dynamic management of tasks without a predefined flow matches perfect with the professional consumer needs and capabilities. The ability to associate documents and other forms of content makes it a great match. An extra dimension is added by the fact that a cloud solution for ACM enables seamless B2B collaboration.</div><div><br /></div><div>This already gives an initial insight in the direction that the Activiti team is currently looking forward towards bringing BPM to the cloud.<br /></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-16522513727549247822011-10-07T14:36:00.002+02:002011-10-07T14:40:49.897+02:00Energy Distributors In Germany Using ActivitiOn October first, <a href="http://www.next-level-integration.com/">Next Level Integration</a> upgraded their product which now includes Activiti for dealing with the business process. Already 50 German energy distribution companies are now using this in production. <div><br /></div><div>This presentation (in German) introduces their product and shows how they leverage Activiti processes: <a href="http://www.next-level-bpm.de/wimhelp/media/Wim-Level1-Level2.pdf">Prozesse im Messwesen</a> (pdf) This is another great example of how Activiti is embedded into a product for a vertical market making it a lot more flexible and powerful.</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-42370233387613652582011-08-16T15:42:00.003+02:002011-08-16T16:02:03.541+02:00Alfresco Activiti 5.7 Revamps ExplorerWe're released Activiti 5.7 today, the embeddable workflow and BPM engine. This release includes a revamped Activiti Explorer. The new app merges the task management functionality of the previous Activiti Explorer with the admin functionality in Activiti Probe.
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ijYa5Sl3PDJr1Y_rGtphaeSvPEp30lI53NM0wlcsdqgNdxZWUzQtXTmLZOLlN7ApnIxqtGu__evnpySQS8pPq1RgUZpjvihLpLDOo-3FK2ZIH-vsakO_uXfd8vYBN62YAtALkkijL4Y/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-08-16+at+15.51.03.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ijYa5Sl3PDJr1Y_rGtphaeSvPEp30lI53NM0wlcsdqgNdxZWUzQtXTmLZOLlN7ApnIxqtGu__evnpySQS8pPq1RgUZpjvihLpLDOo-3FK2ZIH-vsakO_uXfd8vYBN62YAtALkkijL4Y/s400/Screen+shot+2011-08-16+at+15.51.03.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641451394676255842" /></a>
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<br />We're proud on this result. A celebration is in place here: Kudo's to all contributors! And special thanks to the Vaadin team for supporting us with the new Explorer.
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<br /><a href="http://activiti.org/download.html">Download it from the Activiti website</a>.
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<br />And <a href="http://forums.activiti.org/en/">participate in the forums</a>.Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-29048370746031418232011-07-26T12:55:00.005+02:002011-07-26T14:50:58.785+02:00Recycling BPMPeter Evans-Greenwood has written a post called <a href="http://peter.evans-greenwood.com/2011/07/01/bpm-over-promised-and-under-delivered/">BPM over promised and under delivered</a> that is a clear description of a historic shift in the BPM space.<div><br /></div><div>Peter refers to Taylor to indicate we've been looking at automation and BPM in basically an old school way. </div><div> <blockquote><i>The [Taylor] idea is that by driving our workers to follow optimal business processes we can ensure that we minimise costs while improving quality.</i></blockquote></div><div>The early software applications and later BPM has been centered around that approach.</div><div><blockquote><i>Departmental applications were first deployed to automate small repudiative tasks, such as tracking stock levels or calculating payrolls. Then we looked at the interactions between these tasks, giving birth to enterprise software in the process. Business Process Management (BPM) is the pinnacle of our efforts...</i></blockquote></div><div><div>The Taylor historic context is great to get the picture. In the past, there were just a few people had the knowledge to break down goals into tasks for workers. Workers were little informed and just had to do as they were told. BPM systems took the same approach. BPM systems orchestrate and dump workers just have to perform small, simple, repetitive tasks.</div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiioTtcEJBBJuQHN6CpzYn3jaYvNYiQB0jFpTzTmEG7ynlFKY2lf2MxZdcMcY2PSW8-dP2U9LPItvjkY1B447nQLbxRe1YK1HuPS175R-leif-YhMIzfjg5uBIVa_PmEkoqc-SwaCqoQNU/s1600/recycle.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 315px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiioTtcEJBBJuQHN6CpzYn3jaYvNYiQB0jFpTzTmEG7ynlFKY2lf2MxZdcMcY2PSW8-dP2U9LPItvjkY1B447nQLbxRe1YK1HuPS175R-leif-YhMIzfjg5uBIVa_PmEkoqc-SwaCqoQNU/s320/recycle.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633640075537815090" /></a></div><div>That is indeed an aspect of BPM that I've always found problematic. In practice, it turns out to be very hard to find business processes in which the orchestration part can be totally automated. Human judgement is very hard to capture in predefined paths in a process flow.</div><div><br /></div><div>With previously jBPM and now <a href="http://activiti.org/">Activiti</a>, we always took a very pragmatic approach. Over time it has become clear that embeddable BPM is a sweet spot. Enriching applications with the capability to combine human task forms with automatic steps has turned out to be a very valid proposition. Only in big banks we've seen usage that comes close to the traditional orchestration automation promise of BPM.</div><div><br /></div><div>I also agree with Peter that </div><blockquote><i>There has been some half steps in the right direction, with the emergence of Adaptive Case Management (ACM)</i></blockquote>I think this trend is becoming clear by now, but it's Peter's post that made me think of an important potential reason for this: The democratization of information. Where in the past (read more then 10 years ago) only managers are informed and needed to break goals into tasks, now a lot more information has become freely accessible in organisations so that average workers become better informed and can make better decisions.<div><br /></div><div>Also I've seen in most practical situations that processes grow organically. When people get asked a similar task multiple times, they tend to organise themselves better for dealing with these repetitive tasks. That way a business process grows bottom-up. There is not always a central, complete view of the process. It's often a very big challenge to establishing this central view of a business process. It usually takes a lot of interviews and conflict resolution to get to that central view. And you know what... this bottoms-up approach actually works well in most cases. Most often the optimizations that can be found in the central view of a process do not outweigh the effort to build the centralized process view.</div><div><br /></div><div>In conclusion I think the top down aspect that aims at top down business process modeling the orchestration is ready for the scrapyard. Let's get rid of the BPM promise that business agility can be obtained by purchasing a BPM system. And let's recycle those bits and enhance case management with that expertise. By default people should be able to collaborate in an ad-hoc fashion. And when people spot repetitive patterns, everyone should be able to create their own small process flows for simplifying their own work. That form of process automation as an add-on to case management matches a lot better with the common needs of todays web and knowledge workers.</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-27099133924097271772011-06-01T12:18:00.005+02:002011-06-01T14:45:48.868+02:00Alfresco's Activiti 5.6 Improves Mule and Camel SupportHighlights for the 5.6 release:<div><ul><li>Added direct <a href="http://bpmn20inaction.blogspot.com/2011/05/supersize-activiti-with-mule-esb-and.html">Mule and Camel integration</a></li><li>Easier way to retrieve businessKey from task listeners</li><li>Improved support for Alfresco processes</li><li>Added support for delegateExpressions in tasklistener</li><li>Added support for BPMN multi instance in the eclipse designer</li><li>Extended length of all user defined text columns to 4000</li><li>See the full <a href="http://www.activiti.org/readme.html">release notes</a></li></ul><div><a href="http://www.activiti.org/download.html">Get Activiti 5.6 now</a> before it gets you!</div></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-61134015382067412002011-05-02T10:01:00.005+02:002011-05-02T10:18:51.298+02:00Alfresco's Activiti 5.5 ReleasedActiviti is a superdelux BPMN 2.0 based process engine. 5.5 is again packed with a lot of new goodies:<div><ul><li>Added <a href="http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#cdiintegration">CDI support</a> (Congrats to <a href="http://camunda.com/">Camunda</a> for this contribution!)</li><li>Added dynamic sub task capabilities</li><li>Added support for event/activity streams</li><li>Tiese Barrell added support for default value for CustomServiceTask fields in the eclipse process designer</li><li>Simplified persistence</li><li>Performance improvements</li><li>Bug fixes</li></ul><div><a href="http://activiti.org/download.html">Download Activiti 5.5</a> and find out how much more you can do with BPM power.</div></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-44871572266432364492011-04-30T10:00:00.005+02:002011-04-30T11:00:01.001+02:00Mobile, Web Client Storage And Offline<div>Desktops and laptops will be mostly connected to the internet. So almost all software written today targeted for desktops and laptops is web based. For mobile apps, that is much more tricky. Mobile devices are used when people are on the move. While general connectivity coverage is increasing, it will still take quite a couple of years before all planes, trains and stations give you decent broadband required by today's apps. </div><div><br /></div><div>For mobile apps it's a tough choice between HTML 5 and native apps. Native apps don't require to be connected, but you need to develop one for every platform (at least Android and iOS).</div><div><br /></div><div>Martin Fowler's blog <a href="http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CrossPlatformMobile.html">CrossPlatformMobile</a> makes the valid point that cross platform toolkits are no attractive alternative. But then there is this section that really confuses me</div><div><blockquote>The biggest issue here is offline use. If you can live with online all the time, then this won't be a problem, but you need offline you'll need to explore the <a href="http://diveintohtml5.org/storage.html">various local storage options</a>.</blockquote><div>This seems to suggest that the local storage options to some extend would be able to reduce the need for connectivity. That would decide the mobile platform battle in favour of HTML 5 easily. But I still don't see how storage on the client side helps to remove the need for connectivity. If you load a webapp before you go offline, then it is possible to keep it running on local storage when connectivity is down. That is a nice extension to webapps.</div><div><br /></div><div>But afaict it doesn't give the ability to work offline because loading the app still requires connectivity and a refresh gives a 404 page not found without the possibility to get the app back in the browser. Also the linked article doesn't really provide a solution for this. </div><div><br /></div><div>Given that the respected Martin Fowler seems to indicate that web storage has to be looked at as a solution for offline usage of webapps, I assume I must be missing something. But what ?</div><div><br /></div><div><div>I'm in general puzzled why browsers are so bad at using caches when working offline. Yet it seems like a solvable solution for browsers to use their cache to overcome these 2 obstacles of loading the app and refresh and make HTML 5 the ultimate mobile platform. </div><div><br /></div><div>Do you see a solution so that HTML 5 becomes a valid mobile technology option that also covers offline usage?</div></div></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-26230178937387896032011-04-05T14:35:00.003+02:002011-04-05T15:12:31.931+02:00Tijs Rademakers Joins ActivitiTijs Rademakers joins Alfresco to supercharge Activiti. We are very proud to attract a top talented engineer like Tijs! Tijs brings a rich experience from consulting on various BPM related projects. Tijs is co-authoring his second Manning book. The first was <a href="http://www.esbinaction.com/">Open Source ESB's in Action</a> and he's is now working hard to complete <a href="http://bpmn20inaction.blogspot.com/">Activiti in Action</a>.<br /><a href="http://www.renren.it/uploads/allimg/2010-11-22/1290433205961179.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 170px;" src="http://www.renren.it/uploads/allimg/2010-11-22/1290433205961179.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Tijs will continue to lead the Activiti Designer, an Eclipse plugin for authoring BPMN 2.0 processes. He will also be involved in architecting and building out the process capabilities to make Activiti the #1 platform for case and process management on the cloud.<div><br /></div><div>Welcome to the team, Tijs. Looking forward to working with you!</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-84440055202474211422011-04-01T11:11:00.004+02:002011-04-01T16:02:34.104+02:00Activiti 5.4 Released<div>Here's the next Activiti shipment</div><ul><li>Added first version of BPM-roundtrip with Activiti Cycle (see this <a href="http://www.bpm-guide.de/2011/03/22/the-bpm-roundtrip-with-activiti-cycle/">Screencast</a>)</li><li>Started building case management features in the engine: Added dynamic comments, attachments and due dates to tasks in Activiti Engine</li><li>IMAP folder scanning for new tasks</li><li>Added accounts to users in Activiti Engine</li><li>Provided support to specify form properties in Activiti Designer Eclipse plugin</li><li>Many bug fixes</li></ul><div>Download Activiti 5.4 <a href="http://www.activiti.org/download.html">here</a></div><div>Discuss on <a href="http://forums.activiti.org/en/">the forums</a></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-85784725973237153312011-04-01T09:11:00.005+02:002011-04-27T07:59:10.115+02:00Activiti Switches To BPEL<div>[Update to avoid confusion: please check the date on which this article was posted]</div><div><br /></div>Today we are announcing a drastic change in the project that we've been working on for quite a while: Starting from the 5.4 release later today, Activiti will upgrade the file format of all processes from BPMN 2.0 to BPEL.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw4gYuiZsWWkXOtzvknjWI0Aor7E5XVH3fHWV6PHfGMh5jSvBY82WUnndJa9t4W3omhrY7RtD64pHOqNFzQfNK-_iipfNkYSgsIeVF98TU4d254RnIGfvQogYej_TXi3mdfmdPJ0Ul23w/s1600/images-3.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw4gYuiZsWWkXOtzvknjWI0Aor7E5XVH3fHWV6PHfGMh5jSvBY82WUnndJa9t4W3omhrY7RtD64pHOqNFzQfNK-_iipfNkYSgsIeVF98TU4d254RnIGfvQogYej_TXi3mdfmdPJ0Ul23w/s320/images-3.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5590518012386168514" /></a><div>Rather then considering business processes as a combination of manual and automatic steps, we came to the conclusion that XML, WSDL and XPath is the way of the future and a much more natural fit for large corporations. The things you can do in XPath are simply amazing.</div><div><br /></div><div>We are proud to ship with this release with full automatic and seamless conversion of existing processes. Just replace the jar files and reboot your app. What's more, our eclipse plugin will automatically refactor your Java beans and add WS-I compliant web services adapters. But we recommend take a back up of your project before activating that refactoring.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the conversion to BPEL fully completed, we now will start working on the mobile client. To improve usability by business people and at the same time simplify the implementation of our forms component, we'll build a mobile tree browser for XML documents. It will be available next month for iOS and Android. It's a really cool app that allows you to compose SOAP requests in a structured tree view. Those requests can then be sent directly into the new BPEL based Activiti engine. Also the app will allow you to browse your task list XML messages in a graphical tree with collapse and expand features.</div><div><br /></div><div>We've upgraded our Amazon account to handle all the download traffic that we expect later today. But in case Amazon's download servers would not be able to handle the load, please keep trying and let us know.</div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309414151374220630.post-1539538024002080332011-03-16T14:12:00.014+01:002011-03-16T15:56:52.781+01:00Unveiling Next Steps Of Alfresco's Activiti FutureThere's a very interesting discussion going on at ebizQ: <a href="http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ebizq_forum/2011/03/will-case-management-take-over-bpm.php">Will case management soon take over BPM?</a> Instead of trying to position all the overloaded acronyms, I'm going to give a concrete picture of where <a href="http://activiti.org/">Activiti</a> is now and where we are heading. <div><br /></div><div>Activiti now is a native BPMN process engine with nice web based and other tooling around it. We have a strong adoption already in the developer communities. This has pushed us to support very complex processes with a lot of features for easily including automated steps into the process. We also include strong capabilities to include manual steps into an automated process. Things like specifying a BPMN userTask and associating a form to it. People assigned to the task can then complete tasks by submitting a form.</div><div><br /></div><div>The limitation with workflows and BPM processes is that they are fixed. That's good for complex processes that are well understood and have a high frequency. Typical examples are handling insurance claims and expense notes. Of course, not all work done in organizations is of this nature. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even in organizations that manage their business processes well, a lot of work is done ad-hoc. For instance, imagine that you have to organize a 1 year anniversary party for a project that you started almost a year ago (any resemblance to Activiti upcoming 1st anniversary is pure coincidence ;-) Most likely there will be no predefined process for organizing such a party. </div><div><br /></div><div>It will take someone to analyze this particular problem and to break this complex task in subtasks that can be delegated and combined to achieve the desired results. So a first aspect is that people will get involved. Sub tasks might be created. People will discuss these tasks and refer to existing content like websites, content stored in Alfresco or Google docs. While the organization of the party is in progress, new ideas kick in, making some tasks in the strategy obsolete and other new tasks have to be performed.</div><br />People today will tackle this with a bunch of email traffic. And lots of time is spent on writing customized emails to bring different people up to speed. For each new person that gets involved in the party task, it takes a lot of time writing emails for the party organizer to share the bigger context of the request.<div><div><br /></div><div>The first step that we're adding now to Activiti is a snappy environment in which that kind of collaboration is supported. Apart from the tasks that are created by process instances, you'll be able to create tasks dynamically on the fly. It will be possible to involve people with these tasks, have discussions and associate any kind of content like plain URL's, Alfresco docs, Google docs etc to the task (aka case). Furthermore, it will be possible to create sub tasks dynamically. Here's one of our early mockups:</div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXP228Teug3iy_J4Y5qFO1V_x84C1LHGhtycjlkC-TXurzMSoVIj1MLU15FPAy8I6CHDfbvf4VvYuJJfzBBBRCIRQg1XN1iWDl6x8Pu5pRWlU16F45ETAHN99xA7xwT9TPhhG2g81Y5M/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-16+at+15.32.21.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXP228Teug3iy_J4Y5qFO1V_x84C1LHGhtycjlkC-TXurzMSoVIj1MLU15FPAy8I6CHDfbvf4VvYuJJfzBBBRCIRQg1XN1iWDl6x8Pu5pRWlU16F45ETAHN99xA7xwT9TPhhG2g81Y5M/s400/Screen+shot+2011-03-16+at+15.32.21.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584685893711621922" /></a><div>While building this environment, we include as a criterium that it may not be harder to work with this tool then to write an email.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine that people can be involved in tasks and they automatically get the full background of a particular request they receive. That will drastically reduce email and make the group far more effective. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a couple of years, the organizer of the anniversaries might start to think: "I've done this before a couple of times. It might be worth documenting or automating the process of organizing anniversary parties". That's when the organizer will be able to open the last party task and start building a process based on the subtasks that were created. We envision a very simple process editor to orchestrate those process steps. <a href="http://www.activiti.org/userguide/index.html#N12450">Activiti KickStart</a> shows the direction we're thinking in.</div><div><br /></div><div>At that point it might start to get interesting to include automatic steps. Activiti focusses on simplifying the component model for plugging in new automatic steps in the graphical process authoring tools and in the runtime engine. <a href="http://www.activiti.org/userguide/index.html#N11AFE">Extending Activiti Designer</a> shows the direction. This means that in big organizations that have an IT department, the developers can create create custom serviceTask types that can then be used as automatic steps in these processes by non technical people. </div><div><br /></div><div>In some cases, this might grow to become pretty complex processes. At that point, Activiti KickStart modeling might be too limited as that is targeted at non technical people. Because Activiti is based on BPMN 2.0, it will be possible to move these organically grown processes into full BPMN 2.0 based modeling tools.</div><div><br /></div><div>This shows how Activiti's strategy to support the organic nature in which business processes are conceived. It reduces email traffic and overhead for ad-hoc work and provides an environment in which managing business processes becomes so easy that you don't really have to think about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>We plan to have a first version of dynamic case management in our 5.5 release, which is planned for the 1st of May. Then by September we aim to have the full vision of dynamic case management organically rolling into automated business processes completed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now imagine all of this would be free, distributed under a very liberal license like Apache and closely integrated into Alfresco's enterprise content management. Wouldn't that be great?!</div><div><br /></div><div>I think we're heading for some very exciting times at Activiti ;-)</div></div>Tom Baeyenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03067067751334471585noreply@blogger.com11