Alfresco Developer Conferences In Paris And New York

The timing of the Alfresco Developer Conferences couldn't be better for Activiti. The one in Paris is October 20-21 and the one in New York is 3-4 November: Exactly around the time that Activiti 5.0 GA will be released.

I'll be speaking together with Joram about it and also Erik Winlof who started the Activiti Explorer and Activiti Probe web UI's is present so you can expect some nice demos and concrete insights.

Hope to see you there!

Activiti And The BPM Market In A Nutshell

Too much happened to fit into 140 char twitter message so I decided to write the summary here, but first this side note: Elke delivered Joram 2.0 early (probably it will not be often, but hey...) He's called Lars. Congrats to the whole family!

Last release of August 1st already includes a decent coverage of BPMN activity types. Summer time is a great time to get some coding done. Last couple of weeks were really hard core coding with fine tuning of the core engine. We extracted the Process Virtual Machine as a separate module, added a super efficient event mechanism and optimized the DB persistence to the max. First of all, the runtime data is kept to a minimal, with minimal updates during process execution. On top of that, if a parallel gateway forks again, the joined executions are now actually recycled. It's good for performance and the environment! It's amazing that I still find significant optimizations after I've been coding core BPM engines since 2003.

Tijs Rademakers (from Open Source ESB's in Action) got started on a book called BPMN 2.0 with Activiti in Action. I already look forward to reading it.

Josh Long created an Activiti integration with Spring Integration. He's going to show it at JavaZone. Don't miss it.

Furthermore there is an Activiti BPMN 2.0 eclipse designer and an iPhone app in the pipeline. Really cool stuff. More about that later.

But what does that mean for the BPM market in general? Wel... this morning I was cycling to the office and I actually came across the perfect boat metaphors to illustrate what's happening in the BPM market. First I saw this:

That is a really good metaphore for the typical traditional BPM player: Inert, not in the shape that it once was but it's floating.

Then I passed along this one:

That's Activiti: New, fast, agile and fun to work with!

And then I saw what's going to happen with the traditional BPM players after Activiti the GA release in November:

Oh no!

;-)

Activiti 5.0.alpha4 Released

We just released Activiti 5.0.alpha4. Joram published a very nice tutorial based on this release and also the following bullet item list:

Improvements

• MySQL support
• Support for method expressions on sequence flow
• Revised ActivityExecution API
• Added ConcurrencyController API
• Process Event Bus
• Taskforms: added date and date picker support
• Explorer: changed process definition drop down list to a separate page

New features

• BPMN parallel gateway
• BPMN manual task
• BPMN (embedded) subprocess
• BPMN call activity (subprocess)
• BPMN Java service task
• Spring integration (experimental, no docs yet)

Bugfixes

• Made engine compatible with BPMN 2.0 beta process models
• Fixed exception on windows and linux when using boundary timer event
• Expression cannot have whitespaces

Download the 5.0.alpha4 here.

Grails Plugin For Activiti

One of my respected OSS father figures ones said "Open Source Software doesn't fall out of the sky" At the time, I believed it.

Since starting Activiti, I start to have my doubts. A lot of companies already joined with real contributions. And now I just came back from holiday and I find a Grails Plugin for Activiti being announced with very nice features. ...like it fell out of the sky. Amazing ;-)

Welcome to the community, Chee!

Mulesoft Joins Activiti

Mulesoft joins the Activiti team. Their focus will be to make sure that Activiti integrates with Mulesoft and help building the BPMN web service orchestration capabilities.

This really puts another milestone in the life of Activiti. Historically, we (the ex jBPM team) have been focussed on BPM in a plain Java environment. We're thrilled to have these Mulesoft on board. Their experience in the field will ensure that Activiti has web service and ESB support that covers the real life use cases.

Esteban Robles Luna from Mulesoft will become an core Activiti developer. It was a pleasure meeting you last week, Esteban! Welcome to the team.

We now have a very broad set of expertises united in the Activiti project. Consolidation is really happening even faster then we expected. Exciting times!

Complementary Commitments

Last week we had the Activiti Community Kickoff Meeting. We revised the roadmap from now till November in the context of the new contributing companies. The spirit was great.

What struck me most was that the expertise that these companies bring forward is really complementary:

• Alfresco: Core engine technology and BPMN
• Mimacom: Core engine technology and task management
• SpringSource: Making the designs DI friendly and general solid software design expertise
• Camunda: BPMN and practical BPM collaboration
• Next Level Integration: DB compatibility and high scalability
• MuleSoft: Web services and ESB expertise

We've managed to distill concrete tasks for everyone within the domain of expertise and put this into a concrete planning. Not only did they bring their expertise and commitment, but also a solid dose of humor. That was a real good mix. It's a great environment to work. I'm happy and proud to be part of that group.

Activiti 5.0.alpha3 Released

We're getting into a steady release rhythm. We just pushed 5.0.alpha3 out the door with following improvements:

• JobExecutor
• BPMN Timers
• BPMN JSR 223 script support.
• Switched from iBatis to MyBatis
• Updated to a newer version of BPMN xsd
• Query API
• Switched JUnit usage from 3-style inheritance to 4-style annotations

Download here.

Onward to the next!

Alfresco Joins OMG To Participate In BPMN 2.0 RTF

Alfresco knows that Open Source and standards is a rock solid combination. We (Alfresco) are a driving force behind the CMIS standard for ECM systems. Two months ago, we were the first ECM tool to deliver on CMIS compliancy.

So when Alfresco launched it's BPM initiative Activiti as Apache license and mentions a focus on BPMN 2.0, those is not a hollow words. We're very committed to BPMN 2.0. In fact, we're aiming to build the #1 BPMN 2.0 process engine and deliver the full BPM Suite components, all available as open source.

Historically, BPMN only targeted the notation and BPML was intended as the language and file format. BPML was already deprecated long ago in favour of BPEL. But now more recently BPMN itself included the executable semantics and a file format. And we believe that in some specific cases, the convenience for developers were overlooked.

The Activiti mission statement goes like this:

Make Business Process Management (BPM) ubiquitous
by offering solutions
that both business people and developers love.

In the past, we've built up experience in building an executable process language that also takes into account the developer needs. Given our background and current mission, we believe there is a role for us to play in the BPMN 2.0 committee. Luckily we made it in time to join the RTF from the start.

The business aspects are covered in great depth already. But our focus on the developer is quite unique. That is exactly what we want to contribute to the BPMN 2.0. Making sure that BPMN is convenient for both business people and developers.

Mimacom Joins Activiti

Mimacom just joined the Activiti project. It shows that consolidation is really happening around Activiti. A steady stream of companies is joining with the common goal of building the #1 BPM System for BPMN 2.0.

We are very excited because Mimacom brings in this mix a vast amount of expertise on building the Edorasware process engine. That core process engine knowledge and Mimacom's serous commitment to participate will result in a significant acceleration of Activiti's progress.

I enjoyed the discussions we had so far and look forward to more of those starting next week in Stuttgart.

Micha, Agim, Christian and Stefan are a great addition to the team. Welcome, guys!

Activiti Community Kickoff Meeting

Activiti took an awsome start last month.

After SpringSource, Camunda, Signavio and Next Level Integration, even more companies are joining the Activiti community. The snowball keeps rolling!

Next week thursday and friday we're going to kick off the Activiti community officially in Stuttgart, Germany. July 1st and 2nd, we'll be meeting up to bring out a toast and plan the roadmap more concrete between now and the 5.0 GA release in November. Looking forward to it!

If you're interested to meet up with the whole Activiti team over there, this is your chance. Send a mail to myfirstname at alfresco dot com.

First Activiti Presentation

Last week, I gave the very first presentation at the B2B by practice summit in Koln, Germany. Next level integration organized this event and they are also a member of the Activiti community. Here are the slides:

2010 06-b2b bypracticesummit

View more presentations from Tom Baeyens.

Keeping A BPM System In Tune

In very specific cases, a single person can cope with many distinct responsibilities.

But in general, it's easy to get out of tune that way and it's better to split up responsibilities in manageable pieces. The same goes for Business Process Management (BPM) tools. There are 2 very distinct aspects that are often mixed up. Especially traditional BPM solutions I believe are pretty bad at making the distinction between BPM as a management discipline and BPM as software engineering.

Keith Swenson already long time ago made a distinction between these aspects in BPM is not software engineering. In my opinion, these are 2 distinct aspects that are both valuable and they should not be mixed up. BPM as a management discipline can be practiced without the intention of automating them. Likewise, BPM as software engineering can be the most convenient technology way for a developer to implement certain technical requirements that don't have a meaning on a business level collaboration. Of course, the combination of both makes sense as well.

At Activiti, we don't want to end up with a single monolithic BPM System that takes on too much responsibilities and hence only becomes usable for specific nich cases. We clearly acknowledge the different nature of BPM as a management discipline and BPM as software engineering.

http://activiti.org/faq.html#WhatIsBpm

BPM as a management discipline is the responsibility of every strategic executive manager. It's to ensure that the organization performs well in their core business processes. This involves understanding what values the organization delivers and how those are achieved. This means analyzing, documenting and improving the way that people and systems work together. As part of that work, it's useful to work with models and diagrams. BPMN diagrams express the execution flow of the steps to accomplish a certain goal. Important to note that these models are used for people to people communication. They can be underspecified, which means that they can contain valuable high level information without including unnecessary details. Such underspecified process models are also known as abstract business processes.

BPM as software engineering means that executable business processes will be executed by a BPM System (BPMS). Executable business processes are based on a diagram that represents the different steps in an execution flow. The diagram can actually look exactly the same as the abstract business process. But executable business processes are different in some very fundamental ways. First of all they need more technical details. That part is generally accepted.

[read more...]

We believe that you should use the right tool for each job. And that collaboration should be facilitated on the Process Cycle Layer.

With the collaboration tool that we present there, you can see how we facilitate collaboration between business people, developers and system admins. And that without being intrusive. All of those people can't be forced to transition to a new single BPM system that does it all. But instead, with such a collaboration tool, we will facilitate the collaboration between those roles in a non intrusive way.

Activiti Keynote At B2B By Practice Summit

Next week thursday, I'll be doing a first public talk on Activiti at the B2B by Practice summit in Cologne. That's an excellent occasion to find out about Activiti, the vision, the roadmap and more. Hope to see you there!

Activiti 5.0.alpha2 Released

Activiti on steroids! Only 18 days after launching our brand new BPM Suite, we have another release ready for you. This release includes:

• Task forms
• Database table content viewer in Activiti Probe
• BPMN 2.0 Exclusive gateway
• Unified Expression Language support
• Reduced download size (37MB --> 18.5MB, removed duplicated libs)

Too bad I can't show the dynamic effects of the user task forms in this screenshot. But check it out for yourself. With the automatic setup scripts, it takes you less then a minute to get all this running on your system.

It even work great on my new android phone ;-) Cool!

Enjoy!

And let us know what you think.

Practical BPM Collaboration

There is a new form of Business Process Management (BPM) collaboration rising.

We have been exploring and documenting how we see the collaboration between business people, developers and sys admins in The Process Cycle Layer. Traditional BPM focusses on forward engineering or round trip engineering. But in our experience that is a bottleneck for mass adoption that we targeted previously and now with Activiti even more. In the Process Cycle Layer we sketch how that bottleneck in the collaboration can be removed by focussing on discussions, links and social interaction that spans the whole business process automation lifecycle.

Now, Bernd Ruecker just presented his ideas in Making the BPMN Roundtrip real. It turns out that those ideas align very well. They have been working out this idea in a project called camunda fox. This seems like a great validation of our thoughts. Very interesting stuff.