Business Process Management Design Guide: Using IBM Business Process Manager

Business Process Management Design Guide: Using IBM Business Process Manager

by Vyacheslav Zheltonogov, J. Keith Wood, Philipp Schume, Magnus Borgenstrand, Nakul Bharade, Dr. Ali Arsanjani
Released April 2015
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738440590

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Book description

IBM® Business Process Manager (IBM BPM) is a comprehensive business process management (BPM) suite that provides visibility and management of your business processes. IBM BPM supports the whole BPM lifecycle approach:

  • Discover and document

  • Plan

  • Implement

  • Deploy

  • Manage

  • Optimize

    • Process owners and business owners can use this solution to engage directly in the improvement of their business processes.

    IBM BPM excels in integrating role-based process design, and provides a social BPM experience. It enables asset sharing and creating versions through its Process Center. The Process Center acts as a unified repository, making it possible to manage changes to the business processes with confidence.

    IBM BPM supports a wide range of standards for process modeling and exchange. Built-in analytics and search capabilities help to further improve and optimize the business processes.

    This IBM Redbooks® publication provides valuable information for project teams and business people that are involved in projects using IBM BPM. It describes the important design decisions that you face as a team. These decisions invariably have an effect on the success of your project.

    These decisions range from the more business-centric decisions, such as which should be your first process, to the more technical decisions, such as solution analysis and architectural considerations.

    Table of contents

    1. Front cover
    2. Notices
      1. Trademarks
    3. IBM Redbooks promotions
    4. Preface
      1. Authors
      2. Now you can become a published author, too
      3. Comments welcome
      4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    5. Chapter 1. Introduction to successful business process management
      1. 1.1 Introduction to business process management
        1. 1.1.1 What
        2. 1.1.2 When
        3. 1.1.3 Why: The value of BPM
      2. 1.2 Influences on a successful BPM project
        1. 1.2.1 Project delivery methodology
        2. 1.2.2 Center of Excellence
        3. 1.2.3 People
      3. 1.3 Things to consider before a project starts
        1. 1.3.1 Access to resources
        2. 1.3.2 Often overlooked
      4. 1.4 Conclusion
    6. Chapter 2. Approaches and process discovery
      1. 2.1 Why BPM is important
      2. 2.2 The BPM journey
      3. 2.3 The six pillars of success for BPM
        1. 2.3.1 Assessments and maturity models: Course corrections
        2. 2.3.2 A strategic roadmap and tactical plan
        3. 2.3.3 Agile methods and processes: Driving skills, predictability, and consistency within the organization
        4. 2.3.4 Reference architecture: A blueprint or template to be instantiated by various business lines
        5. 2.3.5 Governance: Institutionalizing consistency through centers of excellence
        6. 2.3.6 Tools and software platforms: Automating the process with state-of-the-art capabilities
      4. 2.4 Business process and Smarter Process Maturity Model: A roadmap
        1. 2.4.1 The spectrum of the Smarter Process Maturity Model
        2. 2.4.2 The dimensions of maturity
        3. 2.4.3 Knowledge worker processes
        4. 2.4.4 Automated business processes
        5. 2.4.5 Rules and decisions
        6. 2.4.6 Analytics and KPIs
        7. 2.4.7 Services in an SOA
        8. 2.4.8 API management
        9. 2.4.9 Data, content, and information architecture
        10. 2.4.10 Infrastructure and non-functional requirements
      5. 2.5 Estimating IBM BPM projects
        1. 2.5.1 Dimensions of complexity
        2. 2.5.2 Degrees of complexity
        3. 2.5.3 BPM artifact complexity: Some indicative samples
      6. 2.6 IBM Smarter Process Method
        1. 2.6.1 Workstreams
        2. 2.6.2 The IBM Smarter Process Method: Details
        3. 2.6.3 Techniques and phases of the IBM Smarter Process Method
      7. 2.7 IBM component business modeling
      8. 2.8 Process inventory
      9. 2.9 Process Inventory, Variation Analysis, and Roadmap
        1. 2.9.1 Variation-oriented analysis
        2. 2.9.2 Steps in the PIVAR
      10. 2.10 Blueprint or Macro Design
        1. 2.10.1 Breadth and depth of requirements
        2. 2.10.2 Integrations and services
        3. 2.10.3 Explore the tracks
      11. 2.11 Project
      12. 2.12 Program
      13. 2.13 Process Factory
      14. 2.14 Migration
      15. 2.15 Top Down - Bottom Up
      16. 2.16 Conclusion
    7. Chapter 3. Solution analysis and architecture considerations
      1. 3.1 High-level solution analysis and design
      2. 3.2 Application architecture considerations
        1. 3.2.1 Using IBM BPM Coaches or building custom user interfaces
        2. 3.2.2 Top Down versus Bottom Up design considerations
        3. 3.2.3 IBM BPM Standard or IBM BPM Advanced
        4. 3.2.4 IBM BPM Advanced or IBM Integration Bus
        5. 3.2.5 IBM BPM rules or IBM Operational Decision Manager
      3. 3.3 External system of record considerations
        1. 3.3.1 Introducing an external SOR into the IBM BPM process application solution
        2. 3.3.2 Business entities
        3. 3.3.3 IBM BPM business object model design considerations
        4. 3.3.4 Accessing existing system of records
        5. 3.3.5 Locking mechanism for concurrent access
        6. 3.3.6 Accessing reference data
      4. 3.4 Integration architecture considerations
        1. 3.4.1 Advanced Integration Services
      5. 3.5 Infrastructure architecture considerations
      6. 3.6 Conclusion
    8. Chapter 4. Security architecture considerations
      1. 4.1 Why BPM security is important
        1. 4.1.1 IBM BPM is part of your “corporate DNA”
        2. 4.1.2 IBM BPM users have access
        3. 4.1.3 IBM BPM has unique security considerations
      2. 4.2 Installation concepts and hardening steps
        1. 4.2.1 BPM and WebSphere concepts
        2. 4.2.2 Hardening steps
      3. 4.3 Authentication
        1. 4.3.1 WebSphere user registry
        2. 4.3.2 Flat-file repositories
        3. 4.3.3 LDAP repositories
        4. 4.3.4 Single sign-on
      4. 4.4 Authorization
        1. 4.4.1 Group-based authorization
        2. 4.4.2 Dynamic authorization: Teams
        3. 4.4.3 Task-based authorization
      5. 4.5 Conclusion
    9. Chapter 5. Design considerations and patterns
      1. 5.1 Product installation considerations
      2. 5.2 Business process design
        1. 5.2.1 Process flow patterns
        2. 5.2.2 Routing patterns
      3. 5.3 Service design
        1. 5.3.1 Service complexity and reuse
        2. 5.3.2 Human service design
      4. 5.4 Data flow patterns
        1. 5.4.1 Data flow in processes
        2. 5.4.2 Data flow in services
        3. 5.4.3 Data flow in Coaches
        4. 5.4.4 Integration design
      5. 5.5 Toolkit design
        1. 5.5.1 Categorizing library items into toolkits
        2. 5.5.2 Toolkit maintenance
        3. 5.5.3 Design patterns and performance considerations
      6. 5.6 Error handling
        1. 5.6.1 Error handling concepts
        2. 5.6.2 Error handling strategies
      7. 5.7 Logging
      8. 5.8 Asset maintenance and governance considerations
        1. 5.8.1 Shared assets in IBM BPM Process Center
        2. 5.8.2 Managing IBM Process Designer artifacts
        3. 5.8.3 Managing advanced artifacts
        4. 5.8.4 Deployment governance
        5. 5.8.5 Managing tracks
      9. 5.9 Conclusion
    10. Chapter 6. Business-centric visibility
      1. 6.1 What business-centric visibility is
      2. 6.2 Business-centric visibility in IBM BPM
        1. 6.2.1 Business data and process data reports
        2. 6.2.2 IBM BPM Process Optimizer
        3. 6.2.3 IBM Business Monitor
      3. 6.3 Conclusion
    11. Chapter 7. Performance and IT-centric visibility
      1. 7.1 Performance tuning process flow
      2. 7.2 IT-centric visibility
        1. 7.2.1 Logging
        2. 7.2.2 Auditing
        3. 7.2.3 Monitoring
      3. 7.3 Performance diagnostic tools
        1. 7.3.1 Nmon
        2. 7.3.2 WebSphere Application Server Performance Tuning Toolkit
        3. 7.3.3 IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Health Center
        4. 7.3.4 IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Memory Analyzer
        5. 7.3.5 Pattern Modeling and Analysis Tool for IBM Garbage Collector
        6. 7.3.6 IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer for Java
        7. 7.3.7 Database monitoring tools
      4. 7.4 Sample use cases
      5. 7.5 Conclusion
    12. Related publications
      1. IBM Redbooks
      2. Help from IBM
    13. Back cover
    14. IBM System x Reference Architecture for Hadoop: IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Reference Architecture
      1. Introduction
      2. Business problem and business value
      3. Reference architecture use
      4. Requirements
      5. InfoSphere BigInsights predefined configuration
      6. InfoSphere BigInsights HBase predefined configuration
      7. Deployment considerations
      8. Customizing the predefined configurations
      9. Predefined configuration bill of materials
      10. References
      11. The team who wrote this paper
      12. Now you can become a published author, too!
      13. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    15. Notices
      1. Trademarks

    Product information

    • Title: Business Process Management Design Guide: Using IBM Business Process Manager
    • Author(s): Vyacheslav Zheltonogov, J. Keith Wood, Philipp Schume, Magnus Borgenstrand, Nakul Bharade, Dr. Ali Arsanjani
    • Release date: April 2015
    • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
    • ISBN: 9780738440590