EVOLUTION OF BPR

BPM with TIBCO Business Studio

Posted on the March 10th, 2008 under BPM, Organizational Transformation by Matthew Yankelovich

A recent post by Kaushal Mashruwala over at Financial Express titled "SOA Strategy and Execution is Failing in Many Companies" inspired this particular post that will look at BPM a little more closely with the use of a tool that I consider critical when discussing BPR.

"the SOA value proposition is fundamentally unimportant to business people. It’s just another way to implement an application. What’s more important to business managers is how they can change, through technology, the way their businesses are run. And that’s where BPM comes in."

TIBCO Business Studio is a Business Process Modelling application by TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) out of Palo Alto, California.  Simplistically, the software provides two distinct views of a single process model that are relevant to both IT and Business, providing a means of collaboration between the two groups that would have otherwise required the use of multiple applications.  The software also incorporates robust simulation capabilities using either real data or provided algorithms, that integrate quite well with the overall interface.

The purpose of this specific post is to share my personal perspective learning how to use this application that I think many would argue is a relatively advanced piece of software.  It is this advanced functionality that frightens a lot of BPM practitioners and keeps them latching on to the more comfortable tools like VISIO, not allowing them to tap into some of the more useful benefits of a tool like Business Studio. 

My approach to grasping new technology has always been to immerse myself in it.  Much of the time we know what an application is supposed to do, and more importantly we understand why we might want to use it over the alternatives, however the difficulty is understanding the how.  My technique has always been to start pressing buttons.  I understand that might sound silly, but once you begin to understand what the buttons do you will start to understand how to use them in the appropriate contexts.  Couple that technique with studying any supplied documentation, you will find you will surely adapt and be better off for it.

For the remainder of this post I will take you through the main interface and try to abstract from the more technical features of the application because my experience has been that the majority of new users want to accomplish one thing when starting out and that is to model a simple process.  For a more technical overview, I encourage you to head over to the TIBCO post on Sandy Kemsley’s Column 2 blog, however please keep in mind that it was written in late 2006 and TIBCO has recently released Business Studio 2.1 that addresses a number of the mentioned limitations.

So what does this application look like?

What some of you might notice when you open up this application is that it is built upon the Eclipse Software Framework which is an open-source framework - primarily Java-based. 

This interface typically scares a lot of people at first glance - at least that has been my experience.  My advice would be to not let the interface overwhelm you, start playing around and exploring and of course, check out TIBCO’s repository of educational resources referenced below if you have any questions or troubles.

You will notice that there is a tool drawer that can be enabled by hovering over it (See Left).  This is the repository for all the elements you will use to model various processes.  You simply click-and-drag any element to the window that you’d like to begin building the model.  I encourage you to click on all the elements because TIBCO has gone ahead and included informative tool-tips that appear as you hover over each element that will quickly familiarize you with their intended usage.

The Properties window (below) is where information for each process is collected.  Descriptions with respect to each process can be included to minimize any confusion over interpretation between IT and business.  All sorts of information can be input here depending on the entity in context, from technical details such as scripts and parameters to simple participants and appearance attributes.  I will not include any further details as that would likely require a separate post - which I can accommodate if the demand is there.

 

With a little practice I hope you will find comfort in process design using this tool and perhaps encourage you to tackle some more of the incredibly useful advanced functionality such as the integrated simulation capabilities (see below). 

 

TIBCO has made Business Studio available to all as a free download and I believe they have added Windows Vista support to their latest release, Business Studio 2.1, as I now can run this application seamlessly on my Vista machine without the use of any Virtual machine tools that were previously necessary.

As you explore TIBCO’s website I encourage you to check out the vast collection of video tutorials and other helpful resources to get you started.  In addition, you can add your name to their mailing list and they will notify you whenever a new webinar is hosted to inform users how to get the most of the product.  Sandy Kemsley over at her Column2 blog has been featured on multiple occasions in a series of TIBCO webinars so I would encourage you to head over to the BPM Resource Center and check out her contributions.