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How to Design SOA Business Processes & Workflows
How to Re-factor Business Workflows to Incorporate Business Services

Redesigning Business Processes for a Service Architecture: This solution delineates an approach and techniques for analyzing and redesigning an already modeled Business Process to participate in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) while improving the performance of the Business Process.  This solution embraces the combination of business understanding, systems analysis and technical structuring required for successful process redesign in a SOA.  This includes:

• Comprehension of Business Process Models and supporting artifacts

• Comprehension of defined Services in a SOA

• Evaluation of the process activities for improvement opportunities

• Mapping Business Process portions to specific Services

• Re-factoring (dividing/combining) process activities to align with service boundaries

• Identification of Events and Conditions that affect process workflows

• Definition of potential exceptions and how each must be handled

• Reconciliation of the Information needs between the Business Process and the Services

• Determine if service candidate can be sufficiently generalized

• Evaluate and Define security handling for new Business Process

Overview

Prior to beginning the workflow design, the Business Processes have been defined in Business terms and modeled at a level of detail and specificity suitable for business confirmation.  This definition reflects the current roles, systems, and applications.  The Business Services have been defined and externalized from their original business application contexts, and perhaps implemented as stand-alone Web Services.

The seminar participants will learn how to re-implement the Business Process using the previously defined Services.  They will learn how to re-partition the Business Process, changing the boundaries between human and automated components and/or between automated components, and how to design the interactions across the new boundaries to enable smooth interoperability.

How to Design SOA Business Processes & Workflows teaches how to work from the Business Process (Blue) to craft a revised process model that embeds the new technology capabilities as well as the new or revised roles of the process participants.  The seminar students will learn how to identify and document the Events that will occur throughout the Business Process, how to specify their handling, the valid triggers and expected responses, as well as all information that the process components will exchange.  The seminar teaches how to identify Exceptions and define Compensations for handling Exceptions (Stop, Ask for decision, etc.).  The program also teaches how to define Rules that will implement as conditions for branching and looping within the automated workflow.

How to Design SOA Business Processes & Workflows teaches how to make the technical choices (Gold) required to weave the Services into one or more high level services that implement the new Business Process.  Participants will learn how to define Interfaces between services, as well as the required User Interfaces and how to coordinate between Services within a work flow.  The program also teaches how to analyze and specify inter-service Security, and how to create adjust Business Processes based on Security considerations, including the optional creation of a separate Security/Control Revision Phase for the proposed Business Process.

Seminar Outline

• Comprehending Business Process Models and supporting Artifacts

  • Semantic Interpretation of Business Process Models

  • What the Model Doesn’t Say

  • Artifacts, Documents, and Resources that Support Business Process Models

  • Case Study: Comparing the Model to “Reality”

• Comprehending Service Definitions

  • What is a Service

  • Review of Typical Styles of non-Technical Service Definitions

  • The Role of Services in SOA Business Processes

• Opportunity Analysis

  • What is Opportunity Analysis

  • Opportunity Analysis Techniques

  • Capturing Identified Opportunities

  • Evaluating the Identified Opportunities

  • Case Study: Opportunity Analysis of the Current Process

• Recasting the Business Processes to align with Services

  • Rough Cut – Mapping to Services

  • Re-factoring Activities to align with Services

  • Drafting the new Business Process Model

  • Case Study

• Surfacing Process Workflow Rules

  • Identifying Non-linear Workflows

  • Determining the Necessary Level of Control (Synchronous/Asynchronous)

  • Defining the Decisions, Outcomes and Rules

• Identifying and Detailing Service Boundary Events

  • What is a Service Boundary Event (SBE)

  • Expressing SBE as a Use Case Scenario

  • Declaring Expected Results

  • Identifying Exceptions and Required Handling

  • Identifying Variations (Alternates) and Required Handling

• Analyzing SBE Needs

  • Verifying Information the Service Requires

  • Mapping each Information Need to a Source

  • Confirming Mapping Validity (including semantics)

  • Analyze SBE Security Needs

  • Revise SBE to reflect appropriate security

• Going Forward – Three Paths

  • Application Path – Develop/Modify/Acquire and Deploy the Application(s)

  • Business Path – Prepare/Plan/Train to work per the New Business Process

  • Testing Path – Develop Test Suite to fully test all SBE operations

• Summary Review