review by
Gordon Haverland, June 2006

Monitoring workflow today can involve orchestrating massive systems. Business Process Management (BPM) helps developers design, code, run, administer, and monitor enterprise business processes. This guide explains BPM concepts, architecture and specifications, and then teaches you how to develop process-oriented applications using free tools. View Table of Contents

Reviewer Background: Has grown up with family businesses since 1967. Studied some material consistent with a MBA.

Content Type: Intended for people with a technical knowledge of business.

Content Level: Knowledge of business at a MBA level is needed. Knowledge of GUI development environments, XML and Java would be useful as well.

Features: A fair number of diagrams and some code is included. Contains a reasonable survey of commercial and OpenSource products.

Style: Typical of popular, technical computer books.

Rating: I think the idea of business process modeling is important to almost all business. However, this book is beyond small and many medium sized businesses. It is probably useful to business process modeling consultants.

Table of Contents

Preface 
 Part One. Concepts

1. Introduction to Business Process Modeling 

      The Benefits of BPM 

      BPM Acid Test: The Process-Oriented Application 

      The Morass of BPM 

      Workflow 


      Roadmap 

      Summary 

      References 
2. Prescription for a Good BPM Architecture 

      Designing a Solution 


      Components of the Design 

      Standards 

      Summary 

      Reference 
3. The Scenic Tour of Process Theory 


      Family Tree 

      The Pi-Calculus 

      Petri Nets 

      State Machines and Activity Diagrams 

      Summary 


      References 
4. Process Design Patterns 

      Design Patterns and the GoF 

      Process Patterns and the P4 

      Basic Patterns 


      Advanced Branch and Join Patterns 

      Structural Patterns 

      Multiple Instances Patterns 

      State-Based Patterns 

      Cancellation Patterns 


      Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL) 

      Additional Patterns 

      Process Coding Standards 

      Summary 

      References 

 Part Two. standards
5. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) 

      Anatomy of a Process 

      BPEL Example 

      BPEL in a Nutshell 


      BPELJ 

      BPEL and Patterns 

      Summary 

      References 
6. BPMI Standards: BPMN and BPML 


      BPMN 

      BPML 

      Summary 

      Reference 
7. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) 


      The Reference Model 

      XPDL 

      WAPI 

      WfXML 

      Summary 


      References 
8. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): Choreography 

      About the W3C 

      Choreography and Orchestration 

      WS-CDL 


      WSCI 

      WSCL 

      Summary 

      References 
9. Other BPM Models 


      OMG: Model-Driven BPM 

      ebXML BPSS: Collaboration 

      Microsoft XLANG: BPEL Forerunner 

      IBM WSFL: BPEL Forerunner 

      BPEL, XLANG, and WSFL 


      Summary 

      References 
 Part Three. Examples
10. Example: Human Workflow in Insurance Claims Processing 

      Oracle BPEL Process Manager 


      Setting Up the Environment 

      Developing the Example 

      Testing the Example 

      Summary 

      References 

11. Example: Enterprise Message Broker 

      What Is a Message Broker? 

      Example: Employee Benefits Message Broker 

      Summary 
Key BPM Acronymns 
index