Essential Business Process Modeling

Business process modeling (BPM) provides a platform that enables process, domain, and technical experts to communicate and build applications. In Essential Business Process Modeling, Michael Havey, experienced architect and integration expert, explains clearly and concisely the concepts and standards surrounding BPM and provides examples of the technology in action. In addition to practical information and examples for architects, this book includes an introduction to BPM, allowing project managers and enterprise architects to come up to speed.

In this book, Havey explains everything you need to know about BPM, including:

• Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), the leading BPM standard
• A look at all of the standards that play a role in BPM, including: BPML, NPMN, WSCL, WAPI, WfMCWS CDL, XLANG, and many more
• BPM architecture and theory
• Comprehensive examples
• Design patterns and best practices

Essential Business Process Modeling teaches you how to develop examples of process-oriented applications using free tools that can be run on an average PC or laptop. You'll also learn about BPM design patterns and best practices, as well as some underlying theory. The best way to model processes within an enterprise is with BPM, and the best way to navigate BPM is with this valuable book.

• 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 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
• 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
• References
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 Acronyms

This is definetly not for the practicing manager, nor for any business person, as it is filled with jargon, technical information, references to different "standards" etc.

It includes syntaxical descriptions, sometimes in pseudo-languages and long listings in XML.

As a technical person, I find it too lightweight, as there is never any depth in the discussions, which are also flawed from time to time (transaction processing don't seem to be the authors forte).

As a former standards person, I see it as a project to try to dazzle the environment with a lot of abbrevations and pseudo-standards. It doesn't have to be presented like this in the real standards world, this is a choice of the author, and where he fails miserably.

My impression after having read this book, is that BPM should fail miserably, due to confusing "standards", nomenclature confusion, low theoretical treshhold, limited practical experience of the few practitioners and badly written software. Fortunately, I know this is not the overall case, but it is the impression puts forward.

In other words, it is not even well-written, and contains a lot of bull.