Customer Reviews

Essential Business Process Modeling

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gregor Hohpe should have read past the first 100 pages. This book is good on theory, poor on practice (does that remind you of any other SOA book?).
The examples Havey provides of "non-trivial" systems in the back are, in fact, quite trivial. What's worse is that when he ventures into the territory of "advanced" features, he gets lost. For example, on p.270, he provides an eventHandlers section, but comments it out saying that it doesn't work. I was able to get it to work as written with just a minor tweak, but he slags off the vendor instead (p.284) and proposes an awkward hack for a workaround (p.277). Then, on p.308, he presents us with a piece of parallelism that depends for its success on the use of a correlationSet. This is supposed to be clever, but is, in fact, just poor programming practice. Not only that, but it doesn't work! It can't possibly, not the way it's written. He just sent it off to the publisher without testing. We're not talking about simple syntax errors here... this is a fundamental conceptual flaw in what he's proposing. Pretty basic stuff for him to be stubbing his toe on.

If you go by this book, the essentials of Business Process Modeling consist of knowing a bewildering multitude of languages and (industry) standards. Process theory is covered on the surface. There's a chapter on patterns whose presentation has very little in common with the established patterns form and where it is at least questionable if they really live up to pattern status beyond simply being modeling idioms. The biggest drawback, however, is that this book hardly teaches anything about actually modeling business processes. By comparison, imagine a book on software design that introduces the various UML diagrams and the tools of the day -- but stops short of saying a thing about actually doing software design. No doubt, there's a place for books on notations, standards, and tools. But don't confuse those with the essentials of a field. When modeling business processes, analyzing and understanding them comes first, expressing them in some notation comes much latter. Unfortunately, Havey doesn't touch the first part at all.

First off, let me say that I just got this and I have read only about 100 pages. But from what I read so far, this book deserves to have a review, and a good one at that! I knew I was up to something when I saw that Wil van der Aalst was a technical reviewer. Writing a book on process management with him as a reviewer might be a scary endeavour for the author but it guarantees the reader a book with no handwaving and accurate content.

If you are tired of BPM name-droppers who use words like pi-calculus, process patterns etc. to intimidate and confuse others but you have no time to go back to grad school or read 1000 pages, you have found the ultimate weapon. This book is accurate in detail but easy to read and understand. We get a quick overview of BPM, the theoretical underpinnings (yeah, the calculus), common flavors of execution and modeling languages (BPMN, BPEL, YAWL etc). This is where most books will slowly peter out. Not here -- on top of that we get a nice collection of process patterns, based on the excellent work of Wil v.d.Aalst and his colleagues. We also learn about WS-CDL (Choreography Description) and the relationship between choreography and orchestration.

Of course, the book is not perfect as it takes on a tough task. Could there be more detail on some of the languages? Yeah, but through how many pages of XML listings do you really want to read? The book could be 1000 pages long but I think that would have made it worse. I feel that the author found a good compromise by focusing on architectural trade-offs instead of belaboring tools and syntax. Some of the artwork (e.g. screenshots) is a bit blurry, but the good content makes that an easy detail to ignore.

I want to point out that the book focuses more on the technical aspects of the languages and execution engines than the pure modeling side of BPM. This makes it ideally suited for people with a technical background who work in the Web Services/SOA/BPM/BPEL arena but it might not be as enjoyable for a business analyst trying to develop large process models.

A key factor for BPM is the capturing and effective expression of a business process in a way that enables a shared understanding between both the business community and the technical community. I had thought that this book dealt with this aspect in detail, but not really.

What it is, however, is a very clear overview of the technical architecture of a BPM solution and the related standards that support that architecture. The book gives a very clear theoretical background (Petri Nets etc) which is helpful as well. Whether it should have spent so much time and space on the description of proposed or stillborn standards efforts I guess is open to question.

So get this book if you want a solid description of what a BPM solution should look like, that is clearly based on experience that is informed by a correct appreciation of the appropriate theory.

Don't get it if you want advice on modelling techniques or best practises in developing business process models.

This book is about Business Process Management, and its technical and standards sides. The book explains almost all the technical standards, who creates it and for what purpose.

So, I think the title of the book is not correct. I think it must be "Understanding the Business Process modelling technology and standards". With this title in mind I gave five stars. If you want to know what is BPM, BPEL, BPMN,BPML, WSDL, XLANG, WS-CDL, BPDM and other standards and want to know who creates it and why, buy this book.

People who search a "cookbook" for BPM wil be certainly disappointed.

As Web Services have grown in potential, the Web Services Description Language arose to describe them, as the name suggests. In turn, from this we have the Business Process Execution Language, which is better suited in which to write how to string together a bunch of Web Services. There have been books explaining, in part, how to use BPEL. But mostly from a syntactical viewpoint.

In contrast, Havey shows how to use BPEL in a top-down manner. The tenor of this book is that Business Process Modelling is conveniently expressed in BPEL. It may be easier to learn BPEL this way, given this motivation. The earlier books that include explanations of BPEL tend to use simpler business examples.

Also, quite aside from BPEL, Havey shows that BPM is a subject that has some theoretical rigour behind it. Not just high level concepts.

Are you a software architect or developer who intends to build solutions that feature or use business process modeling (BPM)? If you are, this book is for you. Author Michael Havey, has written an outstanding book that provides BPM concepts, standards, and substantial examples of the technology in action.

Havey, begins examining what BPM is not and discusses its benefits. Next, the author develops a model BPM architecture, and discusses the main pieces of a good BPM application, the design of each piece, and which standards are adopted. Then, he provides a tour of the Pi Calculas, Petri nets, state machines, and UML activity diagrams, and why they matter. The author continues by including a detailed look at the 20 process patterns identified by some of the leading BPM theorists or better known as P4. In addition, he provided a detailed look at BPEL; the BPMI specifications; the WfMC; web services choreography; and, the OMG's model-driven approach, BPSS, XLANG, and WSFL. The author also provides a detailed look at BPEL, the leading BPM standard. Then, the author examines BPMI and its two standards: BPML and BPMN. Next, he presents an overview of the main offerings of the WfMC: the reference model, WAPI, WfXML, and XPDL. Next, the author examines the W3C's work in choreography. Then, he discusses four process languages that are too important not to mention. The author continues by illustrating a fully functional working example of a BPEL insurance claim processing application based on the Oracle BPEL Process Manager product, including how to incorporate human workflow into an otherwise automated process. Finally, the author develops another working example, a central message broker application that manages system communications for a company's employee benefits.

This excellent book assumes the reader is comfortable with or has had some exposure to web services and XML, including XML Schema Definition (XSD) and Xpath. Along the way, this book introduces design patterns and best practices specific to BPM, as well as some underlying theory.

Admittedly my own fault for not looking deeper into the purpose of the book, I found myself lost in the various programming languages. I was looking for a book on process flows/mapping, not an application oriented one. If you are like me, I would recommend PROCESS IMPROVEMENT ESSENTIALS by James R. Perse.

Excellent combination of history, standards and methodolocical material related to BPM. On my wish list: a book of corresponding quality related to the business side of BPM.

Trying to document and model the business processes in your organization is an ever-changing target. There has been a lot of work in the industry lately to come up with a standard way to do that. Michael Havey attempts to cover that work in the book Essential Business Process Modeling.

Contents:
Part 1 - Concepts: Introduction to Business Process Modeling; Prescription For a Good BPM Architecture; The Scenic Tour of Process Theory; Process Design Patterns
Part 2 - Standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL); BPMI Standards - BPMN and BPML; The Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC); World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - Choreography; Other BPM Models
Part 3 - Examples; Example - Human Workflow In Insurance Claims Processing; Example - Enterprise Message Broker; Key BPM Acronyms; Index

This isn't necessarily one of those subjects that sets my heart racing as a developer. There are a lot of acronyms and standards from different agencies all trying to interact and coordinate a very difficult subject. But I can appreciate the work that Havey has done in trying to tie together all this material into a single volume. I got the most out of the concepts section, as that's where I am in my experience/knowledge of BPM. Once you get beyond that level of understanding, the second part can add the details on the specific standards that come into play here. I also appreciate the real-life examples at the end, as it puts some flesh on the theoretical concepts.

Although not a book I'd pick up for an entertaining technical read, it does work well for its intended purpose.