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 John Reynolds's Blog
The Next Generation In Workflow?Posted by johnreynolds on April 22, 2008 at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)Tom Baeyens, of JBoss jBPM fame, published a great overview of BPM's past and possible future in his article: Process Component Models: The Next Generation In Workflow ? over at InfoQ. Check it out! Object Only Programming (and Modelling) Considered SillyPosted by johnreynolds on April 18, 2008 at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)Every so often I come across a blog entry that makes my own attempts to put my thoughts in writing seem pathetically inadequate. Stevey's Blog Rant: Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns is one such entry. Stevey's position is that Object Only Languages are silly... at least that's how I sum up his blog. I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't have said it better... I've tried several times: My first attempt to express my concerns about "Objects Only" was back in in November of 2003: UML and Process Definition for Java - JSR 207. Looking back, I realize that I should have just said "Object Only Modelling is a dumb idea". For the record... "Process Only Modelling" is also a dumb idea. To borrow Stevey's metaphor, a Kingdom of Verbs is just as silly as a Kingdom of Nouns. Let's all move to the Kingdom of Sentences :-) (cross-posted at Thoughtful Programmer) Net Beans (6.1) Page FlowsPosted by johnreynolds on April 14, 2008 at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)NetBeans (6.1) Page Flows may be a small step towards Model Driven development: Read more here. Iterative DevelopmentPosted by johnreynolds on April 10, 2008 at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)I've had a surprisingly difficult time conveying my own definition of "Iterative Development" in the context of BPM development. If you are interested in such things, please take a look at my other blog for an explanation via analogy.... Getting Tasks to the Right Users in a Managed Business ProcessPosted by johnreynolds on March 08, 2008 at 02:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)Still don't quite understand what's different between "normal" programming and developing managed business processes?
Perhaps this blog on Task Routing in a Managed Process will help you to understand the issues that Business Process Developers have to deal with.
Drive the Path (process and data flow)Posted by johnreynolds on February 08, 2008 at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)Any tools can be used wrong, and I believe that's the reason many developers hate BPM. They just don't know how the BPM tools should be used... and I'd love to rectify that situation. If you grok Process Driven Development you will love BPM. If you don't, then you'll try to use your BPM tools like a traditional application development environment and you will end up with a mess. It's all about the Process... Before you begin development, discover the answers to these questions in this order:
When you know these answers, then start your development efforts with the process diagram and use that to drive your development path in this order:
It's absolutely critical that you do these steps in this order at the outset of your project... and once you are done you've got to do the following: Drive through ALL of the process paths with your Business Sponsors. If you follow these steps, then you will expose the flaws in the process flow long before you've wasted any time coding up a fancy UI that is WRONG. The process should drive the UI, but often our haste to show a sexy screen to our Business Sponsors the UI ends up locking us into a bad process model. We've all made this mistake, and we know from experience that it screws things up for the rest of the project's life. Everyone focuses on UI. It's the most visible aspect of a project and the easiest to have an opionion about... But in truth the best UI in the world won't make the wrong process right. Yes indeed... the UI development tools in some BPM suites often require super-human efforts to build the sexy AJAX powered screens that are all the rage, and often you'll end up developing your fanciest UIs with supplemental tools. But that's not why some BPM projects fail... BPM project's fail when the project team doesn't follow the steps of Process Driven Design that I've laid out in this blog entry. If you've had problems with BPM... try it my way next time. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you do.
(cross-posted at Thoughtful Programmer)  |
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May 2008
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April 2008 Recent EntriesThe Next Generation In Workflow? Object Only Programming (and Modelling) Considered Silly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
John Reynolds is an Austin (as in Texas) based programmer who has been professionally developing software since 1980. His primary focus has been on software usability and usefulness, dating back to his involvement with Tandy's DeskMate graphical environment in the late 80's. Java is his current language of choice, superceding a long relationship with C++ and an early affair with the irrepressible FORTH.
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