How to Succeed with Process Automation: The Zen of Automation
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Transcript of How to Succeed with Process Automation: The Zen of Automation
© Blue Slate Solutions 2011 May 11, 2011
How to Succeed with Process
Automation: The Zen of
Automation
Zen: emphasizes enlightenment for the student by the most
direct possible means, accepting formal studies and
observances only when they form part of such means. dictionary.com
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
About Blue Slate Solutions
About – Founded in 2000, headquartered in Albany, NY
– Operations, strategy, technology and industry experts
Services – Specialize in improving and transforming operations
through business process transformation and IT
integration • 100s of projects that have resulted in scalable, maintainable
platforms for growth
• 75%+ of Blue Slate projects leverage business rule engines or
business process management tools
– Technology agnostic and not a reseller
– Business rules driven solutions have resulted in ROI
upwards of 2000% and 40% improvement in
departmental productivity
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© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
Agenda
• Means change, ends do not
• Benefits of a service oriented architecture
• Structure and organization of workflow
• Structure and organization of business rules
• Automating workflow and business rules
• Industry-specific point solutions
• Extended value of rule engines
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Means Change, Ends Do Not
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Why Do We Use Computers?
• Data Access
– Have to define what to store
• Repeatability
– Have to tell it the process
• Computation
– Have to encode the logic
• Speed
– Have to get out of the way
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Same Automation Goals, Different Development Tools
• Increasing abstraction
– 1940s – Programming through wiring
– 1950s – Low-level instructions (Machine language)
– 1960s – High-level instructions (COBOL)
– 1970s – Structured (Fortran/C)
– 1980s – Object-oriented (C++/Smalltalk)
– 1990s – Event-driven (Visual Basic, Delphi)
– 2000s – Engines (Workflow, Rules, Content)
• More capability, more complexity, different risks
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What is Programming?
• Providing a set of instructions to a computer
dictating data, workflow and rules
– Supports human intervention at fixed points
– Allows decisions in predefined ways
– Reads and writes structured and unstructured data
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1 OPEN 1,8,15,“students”
2 PRINT “Student name”
3 PRINT “or DONE to end”
4 INPUT A$
5 IF A$ = “DONE” THEN 8
6 PRINT #1, A$
7 GOTO 2
8 close 1
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Tool Advancement
• Move thinking from micro to macro
• Reduce fine-grained control
• Prefer groups to individuals
• Simplify reuse and expect
commonality
• Focus on goals not means
• Still require programming
– Integration
– Logic
– Error handling
– Security
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Benefits of a Service Oriented Architecture
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Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• 1970s – Messaging
– MQ
• 1980s – Client-server
– ODBC
• 1990s – ORB
– CORBA
• 2000s – Web services
– SOAP, REST
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Connect systems together to share data and logic
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
Services are Easy, Syntax is Hard
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Schauen Sie
Kontoinformationen für
39217839
Nom: Jane Doe:
Couverture:
Bâtiment: 200000
Biens Personnels: 50000
Responsabilité: 100000
Visualizzare il registro delle chiamate per Jane
呼籲2011年2月16日討論加入汽車保險的投資組合。決定等待一個決定
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
XML Represents How
<interaction>
<request>
Visualizzare il registro delle chiamate per
Jane
</request>
<response>
呼籲2011年2月16日討論加入汽車保險的投資組合。決定等待一個決定
</response>
</interaction> 12
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Schema Represents What (Syntax, Metadata)
<account>
<name>Jane Doe</name>
<accountnumber>39217839</accountnumber>
<type>Homeowners</type>
<coverages>
<structure unit=“USD”>200000</structure>
<property unit=“USD”>50000</property>
<liability unit=“USD”>100000</liability>
</coverages>
<latest_notes_available date=“2011-02-16”/>
</account>
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Canonical
• Standardized model for
exchanging information
– Database schema
– Class diagram
– XML schema
• Provides a contract for
system communications
• Requires significant, robust and engaged
governance
• Most challenging component of SOA
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Why SOA?
• Externalizes business
mission and strategy
• Provides forum for effective
communications
• Creates the services
plumbing once
• Anticipates ands formalizes
incremental change
• Encourages flexibility and agility (loose coupling)
• Promotes interoperability and integration
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Structure and Organization of Workflow
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Workflow
• Processes
– Tasks
– Decision points
– Information
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People Systems Documents
Manual Structured Unstructured
Workflow Orchestration Content
management
Human-centric System-centric Document-
centric
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
Baseline
• Current state will involve human-human, human-
system and system-system interactions
• Often driven by people and movement of
documents
– Fax
– Printout
– Handwritten form
• Third-party involvement
– Customers
– Vendors
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What to Document
• Goal is to leverage automation
• SIPOC is valuable
– Suppliers
– Inputs
– Process
– Outputs
– Customers
• Key points
– Manual data
• Source
– Manual steps and decisions
• Knowledge
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Signals for Workflow Automation
• External system lookups
• Reviews and approvals
based on risk
• Department handoffs
• Long-running processes
• Missing metrics
• Regulatory traceability
• Document collation and
generation
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Structure and Organization of Business Rules
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Business Rules
• Logic
– Computation
– Assertion (retraction)
– (Decision)
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Where Do You Find Business Rules?
• Documentation
• Regulations
• Existing applications
– Source code
– Document management flows
– Configuration files
• Interviews with SMEs
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How Do You Document Business Rules?
• Decision Table
• Pseudo code
– If applicant.age < 16 or applicant.age < 17 and
applicant.homestate = “TN” then accept_app = “no”
• Natural Language
– If the applicant is under the age of 16, or the applicant’s
home state is Tennessee and his or her age is < 17, then
the bank cannot accept his or her loan application.
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IF Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 3 Rule 4
Age <16 <17 >=16 >17
State * TN <>TN TN
THEN
AcceptApp No No Yes Yes
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
Business Rule Classification
• Volatility
• Simplicity
• Effectivity
• Reusability
• Ownership
• Sensitivity
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Signals for Business Rule Automation
• Regulatory traceability
• Missing metrics
• Companywide visibility
• Multiple channels
• Point-in-time applicability
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Automating Workflow and Business Rules
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Automation
• Trust
• Integrate
• Encode
• Version
• Execute
• Broaden
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Trust
• Businesses must trust that their process is being
automated with excellent fidelity
– Non-technical clarity of definitions is a goal of workflow
and rules environments
– Audit logging is a feature of most workflow and rules
environments
• Success must require business oversight and
participation
• Success must not require business ownership of all
workflow and rules “development”
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Integrate
• Workflow uses Business Rules and Data
– Workflow drives the business’ processes
– Business rules incorporate the business’ decision and
computational logic
– Data represents the business’ stored and computed
knowledge
• Shared vocabulary (canonical)
– Simplifies coordination between components
– Reduces errors in implementation
– E.g. misinterpretation of information
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Encode
• Features (Human, System, Document)
• Proprietary – Product-specific
– Domain specific language (DSL)
• Standards – XMI
– Workflow • BPEL, BPMN
– Rules • RuleML, SBVR
– Data • SQL
• Portability?
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Workflow Representation
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Business Rule Representations
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Version
• Workflow definitions, rules, XML schemas and
database schemas all represent source code
• Goal is agility but if pieces are out of sync system
will not work
• Must maintain versions and define release
processes
– Complexity added due to proprietary versioning built into
many tools
• Make sure to separate versioning from effectivity
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Execute
• Straight through processing (STP)
• Exception processing
• Assignments
– Individuals
– Teams
• Status
• History
• Repeatability
– Version
– Effective date
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Broaden
• Automated processes lend themselves to external
interaction
• Assignments to contact a third party may be
augmented by screens or services for direct third
party use
– Process and data remains consistent
– Business still controls touch points
– Third party takes on work – productivity and accuracy
benefits
• Extending assignments within workflows is a
powerful feature of these environments
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Industry-specific Point Solutions
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Common Aspects of Point Solutions
• Workflow, rules and data structures prebuilt
• Self-contained integration
• Limited flexibility
– Configure and extend within constraints
• Product fit assessment
– Industry standards
– Commoditization
– 80/20
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Advantages
• Out-of-the-box operation
• Requirements largely dictated
– Industry best practices
– Typical process steps
– Common decisions
– Standard practices
• Updates
– Regulatory changes
– Bugs
– Feature requests
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Limitations
• Tightly-coupled
• Missing general-purpose
features
• Become one-of-many
components
• Proprietary schemas (often)
• Fine line between configuration and customization
• Business demands may promote one-off
applications
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Extended Value of Rule Engines
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Rule Engines Beyond Workflow
• Houses and executes logic
– What-if scenarios
– Versioned lookups
• Security
– Role transformations and checks
– Execution boundaries
• Trends
– Rule utilization
– Rule outcomes
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Complex Event Processing (CEP)
• Leverages business rule engine capabilities – Respond to changing state
• Extensions to support related concepts – E.g. temporal reasoning, aggregation, correlation
rule “Freezer Failing for Vehicle"
when
$n : Number( intValue > 25 )
from accumulate
( $tr : Temp( $veh: vehicleId)
over window:time( 10m ),
average( $tr.temperatureValue ) )
then
$veh.alert(“Freezer failing”);
end
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Closing thoughts
• Automation and externalization must be trusted
before significant value will be found with these
components
• Workflow and rules engines realize their maximum
potential when leveraged together in an SOA
environment
• These are development tools that add agility and
business visibility to system implementations
• No product is a panacea
• Training for business analysts and developers is
important – Tool use and requirements/design approaches
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© Blue Slate Solutions 2010
Your Turn
Please participate by
submitting your questions
Thank you for taking the
time to attend this webinar
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© Blue Slate Solutions 2011
Contact Us blueslate.net
David Read, CTO
518.810.0400
46
Shawn Firehock, Managing
Director
518.810.0378
© Blue Slate Solutions 2010 47
Smart Approach.
Extraordinary Results.
[Welcome to Blue Slate.]