E-book details

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization

Matt Cumberlidge, Tom Baeyens

Ebook
JBoss jBPM is a free, open-source, business process management solution. It enables users to create business processes that coordinate people, applications, and services.

A business process is a sequence of activities triggered by a certain input that results in a valuable output. Business Process Management is about analyzing those activities in a structured way and eventually supporting their execution with a workflow application. This allows for the following results:

Better management visibility of their business: improved decision making
Low cost of inputs: de-skilled labor requirements, less waste, standardized components
Better outputs: consistent quality, more customer satisfaction

Businesses have always tried to manage their processes, but software such as jBPM brings the methodology and management theory to practical life.

JBoss jBPM offers the following key features:

Graphical process definition
Flexibility to integrate code into the graphical process definition
A customizable web-based workflow application that runs the process you’ve defined
Easy programming model to extend the graphical process definition
A process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of process definition languages and Java.
Easy to integrate with other systems through the JBoss middleware suite.
  • Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM
    • Table of Contents
    • Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM
    • Credits
    • About the Author
    • About the Reviewers
    • Preface
      • What this book covers
      • What you need for this book
      • Conventions
      • Reader feedback
      • Customer support
        • Downloading the example code for the book
        • Errata
        • Questions
    • 1. Introduction
      • The BPM approach to software development
        • Evolution of software development methodologies
        • The emergence of key technologies
        • Meanwhilemanagement theory
          • What is a business process and why do we want to manage it?
          • Business process improvement and re-engineering
        • From this convergence, BPM emerges
        • Business process management: a definition
          • Key benefits of BPM
          • Typical business scenarios ripe for BPM
      • How this book works
        • The solution well build
        • Introducing our suggested project lifecycle
        • Introducing our example business scenario
        • Introducing our example BPM suite
          • JBoss jBPM
          • JBoss
          • SeeWhy business intelligence platform
      • Summary
    • 2. Understanding the target process
      • Setting up the project
        • Introducing our example business scenario
        • Project initiation document
          • Example
        • Scope the target process
          • Example
        • Put together the project team
          • Identify project sponsors
          • Project office
          • Example
          • Identify process owners and subject matter experts
            • Example
        • Kick-off meeting
      • Analyze the process
        • Map the workflow
          • Example
        • Identify roles and responsibilities
          • Activity flow diagram
            • Example
          • RACI matrix
            • Example
        • Put metrics alongside the process
          • Example
        • Identify quick wins
          • Example
        • Sign off to be process
      • Summary
    • 3. Develop the process in JBoss jBPM
      • Introduction
        • The JBoss jBPM architecture
      • Installation
        • Install Java
        • Install the JBoss jBPM engine and the JBoss application server
        • Install the JBoss jBPM designer
        • Set up shortcuts
        • Touring the designer's user interface
          • Package explorer
          • Editor area
            • Diagram
            • Swimlanes
            • Deployment
            • Design
            • Source
          • Properties explorer
          • Outline view
      • JBoss jBPM concepts
        • jBPM process definition languagejPDL
          • Nodes
            • Tasks
            • State
            • Forks and joins
            • Decision
            • Node
          • Transitions
          • Actions
          • Swimlanes
          • Process variables
          • Process state
          • Super state
      • Building our example process
        • Add our swimlanes
        • Adding our nodes
        • Export for sign-off
      • Summary
    • 4. The Prototype user interface
      • Build the prototype
        • Develop the prototype user interface
        • Set up our users
        • Deploy the process and user interface
      • Investigating the web console interface
        • End users
        • Managers
      • Adapt the web console
        • Sign off for the proof of concept
      • Summary
    • 5. Iterate the prototype
      • Set up for the proof of concept
        • Set up the team
        • Set expectations
        • Plan the proof-of-concept program
        • Capture requirements
        • Make jBPM available on a server
        • Run the proof of concept
      • Iterate the system
        • Process changes
          • Task prioritization
          • Integration with other systems
      • Obtain sign-off
      • Summary
    • 6. Proof-of-concept to implementation
      • Preparation for implementation
        • Judging readiness
        • Implementation plan
        • Customizing the web console
        • Swapping the database back end
          • Install the database server
          • Install the database tables
          • Import the data
          • Set up a JNDI data source
          • Install the MySQL driver
          • Amend the JBoss configuration
          • Amend the hibernate configuration
      • Monitoring the process
        • Process management
        • Process metrics analysis
        • Process forecasting
        • Example process reporting suite
          • Integrating the SeeWhy business intelligence platform
            • Get SeeWhy
            • Install SeeWhy
            • Set up the BAM points on the graph
            • Make the action handler code available to jBPM
            • Configure the jBPM JBoss server
            • Telling SeeWhy about our process event
            • Configuring SeeWhy's incoming event interface
            • Tell SeeWhy how to interpret the data
            • Taking it further
            • Set up email notifications
              • Tell SeeWhy when to alert
              • Configure a notification
              • Setting up your email client
              • Testing the notifications
            • Using SeeWhy for BAM
      • Go-live
      • Summary
    • 7. Ongoing process improvement
      • Project assessment
        • Project post mortem
          • Evaluate project versus success criteria
          • Determine the real ROI of the system
          • Obtain project sign-off
      • Process analysis and improvement
        • Track process metrics
        • Change request processes
          • Business process changes
          • jBPM changes
      • Business process documentation
        • What kind of documentation?
          • Using a wiki
      • Ideas for further development
        • Breaking up the process into phases using superstates
        • Abstracting into a process hierarchy
        • Building a process-driven enterprise
        • Automate business rules processing
        • Replace the user information database
        • Document management
      • Summary
      • Epilogue
    • Index
  • Title: Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization
  • Author: Matt Cumberlidge, Tom Baeyens
  • Original title: Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization
  • ISBN: 9781847192370, 9781847192370
  • Date of issue: 2007-07-30
  • Format: Ebook
  • Item ID: e_3b6h
  • Publisher: Packt Publishing