Business Process Management (BPM) tool, which will be used in the management, improvement and maintenance of business processes, continues to increase its importance in the enterprise software projects where business processes are involved. In enterprise software projects, many criteria are in the foreground in the selection of BPM tool. These criteria are shaped by the requirements and the technical architecture of the enterprise software project. In this study, BPM selection criteria were determined for the enterprise software project and a method was proposed considering these criteria. In order to make BPM selection correctly, the scoring method was used for criteria. Among the criteria, the criteria related to usability also played an important role. At the end of the study, the lessons learned while selecting the BPM tool were included.
Enterprise software projects often involve processes. One of the existing BPM tools can be selected and used to manage, develop and maintain these processes. Many BPM tools can be found in the market. Some criteria that should be considered for BPM tool selection to meet the needs of the institutions can be proposed as availability, features meeting the requirements of enterprises, performance, cost, etc. Moreover, usability is substantial criterion for the institutions. It is therefore often a challenging task to find the right business process tool that meets the specific needs of a company. 2 2.1
In this section, firstly, the "process" definition will be explained and then “business process management” (BPM) and BPM tool definitions will be stated.
“In the systems engineering arena, a process is a sequence of events that uses inputs
to produce outputs. From a business perspective, a process is a coordinated and
standardized flow of activities performed by people or machines, which can traverse
functional or departmental boundaries to achieve a business objective that creates a value
for internal or external customer” says Chang [
Aalst remarks that “Business Process Management (BPM) is the discipline that
combines knowledge from information technology and knowledge from management
sciences and applies this to operational business processes” [
Maria implies that: “BPM tool is a piece of software, which provides the user with a
possibility to create, store, share and analyses business process models” [
"Enterprise applications are about the display, manipulation, and storage of large
amounts of often complex data and the support or automation of business
processes with that data" explains Martin Fowler [
Wikipedia defines that: “Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application
software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of
an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations would include
businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, clubs, charities, or governments” [
Microsoft says that “An enterprise application is a business application, obviously.
As most people use the term, it is a big business application. In today’s corporate
environment, enterprise applications are complex, scalable, distributed, component-based,
and mission-critical” [
“Proof of Concept (PoC) is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to
demonstrate its feasibility” [
According to the ISO/IEC standard usability is: “The capability of the software product to be understood, learned, used and attractive to the user, when used under specified conditions.” (ISO/IEC 9126- 1, 2000).
The criteria related to usability are realized as important for selecting BPM tool. 3
The requirement is needing a BPM tool to manage processes in enterprise software project. And the problem is how to choose the appropriate BPM tool in the enterprise software project. Choosing the most suitable business process management tool is a challenging task.
Which ways can be followed to make a selection? Is there a method that is experienced in a real enterprise software project? Can some scenarios in the enterprise software project be implemented? What is the importance of usability for the criteria? The answers of these questions can help the solution of the problem. 4
First of all; Mandatory criteria should be decided for selecting a BPM tool. Mandatory criteria are your necessary criteria. For instance; “A BPM tool’s licence cost should be at most 20.000€.” Candidate BPM tools should meet these mandatory criteria. That’s why; if BPM tool does not meet the necessary criteria, it will be eliminated automatically.
Next, expected criteria about the BPM tool should be decided for selecting BPM tool Features that expected from a BPM tool, vendor maturity, community support etc. can be your expected criteria. These expected criteria will be used for evaluation of BPM tool. 5
Many methods can be found for selecting BPM tool. But following method is applied to real enterprise software project with successfully. The applied method is depicted at Fig. 1. And each step explained at the below. Considering time and cost, it is impossible to examine all BPM tools. Therefore, two BPM tools which are suitable for technical architecture of enterprise software project and your company’s experienced in BPM tool can be selected. Of course, it is better to select more than two tools for comparison. However, it depends on your time and cost. These two tools should be chosen to meet the mandatory criteria of the enterprise software project.
The negative aspect of selecting two BPM tools for comparing is the possibility of overlooking more appropriate one out of these tools. After selecting two BPM tools as a candidate; following steps should be applied for both BPM tools. 5.2
It can be started by setting up selected BPM tool, learning its architecture, and general capabilities it provides. The following methods can be applied for this: Quick overview on the official site of BPM tool can be made. Beginner level videos related to BPM tool can be watched. It might be a good idea to look if any review related to BPM tool is found on a search engine or not. It might be a good idea to read a review related to BPM tool found on a search engine. 5.3
To use the BPM tool more effectively, simple scenarios can be implemented. This simple scenario may be a process involving several roles, or it may be a simple scenario in the enterprise software project. 5.4
A complex process to takes place in the enterprise software project can be implemented. In this scenario, different features such as using different activities, user management, and notification settings can also be tested. 5.5
Works using the BPM tool should be documented after each work is done, without waiting for all works to be completed. This documentation will facilitate communication within the team. And it helps using the selected BPM tool at a certain level, while real scenarios is going to be made in the future. 5.6
In general, you can look at BPM tool documentation provided by the vendor. Moreover, it might be good idea to look at the extent to which the advanced topics supported by BPM are provided. 5.7
Various scenarios and problems encountered can be discussed with the pre-sales technical team of BPM tool. Furthermore, additional information about BPM tool can be taken from the pre-sales team. In this way, it is possible to get an idea of the support given by BPM tool team for both fast and after sale. 5.8
When working with the BPM tool, especially following emerging problems, solutions of a problem can be searched on the internet (forums, blogs etc.). In this way, community support on the internet is tested and controlled. 5.9
All of above items will help to score BPM Selection Criteria more efficiently. For example; if one of expected criterion of BPM is “Supporting various technologies (database, LDAP, Active Directory, RESTful Service, etc).”, it can be easy to give more accurate score after applied all of above items. 6
After the method is applied, the selection score of the two BPM tools are made by following formula.
= ∏ ∗ ∑( ∗ ) which uses selected BPM tool, is ongoing. Related to enterprise software project, both simple and complex scenarios were tested in BPM tool selection process.
4 mandatory and 10 expected criteria used in the selection of BPM tool. BPM Tool A and BPM Tool B, which fulfil mandatory criteria, were evaluated according to the method given. BPM Tool C and BPM Tool D, were eliminated initially because of not satisfying mandatory criteria.
Criteria in relation with usability were found important in this choice as well and explained with details at the next section.
The recommended method lasted approximately 3 months. 8
The following criteria can be viewed as criteria for usability among ten criteria which are selected as BPM tool selection criteria for the enterprise software project.
Supporting various technologies. (database, LDAP, Active Directory, RESTful Service, etc.) o Compatibility with database to be used in enterprise software project o Support systems for user management.
o SOAP and RESTful service support by BPM tool Obtaining support from the vendor (before and after sale) Solution and support for problems from community support on the internet Usage of the business rule engine.
Ease of application development in BPM tool.
Having enough documentation about the BPM tool.
The comparison of BPM tool usability studies in the literature and usability in this study is given in the following table.
“The technical support of the process of process Technical support was found to be
modelling is important for the quality and the ap- important as vendor support,
supplicability of the resulting models. The quality of port for many technologies, and
that technical support plays an important role in ease of use of software are taken
the selection of corresponding software products into consideration.
and is a crucial characteristic of differentiation.”
[
takes into account the ease of use of business users with the availability of the BPM tool without the need for an IDE installation.
9
Finding the BPM solution that fits your needs best in the enterprise software project is a challenging task. In this study, you can see an applied and proven method for selecting BPM tool in the enterprise software project.
Since it is impossible to investigate all the BPM tools in terms of time and cost, several tools can be selected bearing in mind which tool is the most appropriate for the technical architecture of the enterprise software project and company’s experiences. In this study two BPM tools are investigated at final. In addition, two BPM tools were initially eliminated they did not meet the required criteria.
When making the selection of BPM tool, the POC (proof of concept) work is very useful. In this POC, firstly implementing simple scenarios and then selecting a scenario similar to the actual scenario can be applied.
Finally; it is very useful to communicate with the technical pre-sales team of BPM tool vendor to discuss the POC works and some problems and solutions.
Concept, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_concept, last