Sometimes “BPM” is used to describe various process improvement initiatives that do not include actual implementation specification or the underlying IT infrastructure requirements. These types of initiatives often do not deal with SOA. But increasingly, BPM is being defined as a strategy that includes infrastructure requirements to support the complete business process lifecycle consisting of modeling, implementation, execution, and monitoring of business metrics (key performance indicators).

When deploying business processes as executable code that orchestrates interactions between people and systems, SOA becomes relevant in two different ways. First SOA can form the basic principle for how business processes access existing systems such as databases, ERP applications, and mainframes. A service-oriented architecture greatly simplifies this connectivity by enabling access through standardized service interfaces that shield the process implementation from the underlying heterogeneity and complexity. Second, an SOA can define how the business processes themselves are managed and accessed. A business process should ideally be considered a service that can be accessed by many clients and this can be achieved by using SOA infrastructure such as a service bus and a registry.

So, it is definitely important to ensure that a BPM product is compatible with SOA and consider the ease of integration between the specific BPM and SOA technologies that are being evaluated. However, BPM projects can certainly stand alone and be implemented and deployed without an SOA. In fact, we suggest that organizations deploy BPM projects in parallel with SOA initiatives for more rapid ROI. BPM projects will help drive demand for SOA and thus help define ROI for the SOA investment.

The modeling tools in BPM suites can cover a broad range of modeling requirements for business processes. Processes can be nested as sub-processes or defined as abstract processes. BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite also includes a process template repository that allows business analysts working on different BPM projects to capture, share, and leverage best practices in the form of process templates.

However, modeling requirements include more than just business processes. Many organizations use enterprise modeling tools such as ARIS and ProVision that support modeling of the entire enterprise architecture with elements such as application systems, data models, and IT system requirements. These models can be mapped to the organization’s business processes and then exported to BEA AquaLogic BPM Designer and Studio for full implementation and execution. A BPM suite can either stand alone for process-only modeling, implementation, and execution or it can be used with enterprise modeling tools to link models and implementation for business processes.

BPM is a strategy for improving business performance by optimizing the business process lifecycle and BPM suites include the necessary infrastructure for implementation of BPM. A BPM suite, such as BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite, provides a completely integrated experience for modeling, implementing, deploying, executing, and monitoring business processes. A BPM suite supports the complete implementation of a BPM solution without the need for SOA. This is important because it allows BPM and SOA projects to run in parallel without one being dependent on the other.

An ESB is one of the core components of the infrastructure that enables SOA. An ESB enables organizations to manage and access services of all kinds from one logical place. An organization registers existing services–such as Web Services and message queues—in the service bus and then defines a set of proxy services that consumers use to access the “real” services. This makes it easier for consumers to use the services, because it shields them from changes to the underlying services and helps bridge communication protocols, data formats, and security protocols.

There are obvious advantages to using BPM suites and ESBs together. A BPM implementation will almost always require access to systems of various kinds such as customer databases, inventory systems and billing systems, and an ESB can provide this access in a manageable and decoupled way. Organizations manage the access to these systems in the ESB and manage the business process in the BPM suite.

Technology and other industry standards play an important role in BPM. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a standard that specifies how process models should look graphically. It constrains how process activities are symbolized and the types of transitions between activities. As this standard becomes more broadly adopted business analysts will find it much easier to switch between modeling tools because they won't have to learn proprietary notations. eXtensible Process Definition Language (XPDL) is a format for storing business processes (the XML file structure). It supports complete human workflow and graph-based process models. Business Process Execution Language is also a standard for storing business processes. It provides a block diagram approach to process modeling with more limitations to state transitions and it doesn't support human workflow. Finally, Web Services standards such as SOAP, WSDL, and WS-Security underlie BPM, making it possible to communicate easily between processes and other systems.

Generally speaking, a business analyst is somebody who understands how business value is generated in a specific operational area and how the business operates while also having sufficient analytical skills to build models that capture the operational pattern at an abstract level.

Business analysts work in various parts of an organization. Some business units will have their own business analysts who can model processes and collaborate with a horizontal IT organization to achieve a complete solution. In other cases, IT is organized in groups that closely support each line of business. In this case, the members of the IT group are likely to be more business savvy and will probably include business analysts. These analysts will typically be able to provide more technical detail for the business process implementation as they have more technical skills and know more about the surrounding IT environment.

Enabling business analysts or even end users to create and change business processes without involving IT is an important goal because it promotes the organizational agility that is increasingly required to stay competitive. Today, this ability only exists for simple cases involving a few well-defined systems (such as workflow in document management, or e-mail filters). BPM as a discipline goes far beyond this and therefore must support a collaborative environment for business and IT in which business analysts define business processes that are then implemented by more IT-savvy people who can build out the detailed logic of a process and configure the necessary integration to external systems.