BPM in a governed SOA environment

Transcription

1 IBM Software Thought Leadership White Paper October 2011 BPM in a governed SOA environment Smart work in the smart enterprise

2 2 BPM in a governed SOA environment Contents 2 The role and value of SOA in BPM 3 Common stumbling blocks in BPM based on SOA 4 Value of SOA governance in successful BPM programs 7 Creating synergy between the BPM and SOA life cycles 8 The IBM BPM/SOA platform 10 Conclusion Management summary In an age of agile change, IT boundaries are becoming obstacles to business success. There was a time when isolation and encapsulation of functionality was required to manage IT complexity. In today s world it is rather the complexity of business change and the need for business agility that require IT focus. Interestingly, cloud computing will drive this transformation at a fast pace, because of its ability to rapidly source business and IT resources, thereby eliminating a significant part of the advantage of having a large legacy portfolio. Consequently IT must evolve. Boundaries must be dulled. process management (BPM) capabilities (process design, execution and more) must align with service-oriented architecture (SOA), and the life cycles of processes and services must be effectively coordinated. The alignment of BPM and SOA governance processes provides enterprises with a more streamlined ability to identify and support opportunities for change, to redesign business processes and to compose those processes based on well-defined enterprise services. All of which results in faster time to market, reduced time to value and improved return on investment. This white paper describes the principles for building BPM solutions that use governed services. The primary audiences are architects and governance leaders that work in an environment in which BPM and SOA are both present and used. The role and value of SOA in business process management The modern enterprise is a network of complex interactions. It rests on a growing set of relationships between employees, customers, suppliers and partners. It encompasses the people, the processes and the systems inside and outside the organization. It continues to get broader and more complex in our modern globalized business environment. And above all, it is always changing. Suppliers come and go. Regulations change. New relationships emerge. Beyond the complexity, it is indeed a dynamic business network. At the heart of this dynamic network is a set of business processes that have participants who span organizational boundaries.

3 IBM Software 3 Customers Partners Service providers Investors Others... BPM engages the business in continuous process improvement to flexibly automate a wide range of business processes, from the human-centric and ad hoc to the more documented and structured. SOA helps make the underlying technology that supports the business less rigid and more agile by integrating the business through linked, repeatable business tasks and services. Insurance Finance Healthcare Transportation To those with an SOA background, the preceding graphic looks like an enterprise service bus, a similarity that is not coincidental. Specifically, in this case it is the business service bus, connecting the consumers and providers of business functions throughout the enterprise landscape a set of connections that it is very beneficial to explicitly define, govern and manage. The IBM whitepaper, Achieving business agility with BPM and SOA together, demonstrates the natural synergy between BPM and SOA 1 and illustrates the relationship between the two as shown in the following graphic. Process analysis and operational excellence It is SOA that transforms the enterprise network from a set of point-to-point connections to a well-orchestrated set of services supporting mission critical end-to-end business processes. In fact, as processes evolve through continuous process improvement and as the handling of exceptions becomes more structured, the number of process instances that execute in an IT enabled, orchestrated fashion can and should increase. Common stumbling blocks in BPM based on SOA While BPM and SOA are inevitably linked through the notion of processes orchestrating and executing services, there are some common stumbling blocks of which any enterprise should be aware. In an immature BPM and SOA environment, one or more of the symptoms in the following list are commonly seen. Processes drive creation of services but now we have 10 different services doing roughly the same thing. I want to see if there is an existing service that I can reuse but I don t know where to look. We have created a new version of the process but we are not quite sure which version of a key service to use. Architectural discipline and explicit governance process management Service-oriented architecture

4 4 BPM in a governed SOA environment We need a new service (to be used by three different processes) but we can t figure out who should pay for it, so it is not being built. We want to invest in a good catalog of reusable services but we don t know where to begin. We don t want to build software services until we need them but we can t wait for services to be negotiated once we have a process that needs them. I keep getting change requests to my reusable service so I don t want anyone else to use it anymore. Some of these symptoms occur because of a lack of asset management, others because of a lack of ownership and yet others because of a lack of an appropriate funding model. Yet among all, a common root cause is a lack of up-front architectural consideration. It is no coincidence that the A in SOA stands for architecture. SOA is an architectural style and when leveraged in a mature fashion begs questions such as those shown in the following graphic. What do I need to think about? What decisions do I need to make? What principles and patterns should I understand? All of these questions lead to the need for also considering culture and role changes as part of a long-term BPM and SOA program. In particular, it is important to crystallize the architectural role that mediates the individual business process need for function and the enterprise need for a robust portfolio of reusable and scalable services. Value of SOA governance in successful BPM programs In the industry there is a lot of talk about SOA governance, but little on how SOA governance matters to BPM. To set the context, first the definition of SOA governance that follows. Governance: Establishing chains of responsibility, authority and communication to empower people (decision rights) Establishing measurement, policy and control mechanisms to enable people to carry out their roles and responsibilities What is a good service, to the business and IT? Should I... reuse? adapt? create? Who is the service meant for and accessible to? How do I compose? How do I implement? What interdependencies exist between services? AccountAccess J Chequing J LineOfCredit J CreditCheck J What qualities of service are required, and where? How coarse or fine grained is the service? What is the syntax and semantics of a service? Does a service need to be stateless or stateful? How will services locate and speak to each other? IT governance: Establishing decision making rights associated with IT Establishing mechanisms and policies used to measure and control the way IT decisions are made and carried out SOA governance: is the intersection of and IT governance focused on the life cycle of services to ensure the business value of SOA? It is the effective management of this lifecycle that is the key goal to SOA governance SOA governance is a catalyst for improving overall IT governance governance SOA governance IT governance

5 IBM Software 5 SOA governance addresses exactly the types of issues that are common stumbling blocks for BPM, based on SOA. And as we see in the list shown in the preceding graphic, SOA governance is just as much, if not more, an organizational issue (funding model, ownership, incentives to do the right thing and more) as it is a technical one. However, technical issues like enterprisewide design, proactive monitoring to understand scaling and timing still need to be addressed. Imagine the following scenario for how an originally well-conceived service fails in the end. Sales Accounting department Legal App. 1 App. 2 Order fulfillment Purchasing Currency conversion service 1. Provide a currency service that fills a specific line of business (LOB) 2. Other LOBs start using the service 3. LOBs increase use of services / quality suffers 4. Service is fixed at provider s expense 5. Fix works temporarily but problem reappears 6. Maintenance costs soar / so provider ends service

6 6 BPM in a governed SOA environment This scenario was a result of a lack of: An ownership model that discusses who owns and is responsible for funding throughout the life cycle of a service. Ideally the funding model will incent providers to produce high-quality services and allow them to recover their costs for developing and maintaining services or even generate additional revenue for taking on these challenges. Guarantees (could be contractual) for the consumers that a service would operate as planned with consistent quality to incent them to accept the provider as a formidable dependency. Without such guarantees, consumers are potentially put in harm s way by depending on distributed functionality that they have no control over. It also shows what happens when you do not take a holistic approach to designing services. You need to have an idea of the amount of load placed on a service and design to that load. Since the accounting department in the scenario shown in the preceding figure assumed that they were the only ones to use it, their initial design was probably good enough. However, as soon as other consumers started to use it, it became apparent that this additional load should have been a key consideration. Communication, communication, communication: Successful organizations use multiple internal channels to iteratively communicate and secure buy-in. Have the ability to execute: Ensure that project teams are empowered to execute. All of which in turn support the collaborative life cycle for building and managing good BPM solutions. leader Process owner How can I work smarter supported by flexible and dynamic processes modeled for the new way people buy, live & work? users analyst The keys to effective SOA governance are as follows: Plan for evolving governance from the beginning: Avoid implementing governance after the fact. Grow governance as the project grows. Define scope, objectives, roles, responsibilities, decision rights, metrics, policies and more: Ensure adequate buy-in from all stakeholders. Build collaborative trust. IT architect IT developer IT leader

7 IBM Software 7 Creating synergy between the BPM and SOA lifecycles At first glance the collaborative lifecycle for BPM in the preceding illustration may seem at odds with IBM s SOA life-cycle model. Indeed, some might say that a choice between a servicecentric viewpoint or a process-centric viewpoint must be made. While the BPM and SOA viewpoints are different, they are not really in conflict. On the contrary, processes and services are both key elements of a combined BPM and SOA environment, each having an independently managed lifecycle in its own right. Yet while independent, these two lifecycles also have important coordination points after all, it will not do to have a process deployed to production if the services upon which it depends are not also production ready. SOA service-centric viewpoint: - Everything is a service, including processes, people and information - New requirements for services come from SOA life cycle, including the need for process services Assemble Model Deploy Manage Governance & Processes BPM business process-centric viewpoint: - Everything is driven by a business process - processes follow own life cycle (independent of the SOA life cycle) - Services are consumed by business processes - Services may be embedded in the BPM life cycle or can be external to it - New requirements for services can be driven out of business process design leader IT architect Process owner IT developer users analyst IT leader

8 8 BPM in a governed SOA environment Discover Storyboard phase of their lifecycle. Especially important is that as processes mature, the requirements on scalability and flexibility of the underlying services will increase. Deploy BPM life cycle Experience At the integrate stage of a process, integration will involve testing and certification against functional and nonfunctional requirements that are captured in the service SLAs. Integrate Manage Operational Identified Finally, at the deploy stage of a process, a snapshot or version of the process application is deployed into production; at the same time, the services consumed by that snapshot must become operational in the deployment environment. Certified SOA life cycle Staged Realized Specified Obviously, without predefined governance processes to coordinate the lifecycle touch points, the sync points mentioned earlier will not be managed, nor will there be any guarantee that the resulting process performs as expected in the operational environment. At the storyboard stage of a process, focus is on identifying new services or finding existing ones that map to business activities. Even at this early stage, expectations must be managed in terms of service capabilities that can be brought to bear. At the experience stage of a process, stakeholder playbacks of the process will seed the service specification lifecycle phase with business requirements. At the manage stage of a process, as business processes are tailored to the desired end-user experience and process performance is optimized, supporting services will begin the realization The IBM BPM/SOA platform The first premise for collaboration lifecycle coordination is mutual visibility. Typically, an enterprise will have different roles performing process engineering and service engineering. Certainly, the tools applied are different in cases where services are also used outside the context of a BPM platform. The integration between the IBM Process Manager platform and IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) delivers such visibility without detracting from the value of WSRR as the overall service registry and repository of the enterprise.

9 IBM Software 9 IBM Process Designer Process Center Console Performance Admin Console Process Portal and Space IBM Integration Designer Process Admin Console Discover services Configure runtime governance Process Center Run rogue services reports* WSRR Process Center Server Repository Perf Data Warehouse Enforce SOA runtime governance Process Server Porf Data Warehouse Process Server Porf Data Warehouse Process Server Porf Data Warehouse Staging Test Production WSRR WSRR WSRR

10 10 BPM in a governed SOA environment The basic visibility is provided by making services in WSRR visible to, and available for use in, the IBM Process Designer and IBM Integration Designer components of the IBM Process Manager platform. On top of this basic visibility an enterprise can build more elaborate governance procedures, such as registering IBM Process Manager process applications or toolkits as service consumers in WSRR. Conclusion While much focus in the industry has been on SOA governance, less has been said on the interaction between BPM and governed services. Nevertheless, at the heart of continuous business optimization is the proper orchestration of well-defined enterprise services. In particular, ungoverned change cannot be allowed to deteriorate process effectiveness or even break process execution. For many enterprises the typical approach to process and service coordination is to drive service identification and delivery based on the particular BPM solution currently in scope. While certainly viable for short term value and success, such an approach does not scale over time. A more flexible and scalable approach is to leverage the power of BPM and SOA governance together. By coordinating process and services lifecycles, without letting one take control of the other, enterprises can take control of their processes yet, at the same time, base those processes on a scalable and governed portfolio of enterprise services. For more information To learn more about BPM in a governed SOA environment, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Partner, or visit the following website(s): ibm.com/bpm About the authors Claus Torp Jensen, Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Architect for SOA-BPM-EA Technical Strategy Matt Sanchez, STSM and Lead Architect for BPM Repository and Governance John Falkl, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for SOA Governance John Colgrave, STSM and Chief Architect for WSRR References IBM white paper, Change Governance in a SOA and BPM Environment, Claus T Jensen, IBM white paper, BPM and SOA require robust and scalable information systems, Claus T Jensen, Rob High, Jr., Steve Mills, IBM Redbooks. Service Lifecycle Governance with IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, Nicole Hargrove, Ian Heritage, Prasad Imandi, Martin Keen, Wendy Neave, Laura Olson, Bhargav Perepa, Andrew White, 2009.

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12 Copyright IBM Corporation 2011 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America November 2011 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and WebSphere are trademarks of International Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol ( or ), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. 1 IBM white paper, Achieving business agility with BPM and SOA together, Claus T Jensen, Rob High, Jr., Steve Mills, Please Recycle WSW14172-USEN-00