Much has been written about the importance of having a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to support both the development of BPM applications as well as to promote enterprise deployment of BPM. But one of the early steps in a BPM application strategy is to develop a specific BPM reference architecture that supports SOA principles and leverages your existing investment in technology and systems.
An enterprise reference architecture (ERA) is a comprehensive framework used to manage and align an organization’s information technology (IT) software and hardware, local and wide area networks, people, operations, and projects with the organization’s overall strategy. Reference architectures were created initially as a means to inventory technology components and their relationships using a stacking model with layers such as presentation, process and collaboration, application services, data services, and event management. These are all common categories used by vendors, analysts, and leading enterprise IT organizations.
Once in place, a reference architecture provides a valuable tool for a number of purposes:
Well-designed reference architectures help everyone:
In addition, a reference architecture can prioritize areas for innovation. Gaps identified in the stack, such as in portals, collaboration, or rules management, can be prioritized based on the degree of non-compliance or operational pain. An ERA can also assist in evaluating new technologies so that once standards are set, new additions to the enterprise stack can be matched against existing or candidate standards. Consolidation and retirement opportunities can be highlighted where there are duplicate or competing standards in areas such as manual workflow or integration services. Finally, and most important for our purposes, it can aid in the BPM application design process.
The most important elements in any BPM application strategy are to develop:
Such an approach not only helps identify the gaps within the existing infrastructure, but also can be used to evaluate solution providers which can potentially provide BPM components to fill those gaps. Developing this BPM reference architecture for this initial application can serve as a model for future deployment of BPM across the enterprise. Thus, just as it makes sense to follow an ERA model for general architecture, an organization can benefit from a standardized conceptual framework for its BPM architecture that can provide a consistent and standardized approach for managing and automating processes across the whole organization.
Bill Chambers is a Principal Consultant with Doculabs, a consulting firm that helps organizations develop sound technology strategies for document and content applications & processes. Contact Doculabs at 312-433-7793, info@Doculabs.com, www.doculabs.com.
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