Top 10 wish list for BOP4 fix pack 1.

2011 will be an exciting year!

One of the reasons is the expected major release for Cordys BOP4: Fix Pack 1! (Maybe already in Q1?)

Though already am a “fan” of the current product (See my blog: Why Cordys BOP4) I have my top 10 wish list ready:


1. BPMN 2.0
As the formal release of BPMN 2.0 is due soon, and 99 percent of the standard is stable I hope for a solid support of this standard in FP1.

Especially extension of the event- and signaling mechanisms, and the addition of compensation constructs would be valuable features!

2. Data modeling
Currently it is possible to define data structures in BOP4. Additional UML class diagram-like modeling would greatly support the process of defining and communicating the business object model in a graphical way. Obviously MDM would profit too.

3. BAM Usability
As I already wrote in an earlier BLOG BAM Imperfections there are several possibilities to improve usability and flexibility of BAM. The good news is that Cordys already committed to these improvements, so expectations are high!

4. Document support BPM
Case Management already supports a kind of out-of-the-box document management. It seems little investment to allow documents to be attached to BPM Instances as well. This would prevent the need for a custom solution based on an external DMS or database solution.

5. Simulation
A fair simulation environment would be a welcome extension to the BOP4 stack. It should allow for defining the expected loads and spread, and the characteristics of the resource capacity. Reports over the simulation runs should allow for proper analysis and process optimization.

6. Complex Event Processing (CEP)
In automated environments where decision making is depending on the combination of several (types of) events Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a must-have. Addition of a CEP module would greatly increase the applicability of BOP4.

7. “Hot” business rules
BOP4 offers great facilities of defining business rules and decision tables. The feature of allowing business to “hot modify” the (values/business parameters of) rules without having to republish or redeploy them would increase the flexibility of the concerned business processes.

8. User interface: modeling versus scripting
For some fairly basic UI functions it takes java scripting in BOP4 (Example: the invocation of a business process). It would improve development efficiency to allow developers to model such behavior instead of scripting it.

9. BPM Complex Mapping
The BPM data mapping possibilities in BOP4 are quiet sophisticated. However certain types of mappings are not yet supported in the BPM mapping tool, where the underlying technology XSLT would allow so. Example: the mapping of two lists onto each other. One of the work arounds is to model these mappings in the BPM itself, obscuring the intended business functionality. Extension of the mapping functionality would prevent this necessity.

10. Reporting
Where BOP4 offers fairly advanced BAM functionality, plain reporting functionality is missing.
As the Cordys Process Factory (CPF) offers reporting functionality it should also not be rocket science to get it available for BOP4 too.

As Cordys claims the BOP4 product itself is the most valuable marketing instrument I have great expectations and I hope that (a late Santa) will generously fill my sock!


Harald van der Weel

Getting started with BOP4: Cordys Academy self study Training

 
I have received several requests to inform people on “how to start off with BOP4”:
Where to begin, how to learn about the features and how to get hands-on experience?

The good news: Cordys has recognized this need!
One of the reasons I have become eager to adopt Cordys BOP4 is the simple fact that Cordys Academy offers high quality training facilities.

Not just the conventional classroom courses: Also a great computer based BOP4 fundamentals! For free, and it can be taken anytime, anywhere!

The Cordys Academy is offering basically a complete package, consisting of the following:

-          Self study environment

Link: https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Cordys+BOP-4+Self+Study+Training+Environment

-          Fundamentals Tutorial

Link: https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Cordys+Fundamentals+BOP-4

-          Several advanced topics (“Training extensions”)

Link: https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Training%20extensions

Access to these sites only requires registration.
This can be arranged instantly through any of the links above. Each will result in the login screen below:



Selecting “New User? Register here” will show the form below.

 
Complete the form and follow further instructions to register.

Once done… you are ready to “play”!
 
Self study environment

The self study environment (I’ll call it “sandbox”) is nothing but a single downloadable VM-ware image!
It is configured as a complete Cordys server the provides all main functionality.
Apart from allowing “students” to do all practical exercises in the tutorials, it even would allow you to do a complete project (for the 3 months license period at least)

Provided you have a VM Ware player (free downloadable at http://www.vmware.com/ ), setting it up simply requires the following steps:

1.       Download the zipped VM Ware environment (It is rather big: Zipped about 2Gb, unzipped about 6Gb)

2.       Unzip the VM environment

3.       Run the VM image

4.       Start a browser session (for the moment IE7 or IE8)

5.       Go to the startup URL (Specified in the Setup and User guide)

6.       Start using Cordys BOP4, provided a default Student1

(If still more info is required: The steps above are well explained in a “Setup and User guide”, that can be downloaded from the “self study environment” page)

This sandbox allows to manage users and provide them with the necessary roles to develop, test, deploy, execute and monitor almost any Cordys work product. The sandbox even allows to use an external SVN version control system to store and version all work products externally from the VM Environment.
The sandbox even provides an example MySQL database with content and web services.

The link to the Self Study Environment is: https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Cordys+BOP-4+Self+Study+Training+Environment, which invokes the page below.


Fundamentals tutorial

The fundaments tutorial teaches novice Cordys BOP4 users everything to know about the BOP4 environment.

Multiple tutorial “chapters” take the user sequentially through all necessary subjects, in order to make a start with Cordys BOP4.
Each chapter contains theoretical information (documents and presentations) and hands-on exercises to practice the learned skills. The exercises are very concise and even suitable for people with very limited technical skills.

Subjects that are covered are:

-          Overview and introduction to the Cordys environment

-          Managing users and setting up a new project

-          Developing business processes (BPMN models)

-          Developing and using services

-          Developing user interfaces

-          Developing workflows

The exercises of each module should be executed sequentially, because there are certain dependencies between them.
They will provide a starting developer with the basic skills to build and run simple BPM solutions.

Note that doing all tutorials will take between about 3 and 5 days to finish, depending on your experience in similar environments.

The link https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Cordys+Fundamentals+BOP-4 takes you to the page below. The order of the modules is Top-Down


Training extensions

A number of advanced BOP4 topics are offered in “Training Extensions”.

This concerns topics that elaborate certain topics in the fundamentals, but also subjects that have not been covered yet before (like Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) or Case Management).

In case of requiring more in-depth knowledge or considering certification these training extensions are a valuable source of information.

The link https://wiki.cordys.com/display/acorg/Training%20extensions will take you to the following page:


Conclusion

Cordys provides great means for organizations and users to gain knowledge about the BOP4 product from scratch at no (direct) cost.

Please bear in mind:
A computer based training may provide you a good starting point. Effective skills are mostly built up by actually applying them in a practical situation.
I would advise starting teams to involve an experienced developer/solution architect, for a number of reasons, like:

-          It provides a direct productivity gain

-          It helps to properly setting up the project and guidelines

-          It will (cross)-train your inexperienced team

-          It will solve “blocking issues” faster

-          You may profit of the network of the experienced developer

Good luck to all new Cordys BOP4 adopters.

Hope to meet you in a future project!

My road to BOP4 certification

I have been a satisfied Cordys consultant for some time. This may be no surprise for the ones having read my BLOGs the past few months. Though I am still looking at “other fish in the sea” I felt I was ready for a new step in my relationship with Cordys BOP4 and I wanted to take things to the next level: Certification!

As I was confident about my knowledge and experience I decided to subscribe for certification, even before knowing the exact procedure. Remembering earlier certifications like RUP, PMBok, Prince2, ITIL and Java, I was expecting an on-site computer based theory exam. So I blocked a day to travel to Cordys in the beautiful surroundings of Putten. At the meantime I chose a nice piece of wall in my office to proudly present my future Cordys certificate!

I read the Cordys certification site and spoke to two primer Cordys employees who had taken the exam as well. How (happily) surprised I was to found out the complete exam could be taken from my own office! (Good news in an overcrowded country like the Netherlands, where distances are short, but travel times sometimes long!).

I was less thrilled to find out it wasn’t just a theoretical exam I had to take, like the ones of several other BPM vendors. It would not as simple as that! Apart from an 80 question theory exam, I would be exposed to a practical exam and an web cam interview before a commission!

It was getting clear to me that Cordys does not hand out a certification to just anyone who is able to spell out “BOP4”.

I felt obliged to do a little more of preparation than initially planned, which was a bit of a pain in these busy times. On the other hand: The value of the future certificate would be a lot higher because this higher threshold!

I ordered the certification exam via https://certification.cordys.com, and selected the date I already blocked.

The learning path for the theory requirements showed – though I already had considerable hands on experience with BOP4 - there were still a lot of details to know, as I (appearently) hadn’t touched every dark corner of BOP4 during the projects.

The good thing was that the windy road through the BOP4 documentation provided me with a number new insights. Cool! I was even increasing my knowledge, instead of just proofing it.

Then the moment was there!

On the date the exam was scheduled I could pick my own time to take the theory exam, within the timeframe of 24 hours. I just needed to visit the certification dashboard and press the “take exam” button.

The game was on!

In 60 minutes 80 various multiple-choice questions were fired at me, of which at least 75 percent had to be answered correctly. The exam tool allowed to mark questions to review them later (provided there is still time left!). 80 questions in an hour is a fair amount, but it is easy to spend too much time in rethinking the alternatives. I needed my time so I just had about 10 minutes left to reconsider the questions I was not sure about. I did not have to use the “end exam” button: After 60 minutes the exam ended automatically.

The certification site then asked me politely for some patience to determine the outcome… And… after a short while I was congratulated! I had passed the theoretical part of the exam! And – more important - the prerequisite to take the second, practical part.

The certification site presented me with 6 practical exercises to solve. All should be finished within a week.

I have the disposition of a local BOP4 environment, however I decided to use the VM-ware environment provided by Cordys: It provides the North-Wind demo, and likely some of the artifacts or database tables could be reused in the exam exercises.

The exercises concerned mainly (combined) UI, BPM and business rules tasks. Of some it took some time to interpret the exact purpose of each assignment, but in the end it was rather obvious what was expected. I decided to start right away, and managed to fulfill the questions in roughly an hour each, including interpretation and testing. Indeed I was able to reuse some NorthWind database tables and webservices, so that was a little advantage.

After reviewing the solutions again the next day I was sure enough to submit the results. This was just a matter of synchronizing the workspace and zipping and sending the synchronized folder to the certification commission.

After submitting the certification site stated that it would maximally take 3 weeks before I would hear whether I would be conducted to an interview.

It appeared to take only a couple of days before I received (and confirmed) an invitation. As required I purchased a webcam and prepared my google environment for the video conference.

The interview was conducted by the certification program manager and the product manager. Basically I had to explain each solution, and answer additional questions about them. My experience and knowledge proved to be sound: as I was capable of coming up with all the answers.

After more than an hour we finished discussing all exercises and the interview was over.

For a third time I was kindly requested to wait for a verdict.

Confident I waited the result. Only after a quarter of an hour I was informed by a colleague who learned via Cordys Twitter that I was certified! Not long after that I received a formal confirmation mail as well. It was official: I had entered the world of Certified Cordys consultants!

Though I had some expectations I felt pretty relieved after the three-stage-procedure that lasted over a week! What made me especially proud was the score of 98% in the practical part.

And now?

Now we’re even more ready for all those fine BPM projects that will use BOP4!

Best Regards and a fruitful 2011,

Harald van der Weel