bpmNEXT 2017 (part 1)

Back at Santa Barbara this year to attend the bpmNEXT conference, where I will be speaking on Thursday.  But before that will happen, we have a full 3 days of presentations and (even more important) demos from a lot of different vendors and experts.

BPM 2017-2021: Outlook for the Next Five Years

Nathaniel Palmer

Nathaniel is starting with a view of the BPM market from his point of view. In 2016, he predicted that the 3 R's (Robots, Rules and Relationships) will be defining the BPM market.  It's clear that rules have a significant impact on BPM nowadays as a way to drive decisions (for example with DMN). According to Google Trends, Robot Process Automation (RPA) is gaining more attention as well.  The interest in business processes is pretty stable (where BPMN is kinda following the same trend but just at a smaller scale). Digital Transformation is a term that has grown and is similar although BPM is still the overarching term that combines all of this.

Automation is forcing us to step away from the traditional architecture associated with BPM.  The future of BPMS vendors isn't just about process management but also includes automation, machine learning and decision management, all driven by an event-driven foundation.

Rather than predicting where BPM is going, he suggested we would all work towards defining it ourselves.  Or as he said, let's all "make automation great again"!

The Top 10 Technologies that will impact BPM in the next 5 years

Jim Sinur - Aragon Research

Jim, with his 50 (!) years of experience in IT, and many years of experience as analyst for BPM (for Gartner and Aragon Research nowadays), highlighted a few technologies he believes are going to be more and more important, including for example:

• Predictive apps get smarter (decision management is key)
• Big data and learning (using machine learning, deep learning and cognitive computing)
• Internet of things (standardization kicking off there now - resulting in a lot of smart devices at the edges and more goal-driven decentralized management)
• Rise of chatbots (moving to full language and action)
• Virtual Reality
• Work hubs (workbenches focused on specific roles)
• Drones
• Blockchain

Jim believes the Digital Business Platform (DBP) is what is / will be combining all these technologies (kinda disagreeing with Nathaniel there) as a place where business and IT collaborate.  Things like digital identity (including your preferences) and change management (across technologies) will be key.

The New Wave of Automation

Neil Ward-Dutton - MWD Advisors

Neil explained how a major shift in our experience of automation is underway.  Traditionally, we have been trained to work around limitations of automation (we are for example all used to pushing keys on computers the entire day), however that is changing, where automation is now changing for us.  Neil introduced 3 layers of change, called the 3 I's: Interaction (sending and responding more like humans - like chatbots), Insight (interactive analytics - like recommendation engines) and Integration (resources being exposed with open interfaces - like smark infrastructure).  Main drivers from his point of view are the rapidly changing technology, business pressures and familiarity of automation.  Use cases range from automating high-volume routine tasks to low-volume expert assistance and in between (make everyone as good as the best).

He concluded with some guidance for the audience (if we want to help define the future): embrace the shift to self-service, the shift to networked (cloud-based) platforms and the shift to learning systems.

The Great Migration: How to survive the leap from BPM as we knew it to the era of the digital workforce

Clay Richardson - Digital FastForward

Clay believes 75% of the current BPM programs nowadays won't survive the shift to digital.  He is no longer a BPM analyst at Forrester as he wanted to focus more on actually helping customers make the digital step (not just making them excited only). The challenge is not necessarily the technology but how to get (and keep) the right skills and mindset for digital transformation.  You will have to use approaches like hiring new talent, reinventing the workforce or outsourcing innovation (or all of the above). And help teams to design, validate and learn (using new methodologies and tools).  And it's not just about what you learn but how you learn: it needs to be interactive and immersive (learning gamification).  And put these people in front of the customer (even if it means leaving their comfort zone) so they learn about what it is they need.

Want to take this gamification to the extreme? Apparently you learn better when combining learning with escape rooms - even including the zombies - looking forward to that experience ! :)

bpmNEXT and Red Hat Summit

We have a lot of interesting things in the works with Drools, jBPM and Optaplanner and we are going to show you! And what better opportunity to take a look under the hood at what is coming than joining us on a session, side talk or over a happy hour in the upcoming conferences?

Here is a short list of the sessions we have on two great conferences this month.  First of all, on bpmNEXT Edson will talk about DMN support and I will give a talk on unstructured cases.  

Red Hat Summit is 2 weeks later and there will be a larger number of presentations around BPM (and a lot more of course)! We hope to meet you there!

Oh, and check the bottom of this post for a discount code for the Red Hat Summit registration!

Santa Barbara, California April 18-20, 2017

• April 19th, 09:00: An Executable DMN Solution for Business Users - Bruce Silver and Edson Tirelli

• April 20th, 09:30: Supporting Unstructured Work - Kris Verlaenen

• May 2nd, 10:15: Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite Primer: Capabilities, Vision and Roadmap - Mark Proctor, Phil Simpson, Prakash Aradhya

• May 2nd, 11:30: It’s all about the process: How Red Hat IT is using JBoss BPM Suite - Kris Verlaenen, Michael Cirioli and Maciej Swiderski

• May 2nd, 15:30: Decision Model and Notation (DMN) 101 - Edson Tirelli and Denis Gagné

• May 2nd, 15:30: Show me the money! Optimize your business with JBoss BRMS Business Resource Planner - Geoffrey De Smet and Duncan Doyle

• May 3rd, 10:15: Preview BPM Suite 7 And meet the brains behind it - Roger Palleja and Mark Proctor

• May 3rd, 15:30: Advanced Drools - Mark Proctor and Mario Fusco

• May 3rd, 15:30: End to End BPM: From process modeling to execution with Signavio and Red Hat - Duncan Doyle and Tom Debevoise

• May 3rd, 16:30: Deep dive on case management - Kris Verlaenen and Maciej Swiderski

• May 4th, 10:15: Case management applications with BPM - Kris Verlaenen, Andrew Bonham and Michelle Kelo

• May 4th, 15:30: Decisions at a fast pace: scaling to multi-million transactions/second at Amadeus - Tarek Zaigouche, Edson Tirelli, Gabriel Bechara and Matteo Casalino

• May 4th, 15:30: Dawn of the Citizen Developer: Low Code Application Development Made Easy in BPMS/BRMS 7 - Alexandre Porcelli and Mark Proctor

bpmNEXT recording on case management

The recordings from the bpmNEXT 2016 conference (which I blogged about here) are available (for quite some time already it seems, I must have missed it somehow), but wanted to share the video of the presentation I did related to case management. 

It's a topic we are asked about regularly, and this presentation + demo might give you a good idea of where we are going:

Since then, we've made good progress, if you want to know more, take for example a look at the blog series by Maciej about case management as well.

jBPM 6.5.0.Final available

While we have been working on jBPM v7 for quite a while now, we still wanted to deliver a few more features that were requested by users.

You can find all information here:

Downloads

Documentation

Release notes

Ready to give it a try but not sure how to start?  Take a look at the jbpm-installer chapter.

So on top of a bunch of bug fixes, you can expect the following new features:

Core Engine

Process instance migration

Process instance migration allows you to upgrade an already active process instance to a newer version of the process definition (than the one it was started with). Optionally it allows to perform node mapping of active node instances within process instance (to accommodate for use cases where currently active nodes might have changed).  The jBPM services have been extended with a new more powerful API and the same functionality is available remotely through the kie-server API.

JMS interaction patterns

When using the remote API of our kie-server, the JMS version now also supports different interaction patterns (on top of the request-response already supported):

• fire and forget
• asynchronous with callback

Task variables support in listeners

Added operations to easily get access to task variables from within task listeners.

Remote API improvements for deployments

Additional operations have been added to the remote API to simplify integration: operations to get deployment information of your projects based on their group, id and/or version (GAV).


Process Designer

Improved automation importing service tasks in Designer

You can import custom service tasks from a service repository into Designer so they can be used in your process, like for example Twitter, FTP, etc. The workbench now automates a lot of the additional configuration as well:

•     Installs the service configuration (wid) into the users Workbench project
•     Installs the service icon (defined in the service configuration)
•     Installs the service maven dependencies into the project POM
•     Installs the service default handler into the project Deployment Descriptor

Using start up parameters, you can also register a default service repositories and even install service tasks by default for new projects. More details are available in the documentation.

Copy/Paste

You can now also perform copy/paste operations across different processes.


Workbench

Using workbench and kie-server together

Various small improvements allow you to use the workbench together with (one or more) kie-server execution servers to manage your process instances and tasks (sharing the same underlying datasource). As a result, processes and task created on one of the execution servers can now be managed in the workbench UI as well.

The jbpm-installer is now configured out-of-the-box to have a managed kie-server deployed next to it where you can deploy your processes to as well.

Support for enums in data modeler
The data modeler now supports selecting enums as the type when defining the parameters of a data object.

Upgrades

Various components have been added / upgraded:

• Upgraded to WildFly 10
• Added support for EAP 7
• Upgraded to Spring 4

The jbpm-installer now uses WildFly 10.0.0.Final as the default. 

Enjoy !

London JBug: v7 Roadmap (November 22nd)

On November 22nd, we will be doing a JBug in London where we will be showing (live) what's on our roadmap for v7 for Drools, jBPM, Optaplanner etc.

This will include for example details on some of our key initiatives:

• Case Management
• The new Process Designer 
• Our new Rich Client Platform
• Improved Forms and Page building 
• Improved Advanced Decision Tables and new Decision Model Notation
• Fully integrated DashBuilder reporting 
• New OptaPlanner features & performance improvements 

If you're interested, please register here.
Apparently there will be beer and pizza as well :)

Other team members will try to set up similar JBugs in a location near you, so stay tuned for more info if you would like to have a sneak peak as well!

Process-driven applications on Red Hat Summit 2016

Next week (June 27 - July 1st 2016), Red Hat Summit and DevNation are taking place again, in San Francisco.  As usual, it's a huge event with a ton of interesting talks.  Learn the latest and greatest from all different products Red Hat offers (cloud, data, automation, integration, you name it), with something for everyone (admins, architects, managers, etc.).

I'll be doing a session on Tuesday June 28, 3:30 - 4.30pm, on Process-driven applications: let BPM do some of your work.  It will be a (quick) overview of what we've been building out over the last few years with jBPM (and Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite as the product offering) and how you can use it to build your applications.  But we give you the option to choose which building blocks you find valuable, and keep trying to add more and more value (for example in the context of case management or rapid application development).

I hope to see some of you in San Francisco, feel free to come and ask questions at my session, try to find me (or some of the other engineering team members) at the middleware booth, just say hi if you see me walking around somewhere or drop me a message if you can't find me but would like to meet up ;)

There are a lot of other interesting session, but highlighting a few others that are related (in chronological order):

• [Summit] Partners in crime from design to execution with Signavio and JBoss BPM Suite, Eric Schabell, Steven Lewandowski (Tuesday 10:15 - 11:15am)
  
• [Summit] A design model for rule and process-driven solutions, Justin Holmes (Tuesday 4:45 - 5:45pm)

• [Summit] Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite and BRMS primer: Capabilities, vision, and roadmap, Prakash Aradhya, Phil Simpson, Jeanine Bradley (Wednesday 10:15 - 11:15am)
  
• [DevNation] Drools 7.x happenings and roadmap, Mark Proctor (Wednesday 10:15 - 11:15am)
  
• [Summit] Automate and optimize logistic plans with BRMS Business Resource Planner, Geoffrey De Smet (Wednesday 11:30am - 12:30pm)
  
• [Summit] Effective decision management for an agile business, Mark Proctor (Wednesday 3:30 - 4:30pm)
  
• [Summit] BPM in financial services: Good advice from the real world (panel) (Thursday 4:45 - 5:45pm)

bpmNEXT 2016 retrospective

Concluding with a few impressions from bpmNEXT last week.  While it's impossible to summarize everything that happened there (I guess you could just join next year), here are some of my key takeaways:

• BPM has reached maturity stage, we're past the hype phase (at least that's what some of the analysts seem to be saying).  Innovation is still there, although more by the smaller players (typically in specific areas).  The main features of BPMS's are well understood.  Big vendors are trying to differentiate in other areas (sometimes even moving away from the BPM name).  As a result, BPM is becoming 'invisible': it's always there, people can always rely on the power it provides, but it has become more mainstream.
  
• Are BPM products growing or are they becoming part of a bigger ecosystem?  And what should we call this bigger entity then?  Luckily we didn't go into finding a new name, but there seems to be some agreement that we are (still) struggling with defining what BPM is (even after a few decades!).
  
• Open-source is an important aspect of the BPM eco-system, both for commoditization, free entry and for innovative research.
  
• A common misunderstanding is that low-code BPM is for business analysts only.  Low-code BPM tries to lower the entry barrier by hiding some of the underlying complexity and offering easier to use user interfaces / experience.  While this is an absolute requirement to get business analysts involved, low-code BPM can be just as useful for the hardcore developer as well (as long as they still have full control and can take advantage of the full power of the engine)!
  
• Most BPM vendors seem to moving towards supporting 'adaptive cases' or more 'unstructured processes' as well.  While there might be various approaches (like for example using the ad-hoc sub-process in BPMN2 vs calling a separate CMMN case vs some custom solution), I expect more convergence in the next few years.
   
• DMN was a hot topic amongst several vendors, gaining a lot of traction it seems.  CMMN seems to be struggling more though, and a healthy part of the discussion was around what we might learn from this and where it should lead us.
  
• Fun fact for those that attended: A tractor can actually look like a bison ! During one of the demos, Watson was used to do automatic recognition of images.  After uploading the image of a tractor, Watson decided it might be a bison.  While most of us found that funny (and it made bison one of the buzzwords of the conference), it might seem that Watson was right after all: apparently bison is a brand of tractors as well.  As we probably should have expected, AI is already smarter than us.
  

I blogged earlier about each of the presentations and demos on-site here: day 1 (part1 and part2), day2 (part3 and part4) and day3 (part5).  Recordings should hopefully be available soon on the bpmNEXT website as well.

Personally, I'd like to thank Bruce Silver and Nathaniel Palmer (and everyone that helped, in or outside the spotlight) on organising this great conference !  And all the attendees as well for the interesting discussions.  It's a unique experience to have vendors discuss strategy in such an open way.  And the venue and conference schedule are ideal to continue discussions over lunch or during the evening (with a nice beer on the rooftop).

Already hoping I'll be able to come back next year !