Business Process Modelling Course v3.4

Copyright © 2001-2011 Avolution Pty Ltd, all rights reserved. International Patents Pending Reproduction or redistribution of this material is forbidden without prior written consent from Avolution Pty Ltd

Business Process Modelling (BPM) Using ABACUS

Introductory Training Course

Avolution Pty Ltd Web: www.avolution.com.au E-Mail: [email protected] Version: 3.4 Thursday, 14 July 2011

Business Process Modelling Training Course Printed: 14/07/2011

Copyright © 2001-2011 Avolution Pty Ltd Page 2 of 42 International Patents Pending Reproduction or redistribution of this material is forbidden without prior written consent from Avolution Pty Ltd

Table of Contents

Table of Contents ................................................................................................... 2

Introduction ............................................................................................................ 3

Course Objectives ........................................................................................................ 3

Learning Outcomes ...................................................................................................... 3

Overview....................................................................................................................... 3

Assumed Knowledge .................................................................................................... 3

The Case Study ..................................................................................................... 4

History .......................................................................................................................... 4

Aim ............................................................................................................................... 4

Starting a New Project ........................................................................................... 5

Start ABACUS .............................................................................................................. 5

Open an New Project using the BPMN library ............................................................... 5

Populate the Business Processes .......................................................................... 5

Create a New Business Process Diagram .................................................................... 5

Explore the new Process .............................................................................................. 8

Create a Drill-down Business Process Diagram .......................................................... 13

Check your Business Processes for Warnings and Errors .......................................... 18

Simulating Business Processes ........................................................................... 21

Do you have the Professional add-on? ....................................................................... 22

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) simulation .................................................................. 22

Performance Simulation .............................................................................................. 24

What-if analysis .................................................................................................... 30

Evolve your Business Processes ................................................................................ 30

Analyse the To-Be Business Processes ..................................................................... 32

Working with ABACUS Enterprise Edition ............................................................ 38

Add a New Project to the ABACUS Enterprise Server ................................................ 38

Adding Users, User Groups and Permissions (Optional) ............................................. 39

Check out a New Project from ABACUS Enterprise Server ........................................ 40

Commit your Business Processes to the ABACUS Enterprise Server ......................... 40

Advanced topics (Optional) .................................................................................. 41

Copy and Re-use Business Processes ....................................................................... 41

Configuring the Business Process Meta-model ........................................................... 42

Summary .............................................................................................................. 42



Introduction

Course Objectives

This course aims to introduce new users to doing Business Process Modelling (BPM) with the ABACUS toolset.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students should:

1. Have an understanding of how ABACUS™ can be used to manage Business Processes;

2. Understand the construction of ABACUS projects;

3. Be fluent in the methodology and terminology used to describe and analyse Business Processes; and

4. Be confident in their approach to Business Process Modelling (BPM).

Overview

This course is intended for chief information officers, lead strategists, business analysts and other architects and designers who wish to use the ABACUS methodology and toolset to model business processes. It demonstrates the following procedures – listed in the order they appear:

• How to create new projects and business processes;

• How to simulate processes for cost and performance;

• How to conduct scenario and what-if analysis;

• How to use ABACUS in an enterprise environment.

Assumed Knowledge

This course is designed for experienced IT strategists and professionals. Course attendees are assumed to meet the following prerequisites:

• Hold a professional qualification in information technology or engineering, or

possess an equivalent level of skill and experience;

• Have an understanding of current systems engineering practices;

• Be comfortable using Microsoft Windows applications.



The Case Study

The practical exercises in this course are based around a case study for the imaginary ABC Ltd company.

History

ABC Ltd is a generic company, that should be considered representative of many financial services, fast-moving consumer goods, logistics companies and government organisations.

The IT department at ABC Ltd has recently purchased ABACUS and wish to use it to define and analyse various business processes.

Aim

Imagine yourself as a Business Analyst who has just assumed a new role in ABC Ltd. You receive a briefing that ABC Ltd wants to better understand the introduction of their new employees and explore the benefits of outsourcing a portion of their Set up payroll sub-process to a 3rd party.

Go to it!

NOTE: This course assumes that ABACUS is installed on your computer.



Starting a New Project

Start ABACUS

ABACUS is a relatively simple application environment. When ABACUS initially starts, only one application window should be visible.

Start ABACUS by selecting ABACUS from the ABACUS program folder in windows. Alternatively, if you have an ABACUS icon on your desktop, you should double click it.

Open an New Project using the BPMN library

Once the ABACUS application has started, you must start a new ABACUS project.

1. Select ‘File’ | ‘New’ (or if you still have the Welcome Screen showing select the

New File J button).

NOTE: This notation is used throughout this paper. In this context, it means to

select the ‘New’ item from the ‘File’ menu.

2. In the dialog that appears select the ‘Model’ | ‘From Standard Library’ icon and

click ‘OK’.

3. In the Select Standard Library dialog select ‘BPMN 2.0 recommended’ and click

OK.

A new project should now be open. In the Tree field of the Explorer window, there

should be four root nodes: Implementations; Types; Templates; and Architectures.

4. Rename the ‘New Architecture 1’ In the Architectures node to ‘ABC Ltd As-Is’.

5. Save the new project by selecting ‘File’ | ‘Save’ and enter a name for the

ABACUS project file, say ‘Business Process Modelling.abacus’.

Populate the Business Processes

Now that you have a new ABACUS project from the BPMN library you are ready to populate it. Two-dimensional (2D) diagrams are the usual way of documenting and communicating various parts of a business. So, let’s have a look at how ABACUS can be documented using 2D diagrams.

Create a New Business Process Diagram

Follow these steps to create a new process diagram:

1. In the ‘Browser’ window on the left of the screen, Click on the [+] sign to the

immediate left of the ‘Views’ icon (under the ‘ABC Ltd As-Is’ architecture icon).

Currently, there are two types of views that can be saved for an architecture; 2D

and 3D. There’ll be more on 3D later. For now, let’s create a 2D view.



2. Right-click the ‘2D’ folder and select ‘Create 2D View’. In the dialog that appears

make sure that ‘Collaboration Diagram (BPMN)’ is selected in the drop down at

the top-right. Note: You may have to select the Use Template check-box first.

3. Click ‘OK’ at the bottom-right of the dialog.

In the dialog that appears change the 2D View Name to ‘Business Process 1’.

This will open a blank process diagram in the Drawing Tool. Note: If they are

visible you will probably want to hide the General Properties and Properties

windows to free up some more space to draw the diagram. To do this, you un-pin

them by left-clicking the little pin symbols at the top-right of their respective

windows (the middle icon). You should see the window “collapse” off to the right-

side of the application window. Hovering over the resulting tab will make it appear

again.

4. Notice how the “Stencil window” automatically appears (the one with the green

background) and that on the Components tab it shows several mapped

component types; e.g. Process to a rounded white rectangle, Gateway to a white

diamond and End Event to a white circle with a solid black border. This is as per

the BPMN view template. For further details on tailoring view templates please

see the online help and the ABACUS Designer training course(s). Note: If the

Stencil window is not visible then you can re-open it by selecting View | Stencil.

5. Drag the ‘Lane’ shape from the Stencil window and drop it near the top-left of the

drawing canvas. In the dialog that appears change the component name to

‘Human Resources Department’.

6. Drag the ‘Start Event’ shape from the Stencil window and drop it inside the

‘Human Resources Department’ component. Notice how the border of the

‘Human Resources Department’ component highlights red when the cursor is over

the shape on the canvas – this indicates that the ‘Human Resources Department’

component will become the Parent of the new Start Event and that the Start Event

will be a Child of the Human Resources Department. In the rename dialog that

appears change the component name to ‘New Employee’.

7. A ‘New Errors Detected’ and ‘New Errors/Warnings Detected’ dialogs may appear

so just click ‘OK’ in them to close. Also, the Warnings window may expand, just

wait a few seconds or click on the drawing canvas to collapse it.

These are warning you that the current project is incomplete, as far as the BPMN

standard. Not surprisingly, there is just a Start Event without any subsequent

processes! So let’s create them now.



8. Drag the ‘Process shape’ from the Stencil window and drop it inside the ‘Human

Resources Department’ component and to the right of the New Employee start

event. In the rename dialog that appears change the component name to ‘Induct

Employee’.

9. Add another ‘Process’ to the right of the ‘Induct Employee’ process and rename it

to ‘Set up payroll’.

10. Finally add an ‘End Event’ from the Stencil window to the right of the ‘Set up

payroll’ process and rename it to ‘Employee Inducted’.

11. Now you want to create connections between the components so select the

“Connections tab” in the Stencil window and click-and-drag the ‘Sequence Flow’

shape from the Connections tab (the 3rd one along), and drop it onto the ‘New

Employee’ start event.

Notice how the border of the ‘New Employee’ start event highlights red when the

cursor is over the shape on the canvas – this indicates that the ‘New Employee’

start event will become the source of the new Sequence Flow.

12. Click on the dropped Connection, so that it becomes selected. Then click-and-

drag the unattached / arrowhead endpoint over to the centre of the ‘Induct

Employee’ process – when the shape glows with a blue-dashed outline, drop the

endpoint. The connection is attached.

You could continue to connect the components by dragging and dropping from the

Stencil window however ABACUS provides a ‘Smart Connector’ feature to speed

up this bulk attachment task. Let’s have a look at that now.

13. In the 2D drawing toolbar at the top of the application click the ‘Connector Mode’

button ( ).

Notice how Sequence Flow is selected as the default connection type in the pull-

down just to the right of the ‘Connector Mode’ button. This means that any

subsequent connections created on the diagram while in Connector Mode will be

of the type, Sequence Flow. Note: For future use, this connection type is saved

with each drawing on close/re-open.

14. Now, back on the diagram click the ‘Induct Employee’ process and then click the

‘Set up payroll’ process.

Notice how a Sequence Flow is automatically created between the last two

components that were selected.



15. Now with the ‘Set up payroll’ process still selected click the ‘Employee Inducted’

end event.

Notice how a Sequence is automatically added between these last two

components. In this way you easily can ‘wire up’ diagrams once you have added

the components to them.

16. Be sure to exit ‘Connector Mode’ by clicking the ‘Normal Cursor’ button ( ) on

the 2D drawing toolbar just to the left of the ‘Connector Mode’ button.

If you didn’t do this any subsequent clicking on the diagram would inadvertently

add Sequence Flows between the last 2 selected components!

17. You should have something similar to the screen shot below.

Explore the new Process

Follow these steps to explore the new business process:

1. Right-click the ‘New Employee’ start event on the diagram and from the menu that

appears select ‘Show in Explorer’.

Notice how the focus jumps to the Explorer window and the New Employee start

event is shown selected within a ‘Human Resources Department’ node. Notice

how there are 4 other components within the ‘Human Resources Department’

node. These are the 2 events and 2 processes you just created!

NOTE: ABACUS is quite different to other tools in the business architecture/modelling space. As you can see by the component hierarchy you have just explored, the



ABACUS model isn’t just a “flat-list” of elements grouped by their type. It is a richly structured model built upon an extremely flexible meta-model.

2. Now select the ‘Human Resources Department’ node above the ‘New Employee’

node by either clicking it directly or using the cursor-up key.

You should now see data populating the ‘General Properties’, ‘References’ and

‘Properties’ windows to the right of the Tree. Note: These windows might be

hidden on the right-side of the ABACUS window and only a “tab” for them visible.

If this is the case then hover over the “tab” (the window will expand out to left),

and pin them in place by left-clicking the little pin symbol at the top-right of the

window (the middle icon). If you accidentally close the window by left-clicking the

cross symbol at the top-right of the window (the right-most icon) or the window

tabs aren’t displayed then you can re-open the windows by selecting View |

General Properties, References or Properties. Anyway, back to the data that is

displayed. These fields are the unique attributes of the component. In the General

Properties window you should be able to see the Type (Lane), an Implementation

(Default Performance Properties) and no Description. In the Properties window

you should be able to see a tabular list of various properties grouped by their type

for the ‘Human Resources Department’ Lane (e.g. Behaviour, BPMN and

Reliability properties). Note: These properties are completely user settable and in

many case will come from the results of an evaluation – but more on that later.

3. Go back to the Explorer window and use the Down Arrow key, or the mouse, to

select the other components in turn, and note how the Type, Implementations,

Description and Properties change.

Navigating and Renaming connections

4. In the Explorer window list on the left hand side of the application, expand the

component labelled ‘New Employee’.

This should reveal one (1) ‘Sequence Flow’ node (with a blue diagonal line icon

and a little red arrow on the right) which represents a connection to the ‘New

Employee’ start event. Notice how the little red arrow as going from the top-left to

the bottom-right. It means the connection goes from this source component (the

‘New Employee’ start event) to some other destination component. Let’s expand

it to see which one?

5. Expand the connection by clicking on the [+] sign to reveal the destination

component – the ‘Induct Employee’ process.



6. To follow the connection to its destination component, double click on the ‘Induct

Employee’ name or icon.

This will cause the Tree view in the Explorer window to jump to the component

entry. Branches of the tree will open as necessary. You can perform this jump

action on any icon that has the shortcut symbol on it. (Note: To jump back to the

last selected item, press Alt + Left Arrow, the Navigate Backwards toolbar button

or View | Navigate Backwards).

7. Go back to the ‘Sequence Flow’ connection and select it by clicking the name or

icon.

8. Now double-click the ‘Sequence Flow’ connection.

This will cause the Tree to jump to the connection entry. Branches of the tree will

open as necessary. (Note: Again, to jump back to the last selected item you can

always press Alt + Left Arrow, the Navigate Backwards toolbar button or View |

Navigate Backwards). Note from the General Properties window that the

connection is a Sequence Flow and from the properties window that it has several

properties.

9. Expand this first ‘Sequence Flow’ connection by clicking on the [+] sign to reveal

the source and destination components – the ‘New Employee’ start event and

‘Induct Employee’ process respectively. Note: With connections the first

component listed is always the source component, the second component is

always the destination component, and connections can only be between two (2)

components. Now, ‘Sequence Flow’ isn’t a very informative name for the

connection so let’s change that.



10. Right-click on the ‘Sequence Flow’ connection name or icon and from the menu

that appears select the ‘Go To’ menu item until it expands to reveal a ‘Business

Process 1’ item and select that.

Notice how the focus jumps to the ‘Business Process 1’ diagram and the

connection between the ‘New Employee’ start event and the ‘Induct Employee’

process is selected. In this way you can always jump from an element in the

Explorer view to its occurrences on any diagrams. The ‘Go To’ feature is

effectively the opposite of the ‘Show in Explorer’ feature we looked at earlier.

11. Now, back to the task at hand of renaming the connection to something more

informative. Double-click the selected connection between the ‘New Employee’

start event and the ‘Induct Employee’ process.

12. In the Rename dialog that appears change the text to ‘Monthly’ and press ‘Return’

or click ‘OK’.

You should be able to see back in the Explorer view on the left hand side, that the

connection name has changed from ‘Sequence Flow’ to ‘Monthly. But why not

show it on the diagram as well.

13. Right-click the connection between the ‘New Employee’ start event and the ‘Induct

Employee’ process and from the menu that appears select the Annotation menu

item until it reveals a Show Annotation item and select that.

Notice how the ‘Monthly’ label appears on the connection on the diagram. Note:

You can change the way the label appears, such as the Font size and Rotation,

by right-clicking the connection, selecting Annotation from the menu that appears

and then Change Font, Rotate etc from the menu.

NOTE: You should now be familiar with how the three (3) elements that make up a connection between two components are shown in the Explorer window. That is a source Component (e.g. ‘New Employee’) attached to a given Connection (e.g. ‘Monthly’) attached to a destination (or sink) Component (e.g. ‘Induct Employee’).

14. Now, on the diagram, right-click the ‘Induct Employee’ process and from the

menu that appears select ‘Show in Explorer’.

15. Now expand the ‘Induct Employee’ process.

This will reveal two (2) attached connections. Notice how the first connection

shows the little red arrow as going from the top-left to the bottom-right, this is the

same as the connection attached to the ‘New Employee’ start event that we just



explored. It means the connections goes from this source component (the ‘Induct

Employee’ process) to some other destination component. Let’s expand it to see

which one?

16. Click on the first connection called ‘Sequence Flow’.

Note: From the General Properties window that this too is a Sequence Flow

connection type, just as its name suggests.

17. Expand the connection by clicking on the [+] sign until you reach the destination

component – ‘Set up payroll’.

18. Double click on the ‘Set up payroll’ component.

Again, this will cause the focus in the Tree to jump to the ‘Set up payroll’

component entry.

19. Now, expand the ‘Set up payroll’ Process.

This will reveal two (2) attached connections. Notice how the first connection

shows the little red arrow as going from the top-left to the bottom-right, as before,

and the second connection shows the little red arrow as going from the bottom-

right to the top-left. This means that connection goes from this destination

component (the ‘Set up payroll’ process) back to some other source component.

Let’s expand it to see which one?

20. Click on the second connection called ‘Sequence Flow’.

21. Expand the connection by clicking on the [+] sign until you reach the destination

component – ‘Induct Employee’ and double-click on it.

In this way you can see that you can navigate forwards and backwards along

connections through the Explorer, and that the structure in Explorer exactly

matches that on the diagrams.

NOTE: Before proceeding, clean up the tree view by right-clicking on the highest level Components and Connections nodes and selecting ‘Collapse’.

�� - Discuss with and Wait for your instructor here

At this point, you should have an understanding of how the various kinds of components can exist in the one hierarchy. Furthermore, you should be able to see how they connect logically and physically. Most importantly, less than 30 minutes into your new job at ABC Ltd, you now have an understanding of how to;

1) Create new BPMN projects in ABACUS,



2) Create a Process Diagram and populate it, and

3) Navigate the underlying repository.

Feel free to explore the ABC Ltd As-Is architecture a bit more, so that you feel comfortable with the structure of the model. Be careful not to edit anything or move things around because that will affect the remainder of this course. Of course, if you do, you can use Edit | Undo or Ctrl-Z to undo your changes.

Create a Drill-down Business Process Diagram

Follow these steps to create a new drill-down process diagram:

1. On the ‘Business Process 1’ diagram right-click the ‘Set up payroll’ process and

from the menu that appears select ‘Create Drill-Down View’.

2. In the dialog that appears click the ‘None’ button in the Components panel and

click the ‘None’ button in the Connections panel.

The nodes in those panels should all disappear. This is just ensuring that no

existing content from the repository is included on this drill-down view.

3. Now check that ‘Collaboration Diagram (BPMN)’ is selected in the drop down at

the top-right of the dialog and click ‘OK’.

A new blank process diagram will be opened and a link will be set up from the ‘Set

up payroll’ process to this drill-down view (but more on that later).

4. Now, because we want to re-use the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane for this

drill-down process, expand the ‘Components’ node within the ‘ABC Ltd As-Is’

architecture in the ‘Explorer’ window on the left of the application to reveal the

‘Human Resources Department’ lane. Drag it onto the top-left of the drawing

canvas. In the ‘Include Sub-Components’ dialog that appears click ‘No’.

This will add the same ‘Human Resources Department’ lane as was on the

previous diagram but without any of the existing content within it.



5. Drag the ‘Start Event’ shape from the Stencil window and drop it inside the

‘Human Resources Department’ component. In the rename dialog that appears

change the component name to ‘Set up payroll’.

Note: It is just a co-incidence that the start event name is the same as the parent

process name, the two do not have to be the same. Indeed, you don’t have to

create a Start Event at all for a drill-down / sub process and can use Intermediate

Events from other processes as the initiators J but those BPMN formalities are

beyond the scope of this course – please discuss further with your instructor if

required.

6. A ‘New Errors Detected’ and ‘New Errors/Warnings Detected’ dialogs may appear

so just click ‘OK’ in them to close. Also, the Warnings window may expand, just


7. Drag the ‘Process’ shape from the Stencil window and drop it inside the ‘Human

Resources Department’ component and to the right of the ‘Set up payroll’ start

event. In the rename dialog that appears change the component name to ‘Get

employee details’.

8. Add another ‘Process’ to the right of the ‘Get employee details’ process and

rename it to ‘Update HR system’.

9. Now, drag the ‘Lane’ shape Component from the Stencil window and drop it

below the bottom-left corner of the ‘Human Resources Department’ on the left of

the drawing canvas. In the dialog that appears change the component name to

‘Finance Department’.

10. Because according to BPMN Lanes should be within a Pool, drag the ‘Pool’

shape from the Stencil window and drop it at the top-left of the drawing canvas,

above and to the left of the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane. In the dialog

that appears change the component name to ‘ABC Ltd’.

You should see that the ‘ABC Ltd’ pool obscures the ‘Human Resources

Department’ lane, we need to fix that.

11. There should be a small amount of the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane

showing below the ‘ABC Ltd’ pool so just click anywhere on that exposed lane to

set the lane as a child of the pool.

A Hierarchy Change Detected dialog may appear and this is just warning you that

you have changed the hierarchy of components in the repository, obviously the

Human Resources Department lane is now a child of the ABC Ltd pool. Just click

‘OK’.



12. Now select the ABC Ltd pool in the background and click and drag the bottom-left

corner of the pool to be about half way overlapping and to the left of the newly

added ‘Finance Department’ lane.

13. Now, there should be a small amount of the ‘Finance Department’ lane showing

below the ‘ABC Ltd’ pool so just click anywhere on that exposed lane to set the

lane as a child of the pool.

Again, if a Hierarchy Change Detected dialog appears just click OK.

14. Finish resizing the background ‘ABC Ltd’ pool by clicking and dragging the

bottom-left corner of the pool to be below and to the left of the newly added

‘Finance Department’ lane, as per the screenshot below.

15. Now, add a Process from the Stencil window to the ‘Finance Department’ lane

below and to the right of the ‘Update HR system’ process and rename it to ‘Set up

employee payroll’.

16. Finally add an End Event from the Stencil window to the right of the ‘Update HR

system’ process in the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane and rename it to

‘Payroll set up’.

A ‘New Errors Detected’ and ‘New Errors/Warnings Detected’ dialogs may appear

so just click OK in them to close. Also, the Warnings window may expand, just




Notice how the ‘Payroll set up’ annotation of the end event is hard to read

because it is overlapped by the shape, let’s fix that.

17. In the Stencil window, right-click the End Event shape (NOT the end event on the

drawing canvas) and from the menu that appears select ‘Annotation’, then select

‘Horizontal Alignment’ and then select ‘Outside Right’.

Notice how the annotation for the ‘Payroll set up’ end event jumps to the outside

right of the shape and can now be easily read. In this way you can make changes

via the Stencil window that will affect all instances of that type on the drawing

canvas, rather than changing them individually on the canvas as we did before

with the connection annotation.

18. Now you want to create connections between the components so in the 2D

drawing toolbar click the ‘Connector Mode’ button ( ).

19. Check that the ‘Sequence Flow’ connection type has been selected in the pull-

down menu just to the right of the Connector Mode button and back on the

diagram click the ‘Set up payroll’ start event and then click the ‘Get employee

details’ process.

20. Now with the ‘Get employee details’ process still selected click the ‘Update HR

system’ process and then click the ‘Set up employee payroll’ process (in the

Finance Department’ lane) and finally click the ‘Payroll set up’ end event.

21. Be sure to exit ‘Connector Mode’ by clicking the ‘Normal Cursor’ button ( ) on

the 2D drawing toolbar just to the left of the ‘Connector Mode’ button.

NOTE: It is likely that the events and processes you have added are not aligned and the connections between them are not exact horizontal or vertical. Let’s have a look at fixing that.

22. Select the ‘Set up payroll’ start event then holding down the Ctrl key select the

‘Get employee details’ and ‘Update HR system’ processes and the ‘Payroll set

up’ end event.

23. Now release the ‘Ctrl key’ and right-click any of those selected items, say the

‘Update HR system’ process and from the menu that appears select ‘Align’ and

then select ‘Horizontal’.

Notice how those 4 components all jump to be in a horizontal line with the centre

of the top-most component.



24. Now, holding down the Shift key, select the connection between the ‘Set up

employee payroll’ process in the ‘Finance Department’ lane and the ‘Payroll set

up’ end event back in the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane.

You should notice that under the cursor where you selected the connection a little

white selection ‘dot’ is shown, as well as the normal white selection ‘dots’ at either

end of the connection. This is referred to as a connection anchor point and they

can be added or removed by holding down the Shift key.

25. Select the connection anchor point you have just added and drag it down and to

the right so that the connection angles horizontally out of the ‘Set up employee

payroll’ process and vertically up to the ‘Payroll set up’ end event.

26. Now, holding down the Alt key, select the connection between the ‘Update HR

system’ process in the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane and the ‘Set up

employee payroll’ process in the ‘Finance Department’ lane.

You should notice that connection jumps to include a horizontal section in the

middle and two little white selection ‘dots’ appear at either end of the horizontal

section, as well as the normal white selection ‘dots’ at either end of the

connection. With the Alt key still held down click the connection again. You will

see the horizontal line section grow, and with each subsequent click you can grow

the horizontal section until the connection is made of purely vertical and horizontal

segments. You should have something similar to the screen shot below. At any

time you can hold down the Shift key and hover over the anchor points and

remove them.



27. Close the ‘Set up payroll’ diagram by clicking the small cross at the top right of

the Drawing window.

You should now see a blue underline on the ‘Set up payroll’ process on the

‘Business Process 1’ diagram. This is indicating that there is a drill-down view of

that process.

28. Click the ‘Set up payroll’ process on the diagram and with your cursor hovering

over the blue underlined annotation you should see it change to a hand symbol.

29. Click the ‘Set up payroll’ process again.

The ‘Set up payroll’ diagram you just created will open showing the drill-down

view.


Check your Business Processes for Warnings and Errors

In the previous exercises on occasion you did an operation that may have caused the ‘New Errors Detected’ and ‘New Errors/Warnings Detected’ dialogs or the Warnings window to appear. Such as when you added a new start event to a lane.

As mentioned, this is indicating that the changes you made resulted in an invalid architecture, according to the defined meta-model and its rules. In this case, the BPMN meta-model.

The structure of an architecture can be restricted by using constraints. Constraints can be applied to component types and connection types to restrict the architecture in two ways.



The first way is to restrict the hierarchy by defining "parent should/must have child" and "child should/must have parent" relationships. The second way is to restrict the topology by defining "component should/must be attached to connection" and "connection should/must be attached to component" relationships. In each case the constraints can be set to just be Warnings meaning a ‘should’ or Enforced, meaning a ‘must’. Architectures are continually validated against the defined constraints. When a Warning constraint is violated a Warning is recorded in the Validation window, and when an Enforced constraint is violated an Error is recorded in the Validation window and a dialog will immediately appear warning the user.

Exploring constraints

Let’s take a look at some of the constraints in your BPMN project:

1. In the Explorer window, expand the Types | Component Types branch by

clicking the [+] symbols.

Notice how there are 16 Component Types including; Start Event, Process and

Lane. These are some of the essential Component Types as per the BPMN 2.0

standard.

2. In the Explorer Window, expand the Types | Connection Types branch by

clicking the [+] symbols.

Notice how there are 3 Connection Types including; Sequence Flow and

Association. These are some of the essential Connection Types as per the BPMN

2.0 standard.

3. Now, in the top left of the Tree go back to the Component Types and expand the

‘Start Event’ component type to reveal a Sequence Flow connection constraint.

Open the connection constraint by ‘double-clicking’ on the ‘Sequence Flow’

connection type constraint icon.

As can be seen in the Attachment Constraints dialog, any Start Events must have

the source end of a Sequence Flow connection attached to them. Here we have



said ‘must’ because the constraint is set to Enforced, if it was Warned we would

have said ‘should’. Click ‘OK’ to close the dialog.

4. Now expand the ‘Process’ component type to reveal several hierarchy

constraints. Open the first hierarchy constraint by double-clicking on the ‘Start

Event’ component type constraint icon.

As can be seen in the Hierarchy Constraints dialog, any Start Event must have a

Process as its parent. But that’s not all ... click ‘OK’ to close the dialog ...

5. Expand the ‘Process – Loop’ and ‘Lane’ component types and notice how a Start

Event hierarchy constraint is also shown there.

This means the Start Event must be a child of either a process, a Process – Loop

OR a Lane. Take a moment to explore some of the other constraints that are in

the library by exploring through the Component and Connection Types and using

Open. Notice how Enforced constraints are shown with a red padlock symbol on

them while Warned constraints are shown with a yellow padlock. Disabled

constraints are shown with a grey padlock.

NOTE: You should now be familiar with the BPMN Recommended library in ABACUS and how it contains approximately 20 different Component Types and Connection Types, with Constraints.

Validating your Business Processes

Follow these steps to validate the new architecture:

1. If it is not already opened, open the Validation window by selecting View |

Validation from the pull-down menus.

The Validation window should appear at the bottom of the application and you

should pin it in place by left-clicking the little pin symbol at the top-right of the

window (the middle icon). The Validation window shows that there are currently

no warnings or errors, so that’s good!

Follow these steps to cause an error in the architecture:

2. On the ‘Business Process 1’ diagram drag a Start Event from the Stencil

window into the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane. In the Rename dialog

that appears just leave the default ‘New Start Event 1’ name and click ‘OK’.

A ‘New Errors Detected’ dialogs may appear but this time take note of what it

says; “New Start Event 1: Start Event must be attached to Sequence Flow at the

Source end”. This is exactly as we expected from the constraints that we

explored above.



3. Click OK.

You can disable the popping-up of this dialog by selecting Tools | Options from

the program menu and then on the Validation tab uncheck the ‘Show Error Dialog

on New Errors’ check box.

Notice how in the Validation window there is now one (1) error listed.

4. Now drag the ‘New Start Event 1’ start event on the ‘Business Process 1’

diagram out of the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane and drop it onto the blank

canvas background.

First you may be asked to OK the Hierarchy Change Detected dialog so do that

and if you haven’t unchecked the ‘Show Error Dialog on New Errors’ option the

‘New Errors Detected’ dialog will appear saying “New Start Event 1: Start Event

must have Process, Process – Loop or Lane as its parent”, click OK. And either

way this new error will have been added to the Validation window. Note: At any

time you can double-click a warning or error in the Validation window and focus

will jump to the place in the Explorer that is causing the violation.

5. Delete the ‘New Start Event 1’ by selecting it on the ‘Business Process 1’

diagram and pressing the Delete key or right-clicking it and selecting ‘Delete from

View’.

A ‘Deleted Unused Element/Component’ dialog should appear asking whether

you want to delete the component from the repository entirely, as it was only used

on this diagram and has no children or attachments. Click Yes on the dialog to be

sure to minimise the ‘clutter’ in your project. Notice how the errors in the

Validation window disappear once you delete the ‘new Start Event 1’ start event.

At this stage, you should have an understanding of how constraints can be used to check for and enforce compliance with a defined meta-model and highlight areas of incompleteness. An important thing to note is that when working ABACUS Enterprise Edition users can not commit local changes to the ABACUS Server repository that have any errors. But more on this later.

Simulating Business Processes

You have already seen how you can document your business processes and explore their validity against a standard framework. As powerful as that is, this is still just ‘static’ analysis. ABACUS can perform advanced ‘dynamic’ analysis by simulating architectures. First, a word on the necessary add-ons and then TCO analysis.



Do you have the Professional add-on?

To be able to run simulations you will need the ABACUS Professional add-on. Accordingly, you have to make sure that you are running ABACUS in Professional mode, that is, you are able to run simulations. Do you have an Evaluation toolbar and/or are the various Analysis menu items are enabled? [Note: if you don’t see the Evaluation toolbar or the Analysis menu items are not enabled then you either have an old version of ABACUS or you don’t have the Professional add-on. In either case please contact [email protected] before you continue with this course / tutorial.]

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) simulation

First we have to update the business process resources with properties to support the simulation.

Adding TCO properties to your Business Processes

Follow these steps to add TCO properties to your business process resources:

1. Select the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane on the Business Process 1

diagram and in the ‘Properties’ window notice there are several Cost properties

already populated such as ‘FTE’ at $100,000 / year and ‘Maintenance Cost

(fixed)’ at $30,000 / year. The $100,000 per year is the fixed rate costs per

employee and the $30,000 are the overheads / on-costs etc for the department as

a whole. Of course these can be changed for your organisation but let’s leave the

values as is for now.

2. Let us however change the value of the ‘Support Effort (fixed)’ property to reflect

the number of employees in the Human Resources Department, say 20, by setting

the property value to “twenty”.

Notice how when you enter “twenty” a new error appears in the Validation window

of “Property: ‘Cost’, ‘Support Effort (fixed)’ value ‘twenty’ does not match Data

Type ‘Decimal’”. Change the property value to the number “20” and notice that

the error disappears. In this way you can see that the data quality of your models

can be ensured through some simple property constraints.

3. Now follow the link from the ‘Set up payroll’ process to its drill-down view by

hovering over the blue-underlined label until the cursor changes to a hand and

then clicking the label.

4. Select the ‘Finance Department’ lane and set the value of the ‘Support Effort

(fixed)’ property to reflect the number of employees in the Finance Department to

‘10’, say.

With a sufficiently populated set of business processes now we can run the TCO simulation.



Running the TCO simulation

Follow these steps to run the TCO simulation of your business process resources:

1. Now run the TCO simulator by clicking the $ button on the Evaluators toolbar, or

go to Analysis | Cost. Select the ABC Ltd As-Is node, leave the Years to

calculate at 5 years and make sure you select the currency to be “$” (you might

have to scroll up depending on your regional settings). Click Next and then

Finish. You should get 14 warnings. Click Continue and then ‘OK’ in the

completion dialog.

2. The TCO is $15,300,000, which can be seen by selecting the ABC Ltd As-Is

architecture node in the explorer and looking at the Properties window

View a TCO pie chart

It is possible to show a pie chart to show the distribution of cost among the different departments / lanes:

1. Select Insert | Chart. Alternatively, you can select the shortcut button from the

main toolbar – the icon looks like a graph.

The ABACUS Charts dialog will now be displayed.

2. Select ‘Pie’ from the list on the left, then click ‘Next’.

3. We do not want to see any of the architecture-level properties. Simply click ‘Next’.

4. In the ‘components’ list on the left, expand (but do not select) the ABC Ltd As-Is

architecture node. Then select Lane component type and click ‘Next’.

5. Expand (but do not select) the Cost node, then select ‘Total Cost to Own - next

5 years’. Click ‘Finish’.

6. The pie chart will be displayed. You can change the way the chart is displayed

using the menu that appears when you right-click on different parts of the chart

and the various toolbar buttons. See if you can change the colour scheme, add

point labels and remove the legend box to match the screenshot shown below.

NOTE: You should be able to see in the pie chart that about 2/3rd of the costs is attributable to the Human Resources Department while about 1/3rd is attributable to the Finance Department. How does that compare to your business?



7. Save the chart by clicking the leftmost Save Chart toolbar button and in the Chart

Name dialog that appears enter ‘TCO by Lane’ and click OK.

This has been a very simplistic example of ABACUS’ Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) simulator and for more advanced TCO simulations please refer to the Enterprise Modelling using ABACUS : Professional Course, available from the Avolution Community.


Performance Simulation

First we have to update the business process resources with properties to support the simulation.

Adding Performance properties to your Business Processes

Follow these steps to add performance properties to your business process resources:

1. Select the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane on the ‘Business Process 1’

diagram and in the ‘Properties’ window notice there are several Behaviour

properties already populated such as ‘Speed’ at 8 hours/day and various greyed

out properties which have been inherited from what is called an Implementation,

but we can ignore these for now. Indeed you can unselect the ‘Hide/Show



inherited implementation properties’ button ( ) on the Properties window toolbar

to hide them.

2. Let us however change the value of the ‘Processors’ property to reflect the

number of employees in the ‘Human Resources Department’, by setting the

property value to ‘20’ to match the number being Supported as per the TCO

simulator in the previous section.

3. Now follow the link from the ‘Set up payroll’ process to its drill-down view by

hovering over the blue-underlined label until the cursor changes to a hand and

then clicking the label.

4. Select the ‘Finance Department’ lane and set the value of the ‘Processors’

property to reflect the number of employees in the Finance Department to 10,

matching the TCO simulator properties.

5. Now select the ‘Get employee details’ process in the ‘Human Resources

Department’ and notice that the Behaviour | Processing value is 0 hours. This is

just the default. Change that property to have a value of ‘4’.

6. Select the ‘Update HR system’ process and notice that the Behaviour |

Processing value is also 0 hours. Change that property to have a value of ‘2’.

7. Now select the ‘Setup employee payroll’ process in the ‘Finance Department’

and notice that the Behaviour | Processing value is also 0 hours. Change that

property to have a value of ‘2’.

8. Now select the ‘Sequence Flow’ between the ‘Set up payroll’ start event and the

‘Get employee details’ process and notice that the there are several Behaviour

properties including ‘Frequency’ in msgs / day and ‘Instances’. Set the value for

the Frequency to 5.

9. Select each of the remaining Sequence Flow connections on the diagram and set

their Frequency property to 5 also.

NOTE: Rather than individually entering the frequency for each sequence flow there are various techniques available within ABACUS to ‘cascade’ the frequency throughout business processes so please discuss these with your instructor or contact [email protected] if you are interested in learning more about them.

While we haven’t populated the top-level ‘Business Process 1’ we still have a sufficiently populated set of business processes so we can now run the Performance simulation.



Running the Performance simulator

Follow these steps to run the Performance simulation of your business process:

1. Run the Performance simulator by selecting Analysis | Performance.

Alternatively, you can select the shortcut button from the evaluation toolbar – the

button has a P symbol.

The Performance Configuration dialog will now be displayed.

2. Check that ‘ABC Ltd As-Is’ is selected in the Architecture drop-down list.

3. In the Component field, click the ‘All’ button.

4. From the Connections field, click the ‘All’ button.

5. Leave the Run Time Scale Factor ‘slider’ at the bottom of the dialog at 10.

This ensures that all the connections will be simulated during the run time. Higher

values will yield more statistically consistent results but take longer time to

calculate.

6. Click the ‘Finish’ button and you should get 15 warnings.

A Warnings dialog will now be displayed. If there is not exactly 15 warnings, then

you have made a mistake, and should backtrack to find it. You may do this by

double clicking on the warning to jump back to the place in the tree where it may

be corrected.

7. Click ‘Continue’ to continue.

At this point, ABACUS will perform a discrete-event simulation of the architecture

and after about 1 second (with a progress bar for feedback though it will be

difficult to see this with such a rapid simulation) a calculation complete dialog

should appear.

8. Click ‘OK’ to acknowledge the simulation.

View a Column Chart of Utilisations

Follow these steps to view a Column Chart of resource utilisations:



2. Select ‘Column’ from the list on the left, then click ‘Next’.


4. In the ‘components’ list on the left, expand (but do not select) the ABC Ltd As-Is

architecture node. Then select ‘Lane’. Click ‘Next’.



5. Expand (but do not select) the ‘Behaviour’ node, then select ‘Utilisation’. Click

‘Finish’.

See if you can get the graph to look like the following screenshot.

NOTE: You should be able to see that the Human Resources Department are the most highly utilised but only at 18.75%. To validate this result you can simply calculate from the ‘Set up payroll’ diagram that 20 people working 8 hours per day are performing a 4 hour and a 2 hour process 5 times per day or 5 * (4+2) / 20 * 8 = 18.75%.

6. Save the chart by clicking the leftmost Save Chart toolbar button and in the Chart

Name dialog that appears enter ‘Lane Utilisations’ and click OK.

View the Response Time Chart

The response time chart is one of the fundamental graphs used to visualise performance.

Follow these steps to view the Response Time Chart:



2. Select the ‘Custom Charts’ tab.

3. Make sure the ‘Response Time’ item in the Select Chart Type field is highlighted,

and click the ‘Next’ button.

4. Make sure ABC Ltd As-Is is selected from the Architecture drop-down list.



5. Select ‘Sequence Flow’ from the Connections list.

This is a list of all the connection types defined and in use for the selected

architecture.

6. Click the ‘Finish’ button.

7. A warnings dialog of invalid properties should appear.

This is just warning about the connections on the ‘Business Process 1’ diagram

that we didn’t populate with Frequency values. Just click Continue. The

Response Time graph will now appear.


This chart is showing that the individual business process transactions (i.e. sequence flows) are taking either 0.5 or 0.25 time units to complete. This reflects the duration it is taking to process a 4 hour or 2 hour task by a resource that works 8 hours per day, that is ½ or ¼ of a day.

We can see all these results overlayed on the various process diagrams in what is called a heat-map. Let’s have a look at doing that now.

Overlay a ‘heat map’ onto your Business Processes

Follow these steps to overlay a heat-map onto your business processes:

1. Go back to the ‘Set up payroll’ diagram and right-click on the ‘Process’ shape in

the Stencil window. In the menu that appears select ‘Change Colour’. In the

dialog that appears select the ‘Using Property’ radio button and then click the ‘...



‘button just to the right that becomes enabled. In the ‘Select Property’ dialog

expand the ‘Behaviour’ node and select the ‘Processing’ property and click ‘OK’.

Back in the Set Type Colour dialog change the Min value from 2 to 0 and then

click the ... button just below that and select lime green from the colour palette

(the 3rd from the left in the 2nd row) and click ‘OK’. Then click the ... button just

below the Max value of 4 and select red from the colour palette (1st on the 2nd

row) and click ‘OK’. Click ‘OK’ again.

Notice how the processes on the diagram are now coloured according to the

colour range for the Behaviour | Processing property

2. Let’s do the same for the ‘Sequence Flow’ lines on the Connections tab in the

Stencil window and set the Using Property to Behaviour | Completed, the value

range to Min = 95 and Max = 100 (you will most likely have to change the Min

value to 95) and the colours this time from red to from lime green.

Notice how the sequence flows on the diagram are now coloured as well

according to their % completion.

NOTE: You should be able to see the Get employee details process takes the longest time to complete and accordingly causes some delays in the completion. Colouring diagrams according to a property is called heat-mapping and you can use the same technique to highlight cost centres (as already seen with the TCO simulation), performance bottlenecks, over-provisioned processes and elements in general, critical points of failure etc.



This has been a very simplistic example of ABACUS’ Performance simulator and for more advanced Performance simulations please refer to the Enterprise Modelling using ABACUS : Professional Course, available from the Avolution Community.


What-if analysis

Evolve your Business Processes

At this point, you should now have a good feel for basic process modelling and analysis. You are now ready to undertake some scenario or what-if analysis, what in ABACUS is called evolutions. You can modify an evolved architecture by adding, removing or changing components, connections and their properties.

Evolve the Architecture

Before you change your architecture, you should create a new version of it. This allows you to keep your current version as a baseline, essential for comparison.

Follow these steps to evolve your current architecture:

1. Position the cursor over the root icon of the most recent architecture – ABC Ltd

As-Is – and click the right mouse button.

2. Select ‘Evolve’ from the menu.

3. After a moment – as the screen refreshes – you will see a new expanded

architecture in the tree, called ABC Ltd As-Is.1. You may also see a ‘New

Errors/Warnings Detected’ dialog appear from ABACUS’ model-checking /

constraint-validation feature. If so just click ‘OK’.

4. Right-click on the icon of the newly created architecture.

5. Select ‘Rename’ from the menu.

6. Type a new name in the highlighted field: ‘ABC Ltd To-Be’, and press ‘Enter’.

Manipulate the Architecture

You now have a new architecture on which to experiment. Recall that one of the aims of your task was to explore the benefits of outsourcing a portion of the Set up payroll process to a 3rd party. Subsequently, you should now locate the Set up payroll process. This could be done either directly in the Explorer or via the process diagram we created earlier, let’s try the latter this time ...

Follow these steps to outsource a portion of the Set up payroll process to a 3rd party:

1. Click on the [+] sign to the immediate left of the Views icon (under the ABC Ltd

To-Be architecture icon).



2. Expand the 2D views folder by clicking on the ‘+’.

3. Open the ‘Business Process 1’ diagram by double-clicking it or right-click |

‘Open’.

The ‘Business Process 1’ diagram should appear. Remember though that this is

the process in the To-Be architecture so while it is currently the same as the one

in the As-Is architecture you can change it without affecting the original process,

but more on that later.

4. Now follow the link to the drill-down view on the ‘Set up Payroll’ process and

select the ABC Ltd pool in the background and resize it by clicking and dragging

the bottom of the pool down the drawing canvas to leave enough room to drop in

a lane for the 3rd party.

You will need to scroll the canvas down using the vertical scroll bar or cursor

down key.

5. Now, drag the ‘Lane’ shape from the Stencil window and drop it below the

‘Finance Department’ on the left of the drawing canvas. In the dialog that appears

change the component name to ‘3rd party’.

6. Select the ‘3rd party’ lane and in the Properties window update the Cost | FTE

property value to ‘70000’, the Cost | Maintenance Cost (fixed) property value to

‘20000’, the Cost | Support Effort (fixed) property value to 2 and the Behaviour

| Processors property value also to 2.

This is saying that the 3rd party has just 2 resources and they are costing $90,000

per year each.

7. Now select the ‘Human Resources Department’ lane and in the Properties

window update the Cost | Support Effort (fixed) property value to 15 and the

Behaviour | Processors property value also to 15.

This is reducing the number of resources in the Human Resources Department by

5, from 20 to 15.

8. Select the ‘Update HR system’ process and drag it down to the ‘3rd party’ lane

and when you see the outline of the lane glowing with a red outline, drop the

process. A Hierarchy Change Detected dialog may appear and if so just click OK.

9. Now, holding down the Alt key, select the connection between the ‘Update HR

system’ process in the ‘3rd party’ lane and the ‘Set up employee payroll’

process in the ‘Finance Department’ lane.

You should notice that connection jumps to be better placed on the diagram.



10. Select the ‘Update HR system’ process and in the Properties window update the

Behaviour | ‘Processing’ property value to 1.5.

This is reducing the duration to perform the process from 2 hours down to 1.5

hours, reflecting the specialised payroll skills of the 3rd party. You should have a

process similar to that shown below.

Analyse the To-Be Business Processes

Re-Run the TCO simulation

Follow these steps to run the TCO simulation of your To-Be business process resources:

1. Now run the TCO simulator by clicking the $ button on the Evaluators toolbar, or

go to Analysis | Cost. Select the ABC Ltd To-Be node, leave the Years to

calculate at 5 years and make sure you select the currency to be “$” (you might

have to scroll up depending on your regional settings). Click Next and Finish.

You should get 16 warnings. Click ‘Continue’ and then ‘OK’ in the completion

dialog.



2. The TCO is $13,600,000, which can be seen by selecting the ‘ABC Ltd To-Be’

architecture node in the explorer and looking at the Properties window.

NOTE: If you compare the value of Total Cost to Own – next 5 years for the ABC Ltd To-Be architecture with that on the ABC Ltd As-Is architecture, you will notice a cost decrease of $1,700,000 (i.e. from $15.3M to $13.6M) for the next 5 years. This is due to the reduction in headcounts.

NOTE: If you look at the value of Total Cost to Own – next 5 years for the 3rd party you will notice that it is $800,000 and this is the potential contract value for the 3rd party.

Re-Run the Performance simulator

Follow these steps to run the Performance simulation of your To-Be business process:

1. Run the Performance simulator by selecting Analysis | Performance.

Alternatively, you can select the shortcut button from the evaluation toolbar – the

button has a P symbol.

The Performance Configuration dialog will now be displayed.

2. Select the ‘ABC Ltd To-Be’ Architecture from the drop-down list.

3. In the Component field, click the All button.

4. From the Connections field, click the All button.

5. Leave the Run Time Scale Factor ‘slider’ at the bottom of the dialog at 10.

This ensures that all the connections will be simulated during the run time. Higher

values will yield more statistically consistent results but take longer time to

calculate.

6. Click the ‘Finish’ button and you should get 16 warnings.

A Warnings dialog will now be displayed. If there is not exactly 16 warnings, then

you have made a mistake, and should backtrack to find it. You may do this by

double clicking on the warning to jump back to the place in the tree where it may

be corrected.

7. Click ‘Continue’ to continue.

At this point, ABACUS will perform a discrete-event simulation of the architecture

and after about 1 second (with a progress bar for feedback though it will be

difficult to see this with such a rapid simulation) a calculation complete dialog

should appear.

8. Click ‘OK’ to acknowledge the simulation.



NOTE: If you compare the values of Utilisation for the Human Resources Department in the ABC Ltd As-Is architecture with those in the ABC Ltd To-Be architecture, you will notice that the values have been recalculated and that the department is now slightly less utilised, even with the reduction in headcount.

With the TCO and performance evaluations completed, we will now analyse the architecture by using some of the available ABACUS visualisations.

View a Column Chart of Utilisations

Follow these steps to view a Column Chart of As-Is and To-Be resource utilisations:



2. Select ‘Column’ from the list on the left, then click ‘Next’.


4. In the components list on the left, expand (but do not select) the ABC Ltd As-Is

and ABC Ltd To-Be architecture nodes. Then select the ‘Lane’ node in both

collections. Click ‘Next’.

5. Expand (but do not select) the ‘Behaviour node’, then select ‘Utilisation’. Click

‘Finish’.


NOTE: You should be able to see that the Human Resources Department has reduced utilisation from 18.75% to 16.63% and this load has been ‘transferred’ to the new 3rd party which is utilised at about 50%.



Comparing Architectures with the Capability Space Chart

So far, we have really been concentrating on cost and performance properties. In reality, there are usually a number of indicators. To visualise the way in which an architecture exists in terms of its capability to meet a set (space) of requirements, a capability space chart is used.

Follow these steps to view the capability space chart for the To-Be architecture (and compare it to the As-Is one):

1. Select Insert | Chart or the shortcut button from the main toolbar.

2. Select the ‘Custom Charts’ tab.

3. Select the ‘Capability Space’ item in the Select Chart Type ‘field’, and click the

‘Next’ button.

4. From the ‘Architectures’ field, select All.

5. Click the ‘Next’ button.

6. Click the All button to select all the architecture properties.



The graph shows the current and planned architectures for ABC Ltd. You will probably want to move the legend on the right to be at the bottom of the graph. To do this, right-click the legend and select Bottom. You might also want to resize the window by dragging the border between the explorer window and the graph. Anyway, now you should be able to see along the various axes the emergent properties that are being tracked. You can see the following (clockwise starting at the top) as shown in the screenshot below;



• Total Cost to Own over the next 5 years is set to be reduced by about $1.7M from the planned outsourcing of the Set up payroll process.

• Overall Utilisation of the resources is set to increase (at the 3rd party as we know) but Throughput, Bandwidth and Response Times are set to stay about the same.

Comparing Architectures over time with a Timeline

The capability chart shows the differences between a number of architectures and indicators and how they might be within the desired or required levels. To visualise the relative differences for each of the architectures over time a special type of line chart can be used, what we call a Timeline.

Follow these steps to view a Timeline for the current and planned architectures:

1. Select Insert | Chart or the shortcut button from the main toolbar.

2. Check the Lines chart type is selected and click the ‘Next’ button.

3. This time select the ‘Plot architecture-level properties’ radio button and from the

Architectures field, select All.


5. Click the ‘Next’ button to skip over selecting any architecture elements.

6. Expand the ‘Behaviour’ node and select the ‘Response (Ave)’, ‘Response

(Max)’, ‘Response (Min)’ and Utilisation properties.

7. Expand the ‘Cost’ node and select the ‘Total Cost to Own – next 5 years’

property.




NOTE: Initially you will only see one timeline for the ‘Total Cost to Own – next 5 years’ property for each of the 2 architectures you selected because the values for that property are significantly higher than any of the others. So J

9. Hover over and right-click the light-blue line at the top with the filled light-blue

squares (this is the ‘Total Cost to Own – next 5 years’ timeline) and select

‘Secondary Axis Toggle’ in the menu that appears.

10. Finally, right-click one of the values on the y-axis on the left of the chart and select

Properties from the menu that appears. In the Properties dialog for the Y-axis

Scale select the ‘Logarithmic’ check-box and change the Decimals to 1. Click

‘OK’.

The graph shows the current (or ‘as-is’) and planned (or ‘to-be’) architectures for ABC Ltd. You should be able to clearly see the trends for the various emergent properties that you selected. You can see the following (starting with the top timeline) as shown in the screenshot below;

• Total Cost to Own over the next 5 years is set to reduce significantly.

• Utilisation of the resources is to increase (at the 3rd party as we know).

• Response Times are set to decrease slightly (due to the 3rd party’s specialised skills).

Interpret the latest Evolution

With regard to the To-Be business processes, we know from the resource utilisation chart, capability space chart and timeline that by outsourcing a portion of the Set up payroll process to a 3rd party, the performance will still be acceptable, and even slightly better. The 3rd party and the internal HR department are better utilised and you have saved the company a total of $1.7M over the next 5 years. Now that’s a pretty impressive morning’s / afternoon’s work!



Working with ABACUS Enterprise Edition

ABACUS Enterprise Edition is both a ‘non-locking’ collaborative approach, but a ‘disconnected’ one also. ABACUS is ‘non-locking’ because it doesn’t force the file to be locked by one user for it to be updated. Each user has their own local copy of the file, and as they make changes and save their file, those changes are recorded and stored for when the user wishes to commit them to the server.

ABACUS is ‘disconnected’ in the sense that you don’t need to be connected to the server or need network access whilst working on a file. ABACUS only requires access to the server when performing operations like creating a file, or performing a checkout, along with operations on an existing file - update, commit, or viewing the log of past commits. Access to the server is not required to work on the file, and your changes aren’t sent to the server immediately (this allows you to easily discard your changes if you make a mistake). When you save your file, you are ‘just’ saving your locally copy – it is not until you commit that your local changes (changes made since your last commit), are sent to the server.

Add a New Project to the ABACUS Enterprise Server

To create a new Enterprise file, select one of the first two options on the New Project dialog (either a blank Enterprise file, or create one from an existing ABACUS file). The third option is to ‘Checkout’ an Enterprise file someone else has already created, this will be covered in the next section.

When you choose to create a new Enterprise file, you will be given a dialog that will allow you to browse to where on a repository server you would like to store your file. It will also have the existing file path and name entered up the top if you chose ‘From Existing Model’ from the New Project Dialog and supplied a file.

The picture above shows a repository with three (3) existing ABACUS Enterprise projects, after entering the URL and pressing enter. You will see after you create a new



Enterprise file, on the next screenshot for ‘Checkout’, there will be another folder and file under this repository.

No specific steps are provided as detailed instructions are available in ABACUS’ online help.


Adding Users, User Groups and Permissions (Optional)

Permissions are defined at the role or group level, as opposed to the individual user level, so that while membership of the groups may change, the permissions can remain fixed. Of course if you want a specific user permission then simply make them a group, or more precisely create a group with that user as the sole member.

It should be noted that groups are atomic, that is they can't inherit permissions or users from one to another, and if a user belongs to multiple groups then the most 'pessimistic' group permission will take precedence on a case-by-case basis for each individual permission (i.e. Create-Read-Update-Delete). For example if the same user is a member of Group A and Group B and Group A has just Create-Read permission for Application component types while Group B has just Read-Update permission for Application component types then the user will only have Read permission for Application component instances.

Furthermore, by default, anonymous users (that is users who have not been defined) have full access to the project. This is to ensure that access is available in an initial configuration. To block access by anonymous users simply uncheck the 'Allow anonymous user full access to file' option in the Manage Users/Groups dialog shown below.





Check out a New Project from ABACUS Enterprise Server

If someone has already created a new Enterprise file, you can ‘checkout’ this file, which downloads a local copy and sets up the necessary files so ABACUS recognises this as an Enterprise file. The dialog is similar to the New Enterprise File Dialog. Enter the repository URL (subdirectories can be included in the URL), select the required file, and click OK. The file will then be opened.



Commit your Business Processes to the ABACUS Enterprise Server

When you choose to commit your changes, the ABACUS file is opened, your changes are performed, and then the .abacus file is overwritten with one that has your changes in it. Your changes file then overwrites the .log file, and both the .abacus file and the .log file are sent to the server.

If other users have committed changes to the file in a similar part of the file to you, there may be some conflicts between their changes and yours. For example, another user may delete a process that you had added to a visualisation. You need to either undo their change (if you are sure that theirs shouldn’t have happened), or discard your change (you may then go back into the file and redo your change).





Advanced topics (Optional)

The following sections describe several advanced tasks for the more experienced user.

Copy and Re-use Business Processes

ABACUS allows for the copying of content in the repository, within a diagram and across diagrams. However there are a few implications of this that need to be highlighted;

• When copying a diagram this just makes a duplicate of the diagram and no duplication of any repository content occurs.

• When copying and pasting content on a diagram a duplicate of the content is made both on the diagram and in the repository.

• When copying and pasting content from one diagram to another any matching content that was already on the destination diagram is duplicated on the diagram and in the repository, however, any content that was not already on the destination diagram is simply added to the diagram with no duplication of the content in the repository.

• When copying and pasting content in the Explorer a duplicate of the content is made in the repository.




Configuring the Business Process Meta-model

The ABACUS Designer Add-on provides the end-user with the ability through simple 'right-clicks' and 'drag-and-drops' in the standard User Interface (UI) to design new, or modify existing ABACUS libraries to tailor a unique and re-usable framework for all users.

Other tools have an archaic Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) back-end resulting in an extremely "rigid" meta-model with an inherent inability to add new meta-model types. They simply have a table for each object (i.e. Component) and relation (i.e. Connection) type with a fixed set of columns for properties. When you inevitably want to add a new object or relation type, then a DBA has to hack in to the back-end and either rename a spare table or add a new one! When you inevitably want a new property, again the DBA has to either rename a spare one or create a new one. Accordingly, you will effectively be locked in to their one-and-only meta-model and an expensive consulting contract to make any changes.

ABACUS on the other hand is built on top of a completely open and flexible XML-based hierarchical repository. Quite simply, no other tool in this market comes close to the end-user flexibility offered by ABACUS® Designer. New libraries, frameworks, ontologies and meta-models can be created literally in minutes all through simple and intuitive 'right-clicks' and 'drag-and-drops' in the ABACUS Standard UI

For a detailed set of tasks relating to configuration of ABACUS meta-models please refer to the Enterprise Modelling using ABACUS : Designer Training Course, available from the Avolution Community.


Summary

This course has demonstrated the main ABACUS principles for Business Process Modelling, in the context of a generic enterprise, ABC Ltd. After completing this course, a user should be able to perform the following functions without direct assistance:

• Create new projects and business processes;

• Simulate processes for cost and performance;

• Conduct scenario and what-if analysis; and

• Use ABACUS in an enterprise environment.

For more information about ABACUS contact Avolution directly, or visit the website at www.avolution.com.au. You can find further details and examples of ABACUS application in the ABACUS Case Study white papers.

ABACUS®

and Avolution®

are trademarks of Avolution Pty Ltd. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks of their respective companies. International patents pending for the ABACUS methodology and supporting toolset. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. This document is confidential and no portion of it may be reproduced without written consent from Avolution Pty Ltd.

Documents

Business Process Modelling Course v3.4