System and method for business process space definition

This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/046,120 filed 20 Mar. 1998 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,308,161 by E. B. Boden, D. G. Geiser and F. V. Paxhia for System and Method for Business Process Space Definition.

1. Technical Field of the Invention

This invention relates to automated classification and organization of business processes. More particularly, this invention classifies and organizes business processes in terms of a 3-dimensional process space facilitating process identification, decomposition and definition by traversal of this space.

2. Background Art

Workflow, which relates to automatically interpreted business processes, is an emerging technology closely associated with business and corporate re-engineering activities. It is considered a cross-industry paradigm for reducing business costs, improving efficiencies and fundamental to the notion of adaptive business organizations. Business processes are defined in such a way that they can be directly interpreted and executed by a workflow server. A major inhibitor to the development of workflow is understanding the mechanisms, interactions and inter-relationships of these processes, because even small business will have hundreds, as workflow matures.

As a business begins employing workflow technology it must systematically defines its current and future processes. The large number of processes and subprocesses that even a medium-sized business will have must be coherently organized so that they can be used, changed, and understood. These business processes must be related to the business organization and the roles of the people.

System providers must deliver workflow solutions that are immediately useful for customers, and yet can be readily changed and augmented by the customers for their situation. Such providers need to deliver workflow solutions in the context of existing software. Further, provision must be made for readily and directly capturing in workflow solutions the policies a business uses to guide its activities. Processes impacted by such a policy need to be immediately and readily known within an overall business context.

It is an object of the invention to provide a system method for enabling understanding of the mechanisms, interactions and inter-relationships of business processes.

It is a further object of the invention to systematically define the current and future processes of an organization in a manner which facilitates understanding, use and change.

It is a further object of the invention to provide an overall business context in which to know and evaluate processes impacted by a policy.

This invention comprises a method and system for representing business processes. Each of a plurality of processes is defined as a 3-tuple including a noun, a verb and an attribute, and a selected process is displayed as a point in navigation space.

Other features and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiment of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 illustrates a visual display of a process space defined by three dimensions in accordance with the invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates a file menu pull down.

FIG. 3 illustrates an edit menu pull down.

FIG. 4 illustrates a process menu pull down.

FIG. 5 illustrates a help menu pull down.

FIG. 6 illustrates a choice box.

FIG. 7 illustrates traversal of business process space by zoom in and zoom out processing.

FIG. 8 illustrates nested process spaces.

FIG. 9 illustrates a process definition window.

FIG. 10 illustrates the interrelationship of various code modules implementing a preferred embodiment of the invention.

Acronyms

Description

In accordance with the invention, a process space is defined by three dimensions. Each point in the space represents a business process. Process decomposition and definition result from traversal of this space. The three dimensions are:

1. A verb dimension comprising a set of verbs or actions. In a specific business process domain like system management or banking processes, this dimension may be labeled the action dimension. 2. A noun dimension comprising a set of nouns. In a specific business process domain like banking or system management processes, this dimension may be labeled the managed resource object (MRO) dimension. 3. A characteristics, or attributes, dimension comprising a set of expressions which can be automatically evaluated and results in a Boolean value. A term for this dimension, for all process domains, that is more consistent with workflow and related process technologies is the policy dimension.

A point in this space is a 3-tuple: (verb, noun, attribute). A process is represented in navigation space by a point. In practice, although very large (order 10**6) spaces will be routinely defined, interpretable process definitions will exist only for a modest percentage (say, <10%) of the total space even in mature workflow businesses. Even this results in a large number of processes.

By way of example, dimension sets for verb, noun and attribute may include the following:

verb={add, delete, change, determine} noun={account, balance, customer, loan, teller, interest} attribute={<10%, overdue, >1000000, court order, audit, null}

And, given the above dimension sets, some process tuples may include the following:

(add, customer, null) (determine, account, court order) (change, interest, null) (determine, teller, overdue)

Associated with the process space are the following important and useful properties:

1. The set that defines each dimension as shipped to customers (with a set of appropriate interpretable process definitions) is extendable by the customer. Thus, customers may add nouns (e.g., North Branch, South Branch), verbs (e.g., summarize, amortize), and policies (e.g., withdraw maximum) specific to their business. 2. Dimension extensions are immediately accepted by the process space presentation software as extensions to the space. This provides consistency of viewpoint, understandability, and simple navigation in the process space. 3. Elements of any one of the three dimension sets may be arbitrarily grouped by the customer. 4. New elements that are groups may be added to each dimension. This produces a simple way of understanding what otherwise would be a noncontiguous set of planes in the process space, effectively combining them into a single plane. These allow customers to work in their preferred terms (for example, North Branch accounts, formal audit control processes.) 5. Elements that are groups may be subset. That is, new elements added to a set may be defined as “in” or belonging to an existing element. 6. There are no inherent restrictions on what constitutes the definition of a noun. Thus, for example, a group of points in the process space may be named and the resulting noun added to the noun dimension set. Processes using existing or new verbs may then be defined for this group of processes. This allows the simple and direct specification of, for example, processes that only a Branch Manager may initiate (cause to be automatically interpreted) or those that only on-duty tellers may initiate.

Three core ideas fundamental to the invention include representation, navigation, and extension. Representation refers to the three dimensional space representation of processes. Navigation refers to the selection of a process point in three dimensional space, and clicking on that point to zoom in by opening up the source to another process definition. Extensibility refers to the definition on the fly of dimensions, and to groupings of scalar definitions into super scalar values. Once a few of these groupings are defined, the user can navigate in three dimensional space to group values, and from there can zoom back to three dimensional space representation of scalar values.

Referring to FIG. 1 a visual display of a process space defined by three dimensions in accordance with the invention includes display panel 20 , title 22 , menu bar 21 with menu buttons 24 , 26 , 28 and 30 , navigation space 32 , and scrollable lists 40 , 42 and 44 . Nouns scrollable list 40 includes a plurality of nouns 50 and scroll bar 51 . Verbs scrollable list 42 includes verbs 52 and scroll bar 53 . Attributes scrollable list 44 includes attributes 54 and scroll bar 55 . Scroll bars 51 , 53 and 55 may or may not be visible, depending upon the number of items 50 , 52 and 54 in the respective lists 40 , 42 and 44 .

In this preferred embodiment of the invention, process point 76 appears in navigation space 32 in relation to nouns grid 70 , verbs grid 72 and attributes grid 74 at the position 80 , 82 , 84 defined by the highlighted noun entry 60 , highlighted verb entry 62 and highlighted attributes entry 64 in lists 40 , 42 and 44 respectively. A single 3-tuple or point in navigation space 32 may be highlighted responsive to selection of one item from each of lists 40 , 42 and 44 . A slice or plane of points may be highlighted by selecting only two items. Thus, by selecting a noun item 60 and a verb item 62 , navigation space 32 will highlight points (not shown) corresponding to all entries in attributes list 54 . For a particular combination of noun and verb, non-relevant entries in attributes list 44 may be grey out (rendered not selectable), and corresponding points in the slice of navigation space 32 not highlighted.

An entry 66 in nouns list 40 entitled “workgroup T”, “my domain”, or the like, may be selected, causing list 40 to display a group of nouns defined by the user. Similar groupings may be provided in verbs list 42 and attributes list 44 .

Buttons 24 , 26 , 28 and 30 may be selected in any traditional manner, such as by pointing and clicking, or by positioning a cursor and pressing enter, or the like. Similarly, entries 60 , 62 and 64 may be selected by pointing and clicking with a pointing device, or by scrolling through lists 40 , 42 , and 44 . Selected items 60 , 62 and 64 define a 3-Tuple which is represented in navigation space 32 by a highlighted point, or some other such indicia.

Table 1 Main Window sets forth an extension of the java.awt.Frame class which, modified as set forth in Java-like psuedo code, defines an example process for generating the display of FIG. 1 , and acts as the main window of the 3D process space application of this example embodiment of the invention. For the purpose of this example embodiment, lists 50 , 52 and 54 are hard coded at Table 1, lines 56 – 64 , 69 – 76 and 81 – 87 , respectively. Alternatively, and preferably, these lists contents would be recorded externally and accessible and modifiable by the provider or user.

In general terms, the actual values shown in lists 50 , 52 , and 54 are controlled by the provider or user. Hence these would be stored externally to the source code shown in Table 1 on some long-term electronic media such as a disk drive. Ancillary functions allow the user to change these lists. That is, add and delete individual items or change the names of individual items. These changes would then appear directly in the lists 50 , 52 and 54 and in the corresponding dimension lines 70 , 72 and 74 , respectively, of 3-dimensional space diagram 32 .

Referring to FIG. 2 a file menu pull down, actuated by selecting file menu button 24 includes file action items new 100 , open 102 , save 104 , save as 106 and exit 108 . File actions 100 – 108 have the meanings and perform the functions well known to those of ordinary skill in the art.

In Table 2 File Menu Pull Down Processing there is set forth a psuedo code reprentation of processes implementing file menu actions 100 – 108 . Calls are made to Table 7 Process Space 180 when executing new 100 , open 102 , save 104 and save as 106 .

When menu item 100 (‘new’) is activated (typically, by a computer mouse button push), the user is prompted for a file name and dimension names, the input information syntax is validated, then the new process space is created. When menu item 102 (‘open’) is activated, the user will be shown a window which allows selection of a directory and then, within that directory, a file. When a specific file is selected, or entered by name as also allowed by the window, the file is read and a new process space main window is created to reflect the contents of the file. When menu item 104 (‘save’) is selected, the process space in the window is saved to a file (secondary storage), using either the name of the file previously opened or the name entered by the user during the processing of ‘new’ 100 . Menu item 106 (‘save as’) allows the user to change the name of an existing file to a new one. Menu item 108 (‘exit’) causes the current window to close, which also closes all associated file.

Referring to FIG. 3 an edit menu pull down, actuated by selecting edit button 26 includes such items cut 110 , add 112 , copy 114 and paste 116 . Edit actions 110 – 116 have the meanings and perform the functions will known to those of ordinary skill in the art.

In Table 3 Edit Menu Pull Down Processing there is set forth in Java and psuedo code processes for executing cut 110 , add 112 , copy 114 and paste 116 .

When menu item 110 (‘cut’) in FIG. 3 is activated, a previously highlighted dimension item (e.g., 84 in FIG. 1 ) is removed from the dimension and the value saved in temporary area (often called the clipboard), as indicated by lines 3 – 11 of Table 3. When menu item 112 (‘add’) is activated (function indicated by lines 13 – 16 of Table 3), the user is prompted for a new dimension item (value, name) and the item is added to a dimension. The dimension may have been highlighted before the ‘add’ button 112 was activated or, if not, the user will be prompted for the dimension name. When menu item 114 (‘copy’) is activated (lines 13 – 21 of Table 3) the highlighted dimension item is saved in a temporary area for possible later use, and (in contrast to ‘cut’) this item is not removed from its dimension. When menu item 116 (‘paste’) is activated (lines 23 – 25 of Table 3) a dimension item is retrieved from temporary storage and added to the highlighted dimension. This will be an item placed in temporary storage by some (not necessarily immediate) previous ‘cut’ or ‘copy’ action. Menu items may be greyed out if the action is inappropriate. For example, paste is greyed out until a cut or copy has been done.

Referring to FIG. 4 a process menu pull down, actuated by selecting process button 28 , includes such items as select 3D process 120 , create 3D process 122 and delete 3D process 124 .

In Table 4 3D Process Menu Pull Down Processing there is set forth in psuedo code processes for executing select 3D process 120 , create 3D process 122 and delete 3D process 124 . After prompting the user for input parameters, calls are made to Table 7 Process Space 180 .

When menu item 120 (‘select 3D process’) from FIG. 4 is activated (typically via a computer mouse button push), the user is prompted (lines 8 – 10 of Table 4) for a name of a 3D space. A dialogue will allow the selection of a space name from a list of existing names, and will also allow the user to navigate directories. When menu item 122 (‘create 3D process’) is activated (lines 12 – 16 of Table 4) the user is prompted for a space name and dimensions. The space is created and a new window is shown which presents the new space (another copy of window shown in FIG. 1 , with the new space). When menu item 124 (‘delete 3D process’) is activated (lines 18 – 20 of Table 4) the user is prompted for a space name, and the space is deleted (if it exists in the current working directory).

Referring to FIG. 5 a help menu pull down, actuated by selecting help button 30 includes such items as about 126 . Help action item 126 , and other help action items not listed, have the meanings and perform the functions will known to those of ordinary skill in the art, and will not be further discussed.

Referring to FIG. 6 a choice box 90 is preferably displayed responsive to selection by right mouse button clicking of a pointing device on process point 76 . Alternatively, and as implemented in Table 5, choice box 90 is displayed responsive to clicking the right or left mouse button with the pointer positioned anywhere in navigation space 32 . Choice box 90 includes a plurality of action items edit 91 , show process definition 92 , zoom in 93 , zoom out 94 , print 95 , and run process 96 which may be selected by scrolling or pointing and clicking, as will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Depending upon the authorization level of the user, some options 91 – 96 may be “greyed out”, that is, not available. For example, not all users are authorized to edit; in which event, item 91 would “greyed out”.

Referring to FIG. 7 traversal of business process space by zoom in and zoom out processing is illustrated. In this illustration, navigation space 32 is illustrated in a series of three panels comprising, respectively, navigation space 132 and scrollable lists 133 , navigation space 134 and scrollable lists 135 , and navigation space 136 and scrollable lists 137 . Process 3-tuple 142 is highlighted in navigation space 132 at the grid positions corresponding to the fourth noun, third verb and second attribute in scrollable lists 133 . Process 3-tuple 144 is highlighted in navigation space 134 at the grid positions corresponding to the second noun, the fourth verb and the fourth attribute in scrollable lists 135 . Process 3-tuple 146 is highlighted in navigation space 136 at the grid positions corresponding to the third noun, the third verb and the fifth attribute in scrollable lists 137 . Points can contain a space, in which case they know the origin of it. Process, or navigation, space 136 is nested in point 144 , and process space 134 is nested in process point 142 .

Referring to FIG. 8 nested process spaces 150 and 160 are illustrated. These may be visible in two panels in display 20 , with process point 162 corresponding to the grid location specified by noun item 163 , verb item 164 and attribute item 165 . As is represented by line 151 from process point 162 to the origin 158 of navigation space 150 , selecting a zoom command in choice box 90 , panel 150 is opened and the zoom'd to space 150 , containing point 152 among other possibilities is highlighted along with corresponding entries in noun list 153 , verb list 154 and attribute list 155 .

In Table 5 Mouse Adapter and Table 6 Choice Panel are set forth Java and psuedo code representations of the processes for selecting choice box 90 and executing its functions, show process definition 92 , zoom in 93 , zoom out 94 , print 95 and run process 96 . For zoom in, the selected process point 162 is checked for zoomability. If it is zoomable, a new window 150 appears showing the nested (zoomed in) space. Point 162 in panel 160 may be highlighted to identify which space in display 160 is represented by display 150 . If process point 162 is not zoomable, point 152 is created along with its containing space.

Referring to FIG. 7 , traversal of nested process spaces is shown. Process space 134 is nested with process point 142 , as indicated by arrow 171 from 142 to the origin point 172 of space 134 . Similarly, process space 136 with origin pont 174 is nested within process point 144 as shown by arrow 173 . Conceptually, any collection of process points defines a process space. Hence the subprocesses that comprise a process point such as 142 implicitly define their own space 134 . Process point 144 is one of the subprocesses that comprise process 142 . This kind of nesting is handled automatically by the system as a customer defines business processes, and then uses lower level process points which have process definitions ( FIG. 9 ). The nesting relationship is directly the result of referring to other processes in the definition of a process.

At a minimum, the nested space contains only the subprocesses used in the definition. The minimal values of each dimension are completely determined as the union, for each dimension, of all the elements referenced in all the definitions. For example, the values for the noun dimension is the union of the noun references from each of the processes in the space. Similarly for the attribute dimension and verb dimension.

In addition, a customer may explicitly add process points to a process space, which are not part of the processes used to define a containing process point. These additional points will cause the value of each dimension to be automatically adjusted to encompass any new nouns, verbs or attributes.

When a space is displayed as the result of a ‘zoom-in’ operation ( FIG. 6 , item 93 ), processes in nested space that are explicitly referenced in the containing process point are highlighted, so that they are easily distinguished from non-referenced subprocesses. Of course, it is possible that all process points in the nested space will be highlighted, indicating that they are all referenced by the enclosing process.

Another aspect of process space nesting is that any given space may enclose more than one point. This is indicated in FIG. 7 by arrows 175 , 177 and 179 . More specifically, a process point may contain exactly zero or one directly nested process spaces. (A directly nested space is a space with no intervening process points. So, for example, space 134 is directly nested in point 142 , and space 136 is not directly nested in point 142 , while space 136 is directly nested in point 144 .) A process space may be enclosed by zero or n process points, where is logically unlimited.

A process point is termed ‘zoomable’ if a zoom-out or zoom-in operation can be performed on it. A zoom-in operation is possible if the process point contains a subprocess as part of its definition. A zoom-out operation is possible if the process space containing the process point is contained within another process point. (If multiply contained, the user is prompted during the zoom-out operation, to select the containing process point.) In general, for a process space, only zoom out is defined. In general, for a process point, zoom in and zoom out are defined; zoom in is defined in terms of the existence of subprocesses as part of the process definition of the process point, and zoom out is through the origin point of the process space containing the process point.

These data modeling relationships and functions are depicted in Tables 7 through 11. The functions depicted provide the underlying data model, used by the functions in Tables 1 1 through 6, to produce the displays depicted in FIG. 1 through 6 , 8 and 9 .

FIG. 8 shows how the traversal from a process point to its nested process space, shown logically in FIG. 7 , looks to a user as shown in display windows. In this depiction, the user has selected menu item 93 (‘zoom-in’), from menu 90 while process point 162 was highlighted. Processing resulted in the overlay display window 150 , showing the contained space and its process points including 152 within the navigation space about origin 158 . The process points actually referenced by point 162 will be highlighted.

Referring to FIG. 9 process definition window 167 is illustrated. Upon selecting show process definition 92 from choice box 90 with process point 162 highlighted, process definition 164 for process 162 is provided. Embedded object 156 in definition 167 may be selected, for example, to pull in and display addition material, or to execute the process.

Referring to FIG. 10 the interrelationships of various code modules implementing a preferred embodiment of the invention are illustrated. As is represented by lines 181 and 187 , for each entry in process space 180 there exists three dimensions 182 and zero or one process points 186 . As is represented by line 183 , for each entry in dimension 182 there exists any number n of dimension items. As is represented by line 185 , for each dimension item 184 there exists zero or one process points. As is represented by line 189 , for each entry in process point 186 there exists one process definition 188 .

Java code and Java-like psuedo code representations of process space 180 , dimension 182 , dimension item 184 , process point 186 , and process definition 188 are set forth in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, respectively.

Referring to Table 7, the basic functions of an implementation of the process space data model are depicted. Lines 10 – 75 provide methods of process space creation, used by the interface generation functions as described, for example, in FIG. 4 , menu item 122 . Lines 76 – 81 provide a means to obtain a specific dimension for the process space. This would be used, for example, in generating the diagram dimensions 70 , 72 , 74 and list boxes 40 , 42 , 44 in FIG. 1 . Lines 82 – 106 provide a means to nest the current process point within another process space, by means of the special process point known as the origin point. Line 107 provides the low level function to zoom out (refer to 93 on FIG. 6 ). Lines 108 – 165 provide various utility functions used by the interface functions (Tables 1–6) to determine information about the process space, such as number of process points it contains (lines 111 – 129 ). Lines 166 – 219 are provided for stand-alone testing of the process space implementation.

Referring to Table 8, an implementation of the dimension abstraction 181 ( FIG. 10 ) used by the process space (Table 7) is given. Lines 16 – 50 provide the basic functions of create, add item, delete item. These would be invoked by the interface level functions, for example, when the customer adds verbs to the list box 42 ( FIG. 1 ). Lines 51 – 94 are basic dimension utilities and navigation functions. For example, lines 87 – 93 would be used by interface level functions to determine actual values to display in the list boxes 40 , 42 , 44 and the corresponding diagram dimensions 70 , 72 , 74 ( FIG. 1 ).

Referring to Table 9, an implementation of the dimension item abstraction is given. These abstractions are the objects actually contained in dimensions 183 ( FIG. 10 ). Lines 14 – 22 provide functions to create a dimension item, and are invoked by the interface functions, for example, when in FIG. 1 , a new attribute item is added to list box 44 . Lines 23 – 34 provide the basic functions to obtain the contents of a dimension item and to change it.

Referring to Table 10, an implementation of the process point abstraction is depicted. This is the abstraction indirectly referenced by all the interface functions when a process point is depicted, and directly used by the data model functions, as shown in 185 and 187 of FIG. 10 . For example, these include process point 76 in FIG. 1 and points 142 , 144 and 146 in FIG. 7 , and point 169 in FIG. 9 . Lines 13 – 17 provide means to create a process point. Lines 29 – 80 , 100 allow for setting and retrieving the process definition associated with a process point, and querying existence of a process definition. Lines 31 – 59 are basic navigation capabilities used by other data model functions and interface functions move from point-to-point and from a point to its ‘position’ in the process space as shown, for example, in diagram 32 of FIG. 1 and FIG. 6 . If, for example, the user drags the point 76 in FIG. 1 , successive neighbors of 76 would be shown, their position marked on the dimension lines, and the dimension value highlighted. This is accomplished by using these lines. Lines 60 – 85 are concerned with functions to support nested (contained) process spaces; create, delete. Lines 86 – 99 are the functions directly providing zoom in and zoom out capability, as used by the interface functions and described in reference to FIGS. 7 and 8 . Lines 101 – 115 provide debugging convenience for this particular implementation.

Referring to Table 11, an implementation of the process definition abstraction is shown. This is used directly by the data model functions 189 in FIG. 10 to hold information about this process point's specific process definition. Lines 13 – 16 provide a means to create the abstraction. Lines 19 – 24 provide basic utilities. For example, lines 24 ff would be used by the interface functions when building the display 167 depicted in FIG. 9 . Lines 29 – 37 would be invoked by the interface functions when the user activates menu item 96 in FIG. 6 .

In accordance with the invention, the preferred embodiment of this invention provides a system and method for enabling understanding of the mechanisms, interactions and inter-relationships of business processes.

Further, the invention provides a method and system for systematically defining the current and future processes of an organization in a manner which facilitates understanding, use and change.

Further, the invention provide an overall business context in which to know and evaluate processes impacted by a policy.

It will be appreciated that, although specific embodiments of the invention have been described herein for purposes of illustration, various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. In particular, it is within the scope of the invention to provide a memory device, such as a transmission medium, magnetic or optical tape or disc, or the like, for storing signals for controlling the operation of a computer according to the method of the invention and/or to structure its components in accordance with the system of the invention.

Accordingly, the scope of protection of this invention is limited only by the following claims and their equivalents.