Plan for Today's Class

• Using Patterns in Process Design

• Adopting, Adapting, Inventing, Implementing...

• First half review

Why We Use Patterns

• Assist in analysis

• Expose inefficiencies

• Encourage best practices

• Simplify/ consolidate / remove redundancies

• Enable transparent substitution

How We Use Patterns

• Adopt pattern (it already fits what I do)

• Adapt to pattern (change what I do to fit pattern)

• Adapt pattern (change the pattern to fit what I do)

• Invent new pattern (no pattern fits)

• Instantiate the adopted/adapted/new pattern

Patterns in Document Engineering

• The essence of Document Engineering is its systematic approach for discovering and exploiting the relationships between patterns of different types

• Working from the top down to connecting a business model to the document/process and information component level can ensure that a business model is feasible

• Working from the bottom up to establish a business model context on transactions and information exchanges can ensure that we are designing and optimizing the activities that add the most value

• These relationships between patterns "bridge the gap between strategy and implementation"

Patterns in the "Model Matrix"

The "Pattern Compass"

Contextualizing Patterns

• If you are in a context where there are no existing processes or solutions, you will probably identify goal-oriented processes and more general constraints

• Your challenge will be to contextualize these general or abstract processes by identifying and applying the constraints in your target context(s)

• You have a strategic opportunity to analyze a range of potentially appropriate process patterns and select the one(s) that best satisfy the abstract goals of your business model

• So Contextualization == Innovation because you will have to make choices about how to frame the context and satisfy abstract constraints with specific instances

Generalizing Patterns

• In contrast, if you are evaluating or re-engineering existing processes or solutions, you will probably identify transactional processes and specific constraints on information components created or consumed by the processes

• To generalize is to take a more abstract view of something by eliminating requirements or constraints, creating a less contextualized perspective

• If generalize = de-contextualize, then we can generalize by "unapplying" the "context dimensions" from Chapter 8 and assessing whether we can ignore the requirements they had imposed

Generalizing Business Model Patterns

• You can identify business model patterns inductively, by looking at specific examples of businesses and factoring out repeating elements to identify the pattern:

• Bank in supermarket

• Fast food franchise in supermarket

• Post office in supermarket

• ==> Complementary product or service for supermarket customers "plugged into" supermarket

• ==> Complementary product or service for customers of business type X plugged into type X establishment

The Context "Recipe" in Document Models

(Cooking) Recipe Patterns

• A recipe describes both objects and structures (ingredients) and the processes (cooking instructions) for creating a food dish

• Recipes are typically written with narrow scope to describe how to make specific dishes and only occasionally do they emphasize the more abstract patterns they follow

• These abstractions enable the recipe to be used as a guide for experimentation to create alternative dishes

The Flavor Principle Cookbook (aka "Ethnic Cooking")

• Elisabeth Rozin, "culinary wizard and anthropologist" analyzed 30 cultures and sub-cultures to determine what patterns of flavors and spices characterize different cuisines:

  • e.g., Oriental cooking dominated by soy sauce (China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia) and fish sauce (Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burma)

  • Indonesia: soy sauce, brown sugar, peanut, chile

  • Provence: olive oil, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sage, tomato

  • Northeast Africa: garlic, cumin, mint

Pizza Patterns

Using Pizza Patterns

• What granularity of a pizza recipe is best for teaching new employees at a pizza franchise?

• What granularity is best for differentiating pizza varieties and recognizing possibilities for new ones?

• What granularity is most likely to reveal that making pizza and making bread have something in common, yielding the hybrid model of focaccia?

Adopting Patterns

• "If a pattern fits, use it" sounds like reasonable advice

• But how do we assess the "fit" of a pattern?

• Is it easier to adopt a pattern if there is no "As-Is" model?

• How does the abstractness of the pattern affect its applicability and fit?

Adapting to Patterns

• If a pattern almost fits, you can change the pattern slightly so it fits your specific requirements or you can change your requirements so that the pattern fits exactly

• How do you decide?

• "Differentiation that does not drive customer preference is a liability"

Adapting a Pattern

• A pattern might be specified in terms of roles or elements that can be instantiated in different ways

• When does an adaptation become a pattern in its own right?

• We might adapt a recipe by applying a different set of flavor principles to an old one

• We would be inventing a new recipe if we were to come up with a new combination of spices to create a new flavor principle

Configuring Collaboration and Transaction Properties

• With the six transaction patterns we can make broad contrasts between types of transactions, but we often need to make finer distinctions

• Even the same transaction type can "behave" differently within a particular trading community, supply chain, or marketplace because of different business rules, "quality of service" contracts or similar guarantees

• So we need some additional properties that further define the semantics of transactions to explicitly tell the participating businesses in a transaction what to expect from each other.

• Each of the six transaction patterns has a characteristic profile of these transaction properties

Time-Based Transaction Properties

• Time To Acknowledge Receipt -- The time in which a recipient of a document must respond with an Acknowledge Receipt business signal

• Time To Acknowledge Acceptance -- The time in which a recipient of a business document must respond with an Acknowledgement Acceptance business signal

• Time To Perform -- The time in which the responding party must respond with the expected business document

Other Transaction Properties

• Authorization Required -- The sender must sign the document and the recipient must validate the signature and the role associated with the signature

• Non-Repudiation of Origin and Content -- The sender must store the business document in its original form for a duration mutually agreed upon in a trading partner agreement; the non-repudiation process includes validating the identity of the sender and the integrity of the content

• Non-Repudiation of Receipt -- The sender of the receipt is required to store the Acknowledgement Receipt for the mutually agreed upon time period; the non-repudiation process includes validating the identity of the sender and the integrity of the content

Typical Transaction Properties

Implementations as Patterns

• Sometimes we want to replicate a process exactly as it has been implemented somewhere else

• This means we want to apply a physical model rather than a conceptual one and will use the same implementation technology and the specific values that fill the roles and activities in the source process

• When would we want to do this?

• What are the costs and benefits of using implementations as patterns?

First Half Course Review

• We're over half done with this course

• What are the big ideas and recurring themes?

For Monday 3 April

• Review of Business Process Modeling Assignment

• Document Analysis - Chapter 12 of textbook