Business Process Management Project Specialist Profiles

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Profiles Overview
• Enterprise Architect
• Business Analyst
• Project / Solution / System Architect
• Application Developer
• Operations Consultant

Introduction

Many specialists are covering a lot of topics in Business Process Management (BPM) Projects:

the business analysts, responsible for process design; the managers and supervisors, responsible for organizing the people involved in the process; the database administrators and data quality specialists, responsible for the information involved in the process; and the application, service, infrastructure network architects responsible for various aspects of these systems.

However, none of these are responsible for determining whether all these pieces fit together to successfully address the business purpose.

Establishing the following Profiles in BPM Projects will help to address all topics for a successful Project implementation.

Profiles Overview

different Profiles Overview:

• Enterprise Architect
  • Skills: Requirements Gathering, Detailed knowledge about business drivers for the enterprise and future vision
  • Soft skills: Team Leader and Guide, technical writing, critical thinking, problem-solving, social intelligence
• Business Analyst
  • Skills: Requirements Gathering, Knowledge of BPM features.
  • Soft skills: Active listening, Problem-solving, Strategic thinking, Technical writing, Decision making
• Project / Solution / System - Architect
  • Skills: Detailed knowledge of BPM features, BPM architecture, and configuration to achieve quality attributes (common scalability, security, etc.), Common referenceable BPM design patterns. They are focused on a Project/Solution and Experts on their Product Set.
  • Soft skills: technical writing, critical thinking, problem-solving, social intelligence
• Application Developer
  • Skills: Solution design (Studio), BPMN, UML, Application development (Java, REST, SOAP, .Net), UI (HTML5, CSS), OSGI, SCA, Service Building, Data Modeling, Forms Building
  • Soft skills: technical writing
• Operations Consultant
  • Skills: HA/FT installations, Security, Databases, FS, Messaging
  • Soft skills: technical writing

Enterprise Architect

The responsibilities of the enterprise architect are broad, and encompass:

• Defining the target architecture for the enterprise
• Defining a practical evolution strategy
• Defining reference architecture(s) consistent with the target architecture
• Guiding project teams in evolving toward the enterprise architecture
• Participating directly in projects requiring complex designs
• Training and mentoring project architects

The Role of an Enterprise Architect should know the Business's future requirements and vision.

He should know how to:

• Architect a Solution in regards to reusability, and stable interfaces.
• the design solution for common requirements
• Knowledge about available Product Features and Functions
• Building Reference Architecture and Samples

Other Technical Knowledge

• Enterprise Architecture Methodology (Zachman framework, TOGAF )
• Design methodology (like ATAM)
• Strong understanding of quality attributes.
• software design (separation of concern, encapsulation, ?).

Business Analyst

The Role of a Business Analyst, defining what we are fighting for, and what the result must look like. He should know how to:

• Use Nimbus to drive a Requirements gathering workshop
• Use Studio for Analyst and Studio Designer to produce OrgModels, ProcessModels, Data Models.
• Create ?business-friendly? process models using swimlanes, comments, color coding, annotations ?.
• Produce project HTML documentation and link Studio documentation with Nimbus online documentation
• Produce effective Meeting Notes, Specification documents, communication supports.
• Know AMX BPM distribution features to drive requirement to a ?comfort zone?
• Use ?workflow patterns? to help to identify and specifying the requirements
• Collect ?quality attributes? aka non-functional requirements. (.i.e. SLA?s)

Other Technical Knowledge:

• Agile approach for the product owner
• conduct requirement workshops
• do a formal review of documents
• requirements engineering (gathering, elicitation, specification) and tools (RequisitePro, ?)

Project / Solution / System Architect

The project architect is responsible for defining and communicating the

the overall architecture of the project?s work - the big-picture design. This includes:

• Defining the end-to-end business process and supporting systems dialog
• Identifying and applying appropriate reference architectures
• Identifying existing services that can be used and incorporating them into the design
• Identifying opportunities for new services and engaging enterprise architects to qualify those opportunities and, where appropriate, specify the new services

The Role of a Project/Solution/System Architect should know how to build the TIBCO platform matching the quality attributes (scalability, security, ?).

They are focused on a Project/Solution and Experts on their Product Set (i.e. TIBCO BPM, Business Works, Oracle Databases, FileNet, SAP, IBM Msg Broker, etc.)

Depending on the project Size there are multiple Architects, one for the Project/Solution overall, one for AMX BPM, one Expert for each other Backend Domain, sometimes these Resources working only Part-Time with the Project.

BPM Expert should know how to:

• Architect an AMX based solution (Enterprise, Environments, Nodes, Applications).
• Leverage AMX BPM internal architecture (EC, ProcessManager, WorkManager, API, ?)
• Size the solution in terms of servers, but also in terms of resources (JDBC Connexions, HTTP connexions, Threads pools, ?).
• Implement security options (X.509 Certificates, SSL, SAML, ?)
• Model ?performant? processes.
• Integrate BPM with service infrastructure (SOA): decide on integration strategy (use of mediation, use of JMS as the underlying protocol, position load balancer), select proper integration patterns and protocols (HTTP, JMS, Virtualization).
• Integrate user desktop application with BPM.
• the design solution for common requirements:  error handling (fault detection, exception report), logging, auditing.

Other Technical Knowledge

• Enterprise Architecture Methodology (Zachman framework, TOGAF )
• Design methodology (like ATAM)
• Strong understanding of quality attributes.
• software design (separation of concern, encapsulation, ?).

Application Developer

Depending on the Projects size, this is Role can be split into Spezialist Profiles for:

• BPM, Business Studio Process Modeling, Data Modeling, Org.-Modeling, Form-Modelling, etc.
• SOA, Business Studio Service Modeling, Mediation, Security, and Building Business Works Services/Implementations, etc.

The Role of an Application Developer should cover producing the applications deployed on the Tibco platform to match the business requirements.

Should know how to:

• Use business studio ? Eclipse (working set, perspectives, local history, SVN, ?)
• Use Business Studio for BPM (configuring errors, comparing process versions, ?)
• Create all necessary artifacts: processes, page flows, data model, org model, forms, services.
• implement all workflow patterns, including advanced process modeling (multi-instances loops, signals, intermediate messages ?)
• Develop forms (embedded forms, CSS, localization, js resources, scripting, ?)
• Consume services (use of mediation; generation of WSDL, invoking BPM API, ?)
• Implement work distribution patterns
• Create data models for process, forms, services
• Organize projects for better testability, reusability
• Document code for maintainability.

Other Technical Knowledge:

• Testing tools (including test plan, HP QualityCenter, ?)
• SOAP UI advanced features (Mock, groovy scripts, data transfer, test cases, performance tests, ?)
• Continuous integration tools
• Active reading of the documentation, including requirements!
• You should write review notes about what is clear enough to be implemented and what is missing.

Operations Consultant

The Role of an Operations Consultant contains getting the whole solution up and running ? continuously!

Should know how to:

• Install the products
• Configure HA / FT, Security,
• Script installations
• Service & BPM Process versioning & Migration (Lifecycle Management)
• Plan an installation, plan an upgrade
• Design and execute health tests
• Monitor the solution
• Diagnose problem at level 1 support

Other Technical Knowledge

• How to communicate with production teams!
• Operating Systems
• Databases, File System, Networks (firewalls, security,?).
• Leverage Tibco Silver Fabric!
• Monitoring tools (Nagios, ?)