Business Integration Management using WebSphere BI Modeler and Monitor A Real World Case Study

Chapter 9. Conclusions, lessons learned and next steps 273

9.1.2 The case study development and deployment

Once the project management team in on board, the Business Analyst can start

to organize his project. The first thing is to select a team of employees directly

involved in the end-to-end process. The business integration success starts here

through a participative approach - buy-in is absolutely crucial. We also have to

ensure that the employees will accept this new “tool” and utilize it in their daily

work when it will be deployed in production.Employee education and acceptance

is also crucial.

Process Analysis

At this step the Business Analyst is responsibilities include:

򐂰 Organize meetings with process owners (or participants if the current process

crosses business unit or departmental boundaries).

򐂰 Describe the process and associated mechanisms (many business process

exist informally but must now be formally defined).

򐂰 Get data.

򐂰 Solve organizational conflicts with management help.

򐂰 Keep project on track.

Process modeling

With all the elements coming out from the process analysis, the Business Analyst

can start to model it in the workbench. The first step is to define, with the IT

Specialist, the structure of the model (process, subprocesses). As seen in the

previous chapters the data structure size can influence the way to model the

defined.

In the case study, the philosophy was to exclusively use the workbench to model

all the process aspects without modifying anything in WebSphere MQ Workflow.

The IT and Business Analyst staff had neither workflow nor modeling skills at the

commencement of the project and it was decided that having to pick-up two new

skill sets was not a sensible idea.

The business process models, once developed and deployed, are owned by the

Business Process Analyst. The solution is so close of the employee work

practices that the business people have to drive the solution evolution - not the IT

people. They will support the solution but the ultimate ownership of the

processes remains with the business.

So, the workbench model is the reference of all the changes (even if the

implementation of the process changes have to be managed outside the

workbench. WebSphere MQ Workflow, WebSphere, or any other technical area

274 Modeling and Monitoring

of such business integration solution must be transparent for the business

analyst (and the users).

For example, the following process changes driven by the Business Analyst have

to be reflected into the workbench model:

򐂰 Organization and managers changes.

򐂰 Employees movements (new hired, jobs changes and so on).

򐂰 Process rules and practices.

򐂰 Business measures.

Then, if necessary, when taking the new model to run time, any changes to the

user interface, will have to be designed and developed jointly between the

Business Analyst and the IT Specialist.

Business integration deployment

Once the model is developed, tested, and ready to be deployed to the users, the

users must now be education to use the new tools. (In addition, we suggest that

you write a user guide with screen shots to help them).

In the case study, the education has been done in one session of two hours,

grouping in one room all the employees involved in the end-to-end process. The

attendee list was in fact the organization tree reflected in the workbench model

including their managers.

The education support was the workbench model, projected on a screen, to

follow the process task by task and to explain business rules. Alternatively, the

run time screens were shown to illustrate the form and the progression of the

information all along the process.

As such, for the first time, all the involved employees have seen and understood

their value-add in the chain of tasks for the entire process.

This session has greatly improved their knowledge, not only on the process by

itself, but also on the job performed by their colleagues. Following this session

and based on the participative project management, it was possible to very easily

deploy the case study solution. Employees have immediately adopted the tool, by

the end of the first week eliminating 95% of the e-mails and all the previous

manual tracking to perform the process.

At this stage, business integration is really becoming a collaboration tool, forcing

adherence to the process, acceptance of the tool, and understanding of the

impact of each in the success of the global process operations.