Designing Efficient BPM Applications

Chapter 4. Managing Starts and Stops

In the previous chapter, you created the first version of the process diagram, matching the basic flow that was described in the requirements.

This chapter considers the overall structure of the Tahiti application, and how the processes within the application start and stop. Helen’s description of the vacation management application that she wants is broken down into a user experience description of the visible elements application, including the usage pattern of each element (what, who, how). This is then used to define the components of the application, how they are related, and how they are started and stopped. At the end of the chapter, you will update the diagram to include more process components.

User Experience Description

This section contains the application description broken down into a set of descriptions of the visible parts of the application, with details of the usage pattern of each one, and an extract of the requirement from Helen.

Application Page with Vacation Statement

What: A summary of days available, booked, and taken, then a table showing requests. Team information for managers. Button to modify or cancel pending vacation requests. Button to cancel an approved vacation request. Button to open a form to create a new request. This is what Helen asked for:

...display the number of days I have available to book, and the number of days booked but not yet taken. This is a kind of “vacation statement,” like a bank statement ...