Practical Process Automation

Chapter 5. Championing Workflow Engines and BPMN

This book concentrates on using workflow engines and BPMN to automate processes. Of course, there are other ways of automating processes in the developer’s toolbox. Also, BPMN is not the only process modeling language you can use.

This chapter gives you the background on why I’ve made these choices. This knowledge will hopefully not only convince you, but also help you in discussions with your company or organization about why certain scenarios can benefit from a workflow engine and BPMN. Feel free to skip this chapter if you simply want to move ahead and learn more about process automation; you can always come back to it later. This chapter:

• Explains alternatives to using a workflow engine, and the trade-offs you should be aware of

• Describes different options for process modeling languages and explains why I consider BPMN to be the best choice

• Briefly touches on process automation with blockchain, as it often comes up as a topic that nobody really understands

Limitations of Other Implementation Options

There are many common ways that developers use every day to automate processes. Each of these implementations has its own shortcomings, and all of them could benefit from the adoption of a workflow engine. Let’s explore how the typical alternatives work.

Hardcoded Processes

Hardcoded process automation was covered in “Wild West Integrations”. There is not much to add, but I wanted to include the headline here for completeness. ...