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Chapter 8. Effective Process-Driven Application Planning

Codi Kaji

To ensure success, every process-driven application project should be carefully planned to ensure each effort meets its objectives. This chapter will walk you through the steps to ensure that you can build successful processes. The purpose of this chapter is to define the main K2 components and how they fit into effective process design. In previous chapters, you learned about how to gather business requirements, including the data requirements. In this chapter, you'll get back to the business process that you are automating!

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Defining your process, including selection criteria for candidate processes and how to effectively diagram your process

• Process design principles, including happy and alternate paths

• The "Who," including actors and roles

• The "What," including activities, events, actions, and outcomes

• The "How," including Line and Activity Rules

• The "When," including escalations and notifications

• Advanced process design, including the Spider Workflow approach

It is important to note that we discussed the data requirements with SmartObjects in Chapter 7. In other words, we talked about the business objects before we talked about the process surrounding those entities. A process is meaningless if the right data is not displayed at the right time to the user who needs to make a business decision.

How to Start

The first step in defining your process is to select one. It is important ...