RE: Definition of business process

[Bob Haugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

Cory Casanave wrote:
> It may be better to position ebXML as having a specification (not model) of
> the externally visible (e-) business process. 

When I first read this, I agreed on the external vs internal aspect,
but was not sure about the specification vs model aspect.

After reading Christian Huemer's message (excerpted below),
I am persuaded that models will be valuable. (Imagine that,
persuaded by somebody's argument on a mailing list...)

>i think ebXML will only be successful, if SMEs are reliefed
>from the burden of the mapping process. this means that
>inexpensive software which allows interchanging without
>prior agreements must be available. accordingly business
>solution software providers have to include modules into 
>their software- which are 'ebXML'-compliant (or at least 
>compliant to some ebXML business transactions) and will
>be responsible for the communication and internal integration
>aspects of the software.

>what does that all mean to modelling? 
>the users of the models are not the end-users. the users of
>the models are the software providers, the programmers who
>are responsible for delivering the above mentioned modules.
>and programmers should not be afraid of UML models. 

>btw, Bob we did not change our name because we want to concentrate
>on business modelling (if so we would be the business
>process modelling project team :-) ). rather it is true
>that we wanted to get rid of 'methodology'. because the
>decision was made that we not create/select a methodology
>to produce the artifacts of the business modelling phase.
>we just want to define a meta-model that is able to
>capture the artifacts. the question is now: which artifacts
>would that be?

Thanks, Christian.  I still think it should be the external
relationships between parties, not the internal workings
of companies.  But I understand that is a fuzzy boundary.

Also, the tendency is for more business processes to
be externalized into Internet business services: for example,
construction projects, forecast collaboration, supply chain
synchronization.  

And several industries are typically outsourced to the extreme, 
so that almost every process is external to every other process:  
electronics, medical devices, etc.  

But the models that work for multi-company collaboration systems 
can be significantly different from those that work for 
internal-to-one-company systems.

However, given all that complexity, I still think that simple
exchanges between parties is a good place to start.

Regards,
Bob Haugen