Subject: Business Collaboration Patterns discussion starting
Over in the CC-BP Methodology and Analysis group, we are starting a discussion of Business Collaboration Patterns. These are common, repeated and stereotypical business conversations happening at the Business Collaboration level of the UMM-ebXML metamodel. UMM already contains Interaction Patterns at the Business Service level and Transaction Patterns at the Business Transaction level. See the first document on the BP Resources and References page: http://www.ebxml.org/project_teams/business_process/wip/resources/index.html (watch for word wrap). The transaction patterns are in Chapter 4. The Transaction Patterns in particular make it much easier for business process modelers to do their work: e.g. the business transactions have already been modeled, or "leave the modeling to us". Business Collaboration Patterns are intended to take this same "already modeled" state up to the collaboration level. (Collaborations are groups of transactions.) The first pattern we will start with is called Order-Fulfillment-Settlement. (This is probably the only one that will get done by our Feb 17 due date.) Order-Fulfillment-Settlement is probably the most common business collaboration pattern. It is characteristic of economic exchanges between companies. I'll first describe this pattern in (maybe annoyingly) abstract terminology from the UMM "Economic Elements". Then I'll describe an example in more everyday terms. By "Order", we mean a type of EconomicContract which contains group of Commitments between trading partners, for example a Purchase Order where the Line Items are Commitments. Commitments are promises to execute specific EconomicEvents in the future: for example, an Order Line Item often represents a commitment from a supplier to delivery some goods, and a reciprocal commitment from the customer to pay for them. EconomicEvents are transfers of ownership from one trading partner to another: for example, delivering the goods, or making the payment. Fulfillment means a relationship where an EconomicEvent fulfills a Commitment: for example, delivery of the goods fulfills the commitment to deliver. Or, if this is a prepay scenario, making the payment fulfills the commitment to pay. Settlement means a relationship where one EconomicEvent compensates for a previous EconomicEvent in the same collaboration. I use "settlement" as the last term in the name of the pattern, because payment might not be the last transaction. Also, the relationship here is between one EconomicEvent and another, although the final transaction could also be the fulfillment of a commitment. The distinction is because if (for example) the supplier only delivers part of the committed goods, the customer is only obligated to pay for the goods received, not the whole quantity on the order line item. (Or settlement could mean settling claims rising from disputes or penalties.) At the most abstract level, this is pretty close to a universal business pattern. However, there are many variations: prepayment or postpayment, payment through an intermediary, shipment from an intermediary, etc. Also, many things can go wrong: commitments may not be fulfilled, or may be only partially fulfilled, or may be fulfilled late. Advanced notifices of shipments and payments may not jibe with that was actually received. Etc. We want to capture in the pattern as many of the things that can go wrong as seems useful, and leave slots in the pattern for business process modelers to specify remedial actions. The deliverable will be a business process model (hopefully defined using the Business Process Editor) along with a description of the pattern and some of the many variations. None of above will be complete or perfect by Feb 17. If you want to help, the discussion will be carried on this list: ebxml-ccbp-analysis@lists.ebxml.org and on Wednesday conference calls which will be announced on that list. Current participants in alphabetical order: Jamie Clark Jim Clark Bob Haugen Ann Hendry Bill McCarthy Karsten Riemer Nita Sharma David Welsh We need examples. We'll start with Dave Welsh's Nordstrom.com drop-ship scenario. More are welcome. We will use Bill McCarthy's REA semantic model as our reference (it is the reference model behind the economic elements in UMM). http://www.msu.edu/user/mccarth4/ This activity will also feed into the parallel discussion of what kinds of collaboration choreography expressions ebXML needs to support. The collaboration patterns and examples will be sources of business requirements. Thanks for your attention, Bob Haugen
Powered by
eList eXpress LLC