InDetail

Innovator for Business Analysts

an agile Business Process modelling tool
An InDetail Paper by Bloor Research Author : David Norfolk Publish date : October 2011

Innovator 11 for Business Analysts is an effective way to exploit BPMN in practice, as it is focussed on the whole Business Analyst role (not just on BPMN) and is part of a larger family of tools that can re-use and extend its models
David Norfolk

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Executive summary
These days, almost all business processes are partly automatedthe business runs on software. For too long, however, development of automated business systems has resided in an IT silo. Too often systems are developed rightbut arent the right systems; that is, they arent systems that satisfy a particular business need, effectively and completely. Business Process Modelling allows us to begin to address this issue. It focuses on understanding the business process and optimising it for business outcomes, driven by business managements strategic vision for the business. In some ways, this marks a return to the original systems analysis concept, in which a whole business process was analysed, a context diagram identified its inputs and outputs, and a man-machine boundary identified a subset of its sub-processes for automation. The mantra in those days (the 1970s/80s) was that systems analysis could often tell you enough about what could be improved in a process to make buying more technology unnecessary. In essence, modelling provides an effective way of understanding and controlling the complexity of business processes and systems considered as a whole (not just the computerised parts of the system). Models provide a lingua franca, allowing all stakeholders in the business process to communicate effectively in pursuit of a business goal. In the past, nevertheless, modelling often failed to live up to these promises due to a lack of effective standards; difficulty in building and sharing models (even with modelling tools, building a model was often as difficult as writing code; and model artefacts had to be retyped if they were used anywhere). The root problem was that modelling was taken over by the IT group, which focussed on technology models rather than business models. The net result was that business modelling, if used at all, was used informally, models werent checked for completeness and consistency (a valuable aid to early defect removal) and business models rapidly became out date and didnt reflect the operational business (or its IT systems) properly. These days, in the 21st century, these issues have mostly been addressed. Standards are available for business modelling as well as for model-driven development. The Object Management Group (OMG)s Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) provides an open-standard notation for building business process models that, together with a family of OMG model-driven development standards around UML, allows these models to be used as part of the development of partly-automated business systems, if that is what the business wants. Moreover, increasing business complexity (driven by globalisation, Internet commerce and loosely coupled service-oriented architectures) has made the use of models for managing business complexity and business process optimisation almost essential. Luckily, agile new tools, typified by Innovator for Business Analysts, have emerged, which make building, maintaining and using models easier than ever before. Automated validation of these models enables errors in understanding to be identified early on and addressed; thus removing defects before they impact the business or get set in stone in the computer code behind an automated system. Institutionalising business process modelling and exploiting it effectively for optimising and improving the business is facilitated by good tool support for modelling, although these tools are still only technology enablers. People have to understand the need for modelling and buy in to it in practice; and modelling has to become part of the organisations process. Still, once you do get people and process on board, a good tool helps to institutionalise modelling and remove barriers to its use. A good modelling tool will offer:

Low cost provisioning/de-provisioning options (that is, SaaS delivery and/or an evaluation tool with near full functionality).

Timely support for changes to any appropriate standards (although any stable tool will lag behind the leading edge of the standards).

Ease of use and the automatic formatting

of diagrams for readability (the removal of crossing lines and so on) so that it is as easy to draw neat diagrams in the tool as on paper.

Automated (and customisable) validity, consistency and completeness checks (early removal of errors in the understanding of business processes is a key advantage of process modelling).

A Bloor InDetail Paper

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Executive summary
Integration with a set of tools that address
other aspect of the business model (such as data structures), via different views into a single model. A free Personal Edition of the tool is available for training and proofs of concept. Key findings In the opinion of Bloor Research, the following represent the key facts of which prospective users should be aware:

Production (optionally) of executable models

for operational use and/or links to tools that can generate executable code, thus ensuring that the model and the business are kept in synchronisation.

Innovator 11 (Version 11 R4) for Business

Analysts is an effective OMG-standard BPMN modelling tool. It supports most of the current OMG BPMN 2.0 standard and is committed to supporting updates to the standard as development permits.

Support for team working, with several teams

sharing the same model, without conflict. MIDs Innovator 11 (Version 11 Release 4) for Business Analysts, distributed by Aptero Solutions worldwide and in the UK, satisfies these requirements pretty well. It is important to distinguish tools like Innovator from tools such as Visio or PowerPoint, which can draw pictures of models but which cant automatically check models for completeness and consistency, nor can they transform them into anything the business can use operationally. It is also important to emphasise that BPMN modelling is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end: which is business process optimisation; or, the better management of effective business outcomes. A useful BPMN modelling tool, such as Innovator, supports the business, not just modelling it; and has features such as logical views and XMI-based metadata import/export, so that its assets can be re-used elsewhere. Fast facts Innovator 11 (Version 11 R4) for Business Analysts is a German product, from MID GmbH, but is distributed and supported in the UK by Aptero Solutions, a company with a strong provenance (many of its key personal come from the well-respected Select development tools company). Innovator for Business Analysts is a BPMN modelling tool that addresses the needs of the Business Analyst role as a whole rather than just enabling BPMN modelling. Innovator for Business Analysts is part of a larger Innovator tool-set supporting other roles (such as Software and Database Architects), with all these tools sharing a common model. MID is committed to supporting the OMGs BPMN standard.

This tool targets a role: the Business Analyst. This means that it is more than just a BPMN modelling tool and supports, for example, basic UML functionality as needed for this role.

This tool supports the formalisation of the

relationships between business roles and software models.

This tool provides innovative features such as

process animation (an animated representation of complex paths through a process) and a whiteboard (which allows different models and even teams to be active in one diagram), which can facilitate user buy-in and collaborative modelling.

A free version of Innovator for Business

nalysts, with reduced functionality, is availA able for stand-alone proof of concept business modelling.

The tool is also part of a family of tools (including, for instance, Innovator for Database Architects and Innovator for Software Architects) and which can share a common model via a metadata repository. This should help support development of effective business systems instead of mere models.

This is a German tool but is being distributed

and supported in the UK by Aptero Solutions, which is also developing innovative plugins for Innovator, supporting, for example, a reusable asset library. There is already a plug-in for SAP, to help you import the SAP processes from the SAP Solution Manager and customise them to your own processes.

2011 Bloor Research

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Executive summary
The bottom line Standardisation of BPMN by the OMG and an increasing need to understand and manage increasing business complexity has led to a renewed interest in modelling business processes with BPMN. Innovator 11 (Version 11 Release 4) for Business Analysts is an effective way to ex ploit BPMN in practice, as it is focussed on the whole Business Analyst role (not just on BPMN) and is part of a larger family of tools that can re-use and extend its models. Bloor Research recommends that any company should consider exploring BPMN modelling for business process analysis and optimisation. The free Personal Edition of Innovator for Business Analysts could easily support a significant proof of concept. Even building purely business models, organisations can expect to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes as the model clarifies issues and poor process; once this becomes part of how we do things here for an organisation, the enterprise version of Innovator for Business Analysts appears to provide all the functionality necessary. Innovator then offers the possibility of building parts of the model as automated operational processes. This is a real bonus as a model than can, in part, be transformed into automation is a model that is truly part of the business and will be maintained as the business evolves.

A Bloor InDetail Paper

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

Product implementation Innovator 11 (Version 11 R4) for Business Analysts runs on Windows 7 (the earliest version supported is Windows XP SP3) and uses its own database. It requires Microsoft .NET 3.5 with Service Pack 1. It is not particularly demanding of resources (the Personal Edition takes up just under 1Gb and can be installed from a USB drive onto an average netbook and works well-enough for training), although a powerful PC and (in particular) a large screen is recommended. The Personal Edition doesnt support the UML features (Class Diagrams, State Diagrams for analysing business objects, Use Case diagrams); mask flow diagrams (a BPMN extension for requirements modelling), requirements, the collaboration features (multiuser access, real-time collaboration, user and rights management); and has no hotline support. Its models cant be imported into the full-featured Enterprise Edition. It has an unlimited license. The Professional Edition adds the features omitted from the Personal Edition, with the exception of multi-user collaboration support. Theres also a 60-day demo licence, although the Personal Edition makes this a bit superfluous. The Enterprise Edition supports all of the Innovator for Business Analysts features, including more complete integration with Microsoft Office. A 60-day demo license is available. All versions can be downloaded from http:// www.mid.de/en/products/innovator-for-business-analysts/downloads.html. Innovator integrates strongly with the Microsoft Office environment (an Innovator Office Integration add-on to Microsoft Word, which needs its own license and Word 2007 or higher, is available for the Enterprise Edition), which seems to be a significant part of MIDs marketing strategy. Enterprise users, who are usually familiar with MS Office, can add requirements and business rules to process models through Microsoft Word. As Innovator provides a specialised editor for each role, keeps external documents synchronised with the model, and provides notification to appropriate people when anything changes, this should effectively encourage stakeholder participation. Generally, even with the Personal and Professional editions, Innovator works just like any other Office-based tool for editing, copy & paste, printing and so on. We applaud this approach, as we believe that the participation of all stakeholders in the modelling process is vital and life is too short for the important business stakeholders to learn a new interface. It is perhaps a pity that Open Office isnt supported explicitly (we dont think that tying an organisations cultural toolset to a major commercial vendor is a great idea) but the MS Office interface is reasonably similar to the Open Office interface in practice, in our experience, although some of the integration features wont work with Open Office. A SaaS-hosted implementation of Innovator isnt available at present. This is, perhaps, a pity; but the availability of the Personal Edition for training, evaluation and proofs of concept probably renders SaaS less of an issue. In any case, MID tells us that it will have a SaaS version of the Innovator repository available in 2012. This will mean that users who want to get started quickly will just have to install some 40 Mb of client application; no data is stored locally and the repository (including configuration services and consultancy, if needed) is hosted by MID. Architecture MID Innovator is a suite of tools that brings together standards-based business process modelling and software modelling. It currently consists of 3 independent standalone modelling toolsInnovator for Business Analysts, Innovator for Database Architects, Innovator for Software Architects (supplemented with Innovator Office Integration)all sharing common models, held on the shared Team Server.
Innovator for Business Analysts Innovator for Database Architects Innovator for Software Architects

Innovator Team Server

Figure1: MID Architecture

Functionality
Business-driven IT

Although all the modules in the Innovator set are interesting, and it is significant and important that theyre there, this report just concentrates on Innovator for Business Analysts. This

2011 Bloor Research

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

could be an important catalyst for businessdriven IT (which is really just IT which considers all of its stakeholders and is directed by the stakeholders who are paying the bills). It models business processes, requirements, task flows, business objects and use cases, using (mainly) the OMG standards Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN 2.0) and Unified Modelling Language (UML 2.1). At Bloor, we believe that a model-driven approach to improving and optimising business processes (which may not always involve automating them, although it often will), with a focus on business outcomes, is an effective part of better business governance. That is, it is an important part of achieving business outcomes, with delivered business value, without waste.
BPMN and UML

For example, although BPMN is businessfocussed, the IT group could well find business process models useful to help it to ensure that it builds the right IT systems, as well as building them right. In essence, BPMN, used properly and with appropriate tools, supports effective knowledge transfer between all of the stakeholders in a business. Achieving this will need good management, focussing on the associated people and process issues, not just on tools and technology. Nevertheless, it is always worth noting that raw BPMN, in all its power, no matter how business-focussed, is often not particularly to the liking of business stakeholders in practice. It is important that BPMN modelling tools support stakeholder-specific views into the models, support simplified dialects of BPMN in a formal way and generally remove barriers between business users and the models. We believe that Innovator for Business Analysts makes a reasonably good attempt at achieving this (we note, in particular, the whiteboard diagram and process animation; see below). However, some business users will see any attempt to define and improve what they do as an intrusion or a threat and may use the need to learn even a user-friendly tool as an excuse for not getting involved. BPMN-aware business analysts should never underestimate the investment needed in selling modelling and its benefits to the business as a precursor to success, just because the benefits of BPMN modelling are obvious to themselves.
Collaborative modelling and team working

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a vendor-independent open standard, maintained by the OMG (Object Management Group), for describing business process models in a business process diagram (BPD). These diagrams use familiar flowcharting techniques and are similar to activity diagrams in the Unified Modelling Language (UML), another OMG open standard. BPMN (like UML 2) is based on a proper underlying metamodel (written in the OMGs MOF), which ensures a measure of completeness and consistency, and is intended to support business process management for a range of both technology- and business-oriented stakeholders. It can be used for abstracted, high-level models that are intuitive for business users, as well as also accommodating complex process semantics at a level suitable for process execution. It is important to distinguish a model with inherent structure from a mere picture, such as can easily be produced in Visio or PowerPoint. The BPMN specification includes mappings to the non-graphical OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSB PEL) standard. However, it is worth repeating that although BPMN models can be taken to a level of detail needed to support automated business processes, they need not be. BPMN focuses on business processes generally; it is emphatically not intended just for processes running on a particular technology or just for the needs of the IT group. Nevertheless, the critical success factor for BPMN modelling is that it is embedded in an organisation and used to support all aspects of model-driven business process optimisation.

Innovator supports collaborative development of BPMN business models; that is to say, teams can reuse each others process or sub-process models. Obviously, this has to be controlled and currently, this is through a fairly simple ownership mechanism. Innovator displays re-used processes, but in view only mode; and when the process owner changes a reused process those changes are propagated to all places where the process is being reused. Of course, if the changes radically affect the process functional description, this might break models relying on the changing process; wed like to see something more sophisticated around full configuration management in later releases, although the latest Innovator release has already introduced versioning on the server, needing just a mouse click and assignation of a version name. Configuration management sounds like overkill until you think about the

A Bloor InDetail Paper

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

models driving the implementation of business process; together with the reality of business change, where migration from old process to new process may take several years, department by department, and you may still be optimising an old process after the migration to a new process has started. Innovator has a whiteboard diagram, which is probably its key innovation in the collaboration area as far as its users are concerned. The whiteboard allows you to display several active models in the same space, with different teams owning parts of the whiteboard.
Just enough modeling for requirements Regulatory support

MID sees the changing regulatory environment (especially Solvency II, which seems to mandate maintenance of process models) as a key driver for the greater adoption of business modelling. Models help to bridge the communications gap between business stakeholders, auditors, regulators etc. and technologists. This needs a tool that provides:

Version management, at least. A secure audit trail for changes made to the
model.

Innovator doesnt force users to maintain heavyweight models if they are not useful. For example, one large telecomms company is attaching text specifications (in Word) to model elements in order to structure them: requirements then become snippets of text on model elements. This is an example of just enough modelling being usefulyou dont need to go all the way down to the OMGs Object Constraint Language if mere text, with a model providing structure, is enough to be useful.
Reporting

Strong access security. Managed access by different stakeholders.

Innovator for Business Analysts meets these requirements pretty well now, although future developments will no doubt improve support for regulatory functions further. For example, Innovator has always provided good support for versioning. However the concept of change sets (introduced in Version 11 Release 4) provides a more effective audit trail by providing the possibility of grouping changes to the model (by objective, say) and allowing the user to annotate the change set with a description of its purpose, thus providing a complete and effective audit trail for models. Always being able to find out who changed what in a model, and when, makes collaboration more effective, and might be essential when a model is part of a compliance story. The promised future support for configuration management will extend this further, although were not sure that the need to merge files from an external configuration management system (an inefficiency Innovator claims to avoid currently) is all that much of an overhead in practice. Innovator does appear to have a decent security model and manages access to models by access rights, roles and groups of similar users. Collaboration between regulators and business analysts is also well supported; different stakeholders can share models at the same time, even if they are in different locations, which mitigate the overheads of sharing information using email.

An important metric for any modelling tool is usage, including usage well outside of the core modelling space. Ideally you want the business (certainly not the IT group) to own the tool. This is facilitated by, say, the CEOs secretary using it to print organisation charts for his/her boss, rather than asking someone else to do it, and Innovators office-like user interface is an important factor here. It is also facilitated by easy connections; for example, a business rule in a Word document can be easily assigned to an element in a business process by a drag & drop interaction; and then a change in the rule definition in the document will automatically appear in the business process. This traceability helps to embed models in the general business process and makes managing change more effective. Of course, Innovator also has a flexible documentation interface, which gives users rolespecific views on the underlying models; and it generates customisable Microsoft Word and HTML reports, for conventional and web (e.g. Intranet) distribution. This facilitates the use of consistent document styles, even across multiple teams.

2011 Bloor Research

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

QA, communication and review

An important aspect of modelling is its potential for identifying errors in peoples understanding of processes or conflicts in different stakeholders views. Also, of course, useful models need to be correct, as far as is necessary for the uses being made of them (pursuing accuracy beyond the point where it is useful is a waste of resources, of course).

A review mode is provided to allow stakeholders to review processes.

On the other hand, customisation takes up resources that are better used for addressing business optimisation and can provide a continuing overhead every time a new version of the tool is released. Bending the tool to the process only makes sense if your particular process is giving you a competitive edge; for routine process, you might as well adopt whatever commodity process is built into the tool. We believe that just enough customisation, used only where it delivers real benefit, is the best approach. Luckily, MID seems to have got the balance about right for Innovator for Business Analysts:

Models can be annotated (in a similar way to

how one would annotate a Word document), so issues can be captured immediately, as the review proceeds.

Simple BPMN dialects can be defined, using

simple declarative modification of both models and notations. This can ease adoption and extend usage to wider and less-involved stakeholders, thus easing institutionalisation of modelling.

These annotations are managed by the

nnovator server, so they are accessible to I all the collaborating stakeholders. One of the problems with reviewing a model is that most ordinary people find it boring and miss issues. Innovator addresses this with Animator for business processes, which enables an animated representation of complex paths through a process. This just requires a simple path definition and the animation zooms automatically into sub-processes. Innovators whiteboard feature could also have a useful place in the review process, especially at the system level, where you would expect several different teams and stakeholders to be involved. There used to be some, not very serious, limitations to the whiteboard: for example, organisation charts could be added but the assignment of organisation chart elements such as roles to pools, lanes & processes wasnt displayed, although manually added dependencies can be displayed. Removing such limitations is a key improvement in Innovator version 11, Release 4, and the whiteboard now supports full visualisation of both UML and the relationship of conceptual to physical database design.
Customising Innovator for Business Analysts

For advanced users, the Innovator API can

be accessed by scripts written in Java or any .NET language.

Innovator has a configurable validation

engine; you may need extra validation for, e.g., matching gateways that are needed for automated execution of business process models (BPMN doesnt mandate sufficient detail for execution but a lot of BPMN v 2.0 is about making sure execution is possible if needed).

The Innovator client can be extended with

downloadable plug-Ins.
Product support

There is an active Innovator support forum at http://www.mid.de/en/support/forum.htmlif (in practice) you speak German, although no doubt English speakers could contribute (German speakers are usually better linguists than Americans or the English). Theres a useful English language blog at http://blog.apterosolutions.com/. MID offers consulting services and hotline support (both email and phone) from its website. It also runs the MID Academy, offering a rich training resource, from http://www.mid. de/en/academy/mid-academy.html. Aptero provides a useful series of BPMN, UML and Agile training courses, in English, at http:// www.apterosolutions.co.uk/training.html and also supports the MID solutions it resells.

We are in two minds about customising modelling tools. Of course, it is good to be able to minimise any barriers to adoption (but Innovator already has an Office look and feel) and you dont want your tool to drive your process just because it is too inflexible to cope with what you want to do. Low-cost cosmetic changes to suit your culture can also help prospective users buy in to using the tool.

A Bloor InDetail Paper

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

An academic license and support is available effectively, freefor academic organisations such as universities and their students; see, for example, http://www.apterosolutions. co.uk/academic-support.html. We think this is extremely forward-looking; in conjunction with the Personal Edition, MID is nurturing, with luck, a new generation of business analysts using modelling as a matter of course
Differentiators

Supporting products Innovator for Business Analysts is, essentially, an agile, customisable tool that can be extended with add-ins. At present, there are two add-ins addressing existing de facto standard business technology environments. The SAP Solution Manager plug-in lets you compare both SAP-standard and customer-specific processes using BPMN models; this facilitates the customisation of SAP standard solutions to customer-specific needs. It also helps you visualise how the SAP Solution Manager workflows can support your own business processes. Innovator Office Integration lets you create, update and maintain requirements from within Innovator models, using Word, the de facto business office suite standard. Wed probably like an add-in for Open Office toobut theres no technology barrier to providing this, if there is sufficient demand. Innovator for Business Analysts is built as part of a complementary suite of modular tools on a common platform, sharing a common model/ repository and each targeting different roles:

MIDs biggest competitors for Innovator, in practice, are the do nothing option (adopted by people who dont understand the need for modelling) and ordinary office productivity tools. The most used modelling tools (in reality, these are just tools for visualising models) are probably textual tools like Word and pictorial tools such as Visio. However, a picture (even a verbal one) is not a model. Innovator is based on formally defined models that have structure, which means they can be automatically checked for completeness and consistency and, ideally, transformed into an automated system/subsystem. For example:

Unlike with Visio diagrams, with Innovator

BPMN, renaming a process element renames the element in any process where this element occurs, even when another team, at a different location, is working on the model.

Innovator for Software Architects/Innovator

Object provides component-based objectoriented development based on the OMG standard Unified Modelling Language (UML 2.1). Using this, an IT developer can take a BPMN process from a business analyst and model its use cases in UML for a service implementation directly connected to the BPMN process, thus bridging the gap between business and IT. Similarly, business object models can be linked to the design models used by IT. Innovator for Software Architects is based on Innovator Objecta proven IT-oriented UML 2 tool.

Innovator supports relationships; for example: a lane in a process can be assigned to an organisational unit.

Innovator provides automated model checks

that validate the model, helping users to avoid making mistakes and introducing inconsistencies across teams and users. In terms of other proper modelling tools, MIDs differentiator is that it is more than just a BPMN modelling tool but one that addresses a whole role, that of business analyst. It therefore has an Office look-and-feel and extends BPMN and UML modelling with powerful additional diagrams such as organisational charts (which can be connected with business processes), user interface flows and information modelling. Innovator has a properly modular architecture; add-ins for integration with Office and SAP are a symptom of this.

Innovator for Database Architects delivers

flexible data modelling using the OMGs Information Management Metamodel (IMM); Entity-Relationship Modelling (ERM) and Structured Entity-Relationship Modelling (SERM). It is a full-featured database modelling tool, supporting the usual enterprise DBMSs: IBM DB2/Informix, Oracle DB/MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, etc. It supports both reverse and forward engineering: in other words you can implement a physical database from Innovator or

2011 Bloor Research

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Innovator for Business Analysts

capture information (it supports the ISO IDEFIX notation for physical database description) as a basis for future database changes, from an existing physical database. Conceptual data modelling using standard notations (such as ER/Chen and UML) is supported and MID sees this as an opportunity to exploit Oracles dropping of support for conceptual modelling, which MID believes has left some Oracle customers rather unhappy. The conceptual models can be viewed in various ways, suited to different stakeholders, meaning that these stakeholders can use a familiar user interface and employ the information in Innovator to support enterprise architecture, business intelligence and master data management activities. Innovator can also map conceptual models onto physical designs and compare asis physical database designs with should be and future designs, thus assisting with change and impact management.

A Bloor InDetail Paper

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Customer stories/case studies

As is common with the financial services and similar organisations that make up MIDs customer base, the customers involved in the case studies below asked to remain anonymous.

A translation case study, from pictures to models

Background

and links to other elements, are subsequently represented on diagrams.

Analysts and process users can navigate between process workflows, from the calling of a process on one diagram to the full visual representation of that process on another.

Phil Webb of Aptero Solutions, MIDs worldwide distributor/partner, has been working with an international banking group to improve its modelling and development processes.
The problem

Processes can be rolled out to process users

through Innovator itself, or as a generated and customised HTML website, or through an integrated process report in a generated Word or PDF document.

This organisation has invested considerable resources in producing a large number of Microsoft Visio process diagrams, which visu ally describe its processes. Each diagram is complemented with a separately-maintained Microsoft Word document, which holds a detailed step-by-step process description, and includes documentation of the roles represented by the various process lanes. This has been professionally implemented and maintained, as the Visio pictures and Word documents are pretty much in synchronisation, even down to unique identifiers for each step and gateway. However, this involves a significant overhead for its process analysis activities, although the investment need not be wasted, as it allows easier migration to more powerful and costeffective modelling tools.
The solution

This brings all stakeholders together and

makes process improvement (optimisation) both easier and more error-free. According to Webb, a significant benefit of the migration was that we were able to highlight problems with the original Visio diagrams and Word descriptions, through Innovators neat annotationsopen the BPMN diagram and the annotations show you where and what the problems are, whether they are the result of incorrectly linked connectors in Visio or misnamed items where matching descriptions could not be found in Word. Processes are now defined once, which makes renaming or changing a description a simple activity, and this encourages agility. Textual descriptions of processes and process steps (tasks in BPMN-speak) can be viewed just by clicking on the process or task, rather than having to refer to both Visio picture and Word description. Roles can be modelled in an organisation chart and associated to lanes or processes; as Webb says, imagine clicking on your role in an org chart and being able to immediately navigate to the processes or tasks that are the responsibility of your role.
Conclusion

Using the public APIs of Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word and Innovator for Business Analysts, Aptero Solutions has been able to build a Visio-to-BPMN migration utility, which translates pictures of process models in Visio to be valid Innovator BPMN models. Webb is fully aware that some people will see this as merely moving pictures from a familiar environment to diagrams in a less familiar one, but he maintains that the organisation will not only see benefits for its process analysts and their process users, in the longer term, but also an immediate gain in both accuracy and lower maintenance overheads, from use of a proper modelling tool with automated completeness and consistency checks.
Benefits

As a result of migrating from Visio pictures to Innovator BPMN models:

Both the pictorial and descriptive information is in one place.

The visualisations and textual descriptions

are tied together through Innovatorwhere model elements, with descriptive information

The migration makes life easier for all involved and, if the people and process aspects of BPMN modelling are managed properly, this should facilitate greater buy in to the modelling process, more use of the models by a wider community, and a better return on the investment in modelling. Webb concludes that, Visio is perhaps one of the most commonly used tools for drawing process workflows. However, I aim to continue to persuade people that using a BPMN modelling tool like Innovator instead can make a significant improvement to the costs and usefulness of building and distributing valid process descriptions.

2011 Bloor Research

10

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Customer stories/case studies

An IT process management case study
Background

A manager in the Computer Science department of a large German insurance company told us about starting the journey with Innovator for Business Analysts. This company manages property and casualty insurance, life insurance, health insurance and home loans for private clients, together with motor insurance, private liability household insurance and occupational pensions. It has over 9.5 million customers and around 8,500 employees, so it is a large enterprise, where effective process governance is at a premium.
The problem

It also sees a potential for bringing IT process in line with business process, for general governancebut this hasnt started yet. The organisation has a strong departmental structure and the Computer Science department has submitted a proposal to senior management for extending the use of Innovator for Business Analysts to business departments but this hasnt been accepted as we write this. There is a general feeling that business process management is already being satisfactorily managed by different parts of the organisation anyway.
Benefits

Structured, maintainable documentation is now available as a basis for process improvement/optimisation in the Computer Science department. A proof of concept for Innovator for Business Analysts is now available as a basis for possible wider deployment in future, and possible integration with other MID Innovator tools. In essence, Innovator for Business Analysts helps to improve IT governance and this project has improved both this and the organisations understanding of the use of tools such as MID Innovator for Business Analysts. Our contact, for instance, understands that, you must always consider the level you want to work at were working at a high (ITIL process) level and delivering something useful, but more detailed models, for code generation etc., could be usefuljust not yet.
Conclusion

The Computer Science department has been engaged on a 2-year project analysing IT processes in the interests of better governance and has produced extensive Word, PowerPoint and Visio documentation. It now wants to convert this into more structured, maintainable documentation.
The solution

Innovator for Business Analysts was chosen for this project after a comparison exercise with other tools:

The organisation already had other Innovator

tools, so they were familiar and there is potential for future integration (although this hasnt happened yet).

BPMN modelling promises to be a futureproof standard.

An early start on productive modelling with

Innovator for Business Analysts is possibletheres no 12 week barrier while you put underlying structures into the tool and get to understand its workings.

Little up-front training is needed for

nnovator for Business Analysts (its Office I look and feel helps but isnt the only aspect of this). The organisation now has its structured documentation in Innovator for Business Analysts; it can standardise and evaluate its models and look for opportunities for process improvement. For example, it has a matrix of work groups to process relationships and can optimise this.

Innovator for Business Analysts can deliver immediate benefits to a large, mature organisation and provides lots of opportunities to exploit both the tool and, more important, business process modelling. This organisation claims success from using Innovator for Business Analysts to improve the structure and quality of its high-level IT process documentation as a basis for process improvement. The tool is being used within the IT department and it sees possibilities for expansion of the tool into the business arena, although whether there are sufficient benefits to justify doing this are under discussion with the groups responsible. In a mature organisation there are lots of people (cultural), process and organisational barriers to expanding its use. Implementing business process modelling for process

A Bloor InDetail Paper

11

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Customer stories/case studies

improvement across the whole organisation might be useful, but it is a journey and you must plan to deliver immediate benefits and gain acceptance for the tool, if you are to get more from it in the future. Nevertheless, this case study shows that the, not insignificant, barriers to adoption of BPMN modelling by a Computer Science department can be overcome. A low barrier to entry with a tool that can be used immediately to deliver something practically useful is key to successful implementation.

2011 Bloor Research

12

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

The vendor
Vendor background MID Gmbh is a Nuremberg software and consultancy agency with many years of experience with methodology and project management incorporated in its MID modelling methodology, M3. It is ISO 9001 certified. The MID management team can be reviewed at http://www.mid. de/en/company/management.html. It is now delivering a next-generation roleoriented and business-focussed development platform supporting a range of standardsbased (BPMN and UML) modelling tools. These tools have a Microsoft Office look and feel, as business users expect these days, and the different tools are appropriate to different roles (such as data and business analysis), all sharing the same repository. The overall goal of this toolset is to help organisations to bridge the gap between business process description and optimisation and conventional technologyoriented systems development. In addition, the MID Academy offers an extensive training program, as well as in-house qualification courses tailored to a particular companys needs. MIDs User Group has been recently reorganised as an independent and self-sufficient user community, supported by, but not controlled by MIDa development which we at Bloor heartily welcome. MID is privately owned by a Swiss equity investor with an engineering background, who takes an active interest in both MID and in software development generally. The company isnt being obviously micro-managed by the money people and the MD responsible for Product Development and Management, Jochen Seemann, has been given a mandate for the long term development of high-quality solutions. This means, for example, that MID consultancy is not being treated as a profit centre (although it no doubt pays for itself) but as a way to ensure customer satisfaction and to develop long-term relationships with large companies. MID GmbH currently has about 110 employees, and has its headquarters in Germany. It has branch offices in Cologne, Stuttgart and Munich. MID Gmbh web site: www.mid.de A free subscription to MIDs Modelling Magazine can be downloaded at http://www.mid.de/ en/company/modeling-magazine.html.
Worldwide distributor

Aptero Solutions (www.apterosolutions.com) is MIDs worldwide distributor and partner. Intellectually, Aptero Solutions is an informal child of that well-respected producer of softwareautomated business solutions, Select. Many of its key personnel are ex-Select employees As its name suggests, Aptero Solutions places great emphasis on working at the business level to solve business issues: We are committed to deliver software solutions to your business requirements. We pin down your pain point, take on your challenges and get your systems doing what you want them to dotaken from its website. At a business/technology level it supports:

Model-driven application delivery. Component software engineering. Cloud application management. Process performance management. Business-driven software engineering.
As well as its relationship with MID (for business-driven software engineering), Aptero has relationships with tool vendor Mendix (for model-driven application delivery); there are significant possible synergies between these approaches. More than just focussing on tools, however, it specialises in facilitating and managing change, in co-operation with its clients. Aptero has offices in Cheltenham, in the UK, and has about 20 employees and associates. Customers MID GmbH targets blue-chip enterprise customers with large, long-running projects across a range of industry sectors. These customers choose MID because it is small enough to be a manageable partner whilst still being able to demonstrate technical competence and the successful delivery of large projects.
Public sector customers:

Bundesagentur fr Arbeit Ministerium fr Lndlichen Raum und Bundesministerium des Inneren Bundesministerium fr Migration
Flchtlinge. Verbraucherschutz, Baden-Wrttemberg und

A Bloor InDetail Paper

13

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

The vendor
Industrial sector customers:

Daimler AG Siemens AG.

SAP

Insurance customers:

HUK Coburg HanseMerkur Versicherung Barmer GEK AXA Winterthur.

Financial sector customers:

DATEV eG Deutsche Wertpapier Service Bank AG

Embedded systems customers:

Leopold Kostal GmbH & Co. KG Hella KGaA & Co.

Telecommunication sector customers:

Deutsche Telekom AG.

System integrators:

T-Systems Siemens IT Solutions and Services.

Commercial sector customers:

Witt Weiden (Otto Group) Migros.

Competitors

MIDs competitors for Innovator for Business Analysts are the large vendors of complete development solutions including BPMN modelling (such as IBM and Oracle) and smaller vendors of specialist BPMN tools. In our opinion, it should be easier to get started with Innovator than with many large-vendor tools (partly because of the breadth of user requirements and extreme scalability some of the customers of large vendor solutions require; and partly because of their legacy support issues). Against smaller specialist vendors, MIDs defence is probably that it supports a business-level role, the business analyst, rather than just the BPMN modeller; and that it has integrations with tools supporting other roles in the organisation. Partners MIDs partners are listed at http://www.mid. de/en/company/reference-list/partner.html. Of particular interest are:

MID is now an accredited SAP partner (and has invested a lot of resources in getting there), as part of developing its SAP Solution Manager plug-in to Innovator for Business Analysts and its MID Modelling Methodology for SAP (MSAP), which provides a domain specific language (DSL) specially designed for the SAP world. You can model alternative SAP selection and implementation scenarios at the technical level using this DSL, generate portfolio and potential analyses from these scenario models and then use them to carry out business evaluations and comparisons. Appropriate SAP best practice solutions and existing processes can then be reused in the SAP Solution Manager. What this means is that you can abstract your business requirements in BPMN and compare them with standard SAP processes at a similarly abstracted level and then implement the SAP solution that best fits your needs. The MSAP profile provides a special DSL based on the SAP NetWeaver terminology. The Innovator system modeller can create SAP-specific architecture and design models and automatically generate SAP ABAP program source from these. MSAP is completely geared towards the SAP ASAP implementation methodology and can be used as a part of it, allowing MID Innovator to provide efficient, transparent decision and implementation support for the life-cycle management of SAP solutions.
Oracle

MID is an Oracle partner. For example, MID integrates with Oracles execution engine via BPEL and can generate Oracle ADF GUI code. It also integrates with the JDeveloper rules engine (although Oracles best rules engine, originally the Haley Ruleburst engine from Australia, which has patents around linear scalability in limited areas, is now in Siebel and not really accessible to MID).
Academia

Both MID and MIDs partner, Aptero Solutions, maintain strong relationships with universities and colleges throughout Europe and North America. Academic site licenses for educational use are available for all its commercial tools and Aptero, in particular, offers to share its experience of commercially available tools with legitimate students. This means that the personal edition of MIDs BPMN modelling tool, Business Innovator, is getting traction and visibility outside of its customer base.

2011 Bloor Research

14

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

The vendor
Standards bodies

MID is an active member of the Object Management Group (OMG - http://www.omg.org) and Arbeitskreis Software-Qualitt & Fortbildung e.V. (ASQF e.V. - https://www.isqi.org/en/ asqf-ev.html). The former is an international standards body and the latter is a network of excellence for the software development industry in German-speaking European countries. MID works with ASQF e.V. on, for example, certification standards such as Certified Requirements Engineer. Financial information MID is 100% privately owned, with a single Swiss equity investor and its current revenue is around 1819 million Euros. Its current profit margins are healthy with a considerable investment in its new software products. Current issues As a 100% privately owned company with a single equity investor, MID is subject to the risk associated with the possible impact of one persons decisions. On the other hand, it is free of the pressures a public company faces from the market and its shareholders to respond to technology fashions and to take short-term, share price focussed, decisions. On balance, we think private ownership is a good thing, as it makes it easier to take the long-term view and target customer (as opposed to shareholder) satisfaction.

MID is also targeting the sort of large customer where it faces strong competition from companies like IBMwhere the business practices it faces may be as big a competitive problem as any competing technology issues. However, it does seem to have a strong position in its German home market to build from. MID also faces the issue that many developers are (erroneously, we think) seeing agile, bottom-up development as replacing modeldriven approaches and top-down development. This is not the place for a discussion of this issue, but MID has side-stepped it neatly by targeting the business and business analysts. This is an area where interest in modelling is increasing and, as Seemann points out, the business is always most comfortable thinking top down (in practice, of course, business automation needs both top down and bottom up thinking).

A Bloor InDetail Paper

15

2011 Bloor Research

Innovator for Business Analysts an agile Business Process modelling tool

Summary
With Innovator for Business Analysts, MID offers a modern, forwardslooking tool for the business analyst roleoriented towards business stakeholders (rather than mainly targeting IT). It helps the business analysts in a business to manage complexity and optimise its business processes; helps to improve communication between all stakeholders in the business process; and can be used (but doesnt necessarily need to be used) as a basis for automating business processes. Reasons to consider buying this product include its focus on standardsbased (BPMN) business process modelling from the business point-ofview (instead of from an IT point of view); its possible integration with the Microsoft Office environment and the SAP environment; and its support for integration with tools supporting other roles in the business process story, with all stakeholders sharing a common model through rolespecific interfaces. All this adds up to a modelling tool that can promote desired business outcomes and help to bridge the gap between IT and the business. Further Information Further information about this subject is available from http://www.BloorResearch.com/update/2110

2011 Bloor Research

16

A Bloor InDetail Paper

Bloor Research overview

Bloor Research is one of Europes leading IT research, analysis and consultancy organisations. We explain how to bring greater Agility to corporate IT systems through the effective governance, management and leverage of Information. We have built a reputation for telling the right story with independent, intelligent, well-articulated communications content and publications on all aspects of the ICT industry. We believe the objective of telling the right story is to: Describe the technology in context to its business value and the other systems and processes it interacts with. Understand how new and innovative technologies fit in with existing ICT investments. Look at the whole market and explain all the solutions available and how they can be more effectively evaluated. Filter noise and make it easier to find the additional information or news that supports both investment and implementation. Ensure all our content is available through the most appropriate channel. Founded in 1989, we have spent over two decades distributing research and analysis to IT user and vendor organisations throughout the world via online subscriptions, tailored research services, events and consultancy projects. We are committed to turning our knowledge into business value for you.

About the author

David Norfolk Practice Leader Focus Area: Development/Governance
David Norfolk first became interested in computers and programming quality in the 1970s, working in the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University. Here he discovered that computers could deliver misleading answers, even when programmed by very clever people, and was taught to program in FORTRAN. His ongoing interest in all things related to development has culminated in his joining Bloor in 2007 and taking on the development brief. Development here refers especially to automated systems development. This covers technology including acronym-driven tools such as: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Integrated Development Environments (IDE), Model Driven Architecture (MDA), automated data analysis tools and metadata repositories, requirements modelling tools and so on. It also covers the processes behind them and the people issues associated with implementing them. Of particular interest is organisational maturity as a prerequisite for implementing effective (measured) process and ITIL (v3) as a framework for automated service delivery. David is a past co-editor (and co-owner) of Application Development Advisor and associate editor for the launch of Register Developer, and is currently executive editor for GEEs IT Policies and Procedures product. He has an honours degree in Chemistry and is a Chartered IT Professional, has a somewhat rusty NetWare 5 CNE certification and is a full Member of the British Computer Society (where he is on the committee of the Configuration Management Specialist Group). His early career involved working in database administration (DBA) and operations research for the Australian Public Service in Canberra. David then returned to his UK birthplace (1982) where he worked for Bank of America and Swiss Bank Corporation, at various times holding positions in DBA, systems development method and standards, internal control, network management, technology risk and even PC support. He was instrumental in introducing a formal systems development process for the Bank of America Global Banking product in Croydon. In 1992 he started a new career as a professional writer and analyst. Since then he has written for many major computer magazines and various specialist titles around the world. He helped plan, document and photograph the CMMI Made Practical conference at the IoD, London in 2005 and has written many industry white papers and research reports including: IT Governance (for Thorogood), Online Banking (for FT Business Reports), Developing a Network Computing Strategy and Corporate Desktop Services (for Business Intelligence), the Business Implications of Adopting Object Technology (for Elan Publishing). He has his own company, David Rhys Enterprises Ltd, which he runs from his home in Chippenham, where his spare moments (if any) are spent on photography, sailing and listening to music.

Copyright & disclaimer

This document is copyright 2011 Bloor Research. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any method whatsoever without the prior consent of Bloor Research. Due to the nature of this material, numerous hardware and software products have been mentioned by name. In the majority, if not all, of the cases, these product names are claimed as trademarks by the companies that manufacture the products. It is not Bloor Researchs intent to claim these names or trademarks as our own. Likewise, company logos, graphics or screen shots have been reproduced with the consent of the owner and are subject to that owners copyright. Whilst every care has been taken in the preparation of this document to ensure that the information is correct, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions.

2nd Floor, 145157 St John Street LONDON, EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7043 9750 Fax: +44 (0)20 7043 9748 Web: www.BloorResearch.com email: info@BloorResearch.com