Use Cases for the Internet of Things

A use case is a description of steps or actions between users, (participants, products) and core software systems which leads the user towards something useful.  In our practice of business process modeling, particularly at Bosch, I have been encountering many ‘Internet of things’ use cases. These ‘things’ or products are process participants, as opposed to simple data feeds or event sources. They are responsible for activities. They send and respond to signals.

Use Cases for the Internet of Things

In the new world of process modeling for the “things world”, product features respond (process) to their environment (events) according to the needs and desires of their owners (decisions and rules). In addition, process activities are continuously updated and communicate in a globally connected environment. This is the nature of the internet of things or the ‘things world’. Some, aspects of the process, events and decisions will be controlled by the end-user. Other aspects are controlled by the things, outside agents, products or by others, such as weather or an electrical utility (smart grids).
The goal of BPMN and other visual environments, such as Visual Rules is to empower the stake-holders, such as product experts, to control their area of concern, without writing computer code. End-users can configure the actions in the use case, according to their needs.  This is referred to as the ‘user creating the application’. In the ‘things world’, a wide range of products that will interact in unanticipated ways. Cameras, household appliances, security sensors and many other things will interact. The end user will probably not use BPMN for this; however, they will want to change the sequence of tasks and the nature of responses to events.

BPMN in the Things World

The visual approach, including BPMN, is a common way to model process and rules, and now even events.  What can be difficult to relate is how to build a use case that matches ‘things’ requirements with a list of objectives for events, processes and decisions. What is needed is a context for arranging the vision into a form that can be incorporated into products.
The outcome should be to define services that support product features, events and decisions that carry out the use case objectives. This is the beginning of an iterative process, a starting point for building a core set of services that support a more integrated portfolio of capabilities.
There are many native benefits to the combined Process/Event/Rules approach that enhance competitiveness. The result should be a portfolio of agile products and process features that increase agile responses to customer requirements, economic or competitive challenges. Over time companies, by adopting the strategy, will build an agile core for managing a collection of common events/process/decisions and information structures that support the objectives of the business. This is the clearest path to the ‘internet’ of things.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the ‘things world’ is not just sensors, appliances and cameras connected to the internet. This connectivity will spawn new business models and new opportunities.  To wit, there are underpinnings, including vocabulary, product/services, organizations, and personnel and training data structures that are critical to every process, and therefore every ‘internet of things’ initiative.

Tom Debevoise

Business Rules Usage Patterns

Dr.  Ketabchi, from Savvion, believes there are seven process usage patterns. These are 

1. Human Centric
2. Document Centric
3. System Centric
4. Decision Centric
5. Case Management
6. Project Centric
7. Event Centric     

There is an eighth one, the 'shadowing' process. This is a process for monitoring 'legacy' processes. Dr. Ketabchi A description of each of these processes can be found in this BPM Institute recorded webinar.

As the BPM Industry matures, these patterns will emerge. We know from design patterns, that best practices can emerge from the wisdom of experience. 

I believe there are some distinct business rules usage patterns. I list these here:

Usage Pattern Center	Typical Legacy Sources	Application	Characteristics
Computations and Score Carding	Spread Sheets, Desktop Databases and Scripting	Credit Risk, Security Targeting	Generally Computes one or more metrics. Often one or more decision tables serve as the final arbitrator
Hierarchical or Hierarchical Graphs	Database and Scripting Languages, Cobol	Insurance, Social Benefits or Entitlements	Seeking a number of nodes in a large graph of options and factors. Logic can be deeply nested and the graph can be imperfect
Pattern Matching	The Gamut of Source Code (C++, Fortran, Basic, C#)	Fraud Detection, Market Abuse, Security	Often applies multi-variant or fuzzy logic
Algorithmic Decisions	Source Code	Derivatives,  Hedging, Environmental Modeling	Focusing on Applied Numerical Methods, Regression Techniques and Statistics
Event Directors	Java	Sensor-Based Controls	Uses within event processing applications

 - Tom Debevoise

BPMN in Visio 2010

I have been looking at Microsoft Visio 2010 and I would recommend it to anyone seeking a simple process modeling requirements tool. Ultimately, when your 'requirements' phase in process modeling is complete, the business analysts must move away from Visio and into the business process management suite.

There are many, many users of Visio who are 'process focused'. Moreover, there has been a significant investment in process modeling using Visio. When teams, who have not used an execution-oriented framework such as PMF, move these models into execution there will be issues. Visio 2010 Premium will help a bit by doing a very competent job at supporting early (learning and requirements) efforts in process modeling. The 'check diagram' function checks the proper syntax of the BPMN shapes. For instance in the diagram below, there are two errors: a message is flowing the wrong way and there is a 'hanging' activity.

Wrong

After you correct the issues the errors disappear.



Casewise, Orbis and others provide Visio 'bridges'.  Yet, all these will change when other vendors will seek to capitalize on Visio 2010's new BPMN features. This tool also supports moving process onto SharePoint 2010. Overall, I commend the Microsoft Visio BPMN team for their efforts.

Business Rules and Business Process Modeling Simplified

In BPMN 2.0 there is a shape for business rules:



 This shape denotes the place within the process model which calls business rules and obtains decision output.  The question is, how do you use it?

The difference between process and rules is simple; processes are stateful and rules are stateless. In BPMN a process has an explicit or implicit single start and one or more stops. In business rules there is no start or stop. It is an expression of a sequence of logical conditions.

Consider the figure below:



Simple Process with exclusive gateway, the process corresponds to the process: Start: When A Condition: Start Activity A When B Condition: start activity B, When either complete: Stop

This simple process uses the exclusive gateway to choose which activity to run. The activity, A or B, will run for an indeterminate time. When it is done the end is reached. A simple flow rule from Visual Rules is shown in Figure 2.  A flow rule is a graphical representation of a path of logic. There is no time element to the evaluation; either condition A or Condition B will be the outcome of the evaluation of the conditions in the two gateways-there is no time element to consider.





Figure 2: Simple decision graph with two exclusive outcomes, the diagram corresponds to the logic IF A condition Then A Outcome else If B Condition then B Outcome.

The two figures compare and contrast the similarities of BPMN and business rules. Both evaluate the logic conditions to decide which process activity or outcome to choose. The contrast is in the time element. This is what we mean when we stay the process is stateful and the decision graph is stateless.

If we connect the flow rule with the process then the process model looks like this:



This is simple, but most process decision are more complicated than that. I discuss process decisions in a white paper located here:

YouTube Short on Business Rules and BPMN

I have created a short video on the role of Business Rules and Business Process Management.

The video is linked to the graphic below:

You can also view the youTube video here.


Enjoy: