Insights into the process vs. interfaces

I have been modeling a material return and repair process the last week or so and utilizing the Intalio designer. Since my company utilizes TIBCO as a service bus, I have downloaded their Business Studio and requested IT to set it up for me… but back to the topic at hand. As a part of that process model, I have been building an information model and associated XML schema. A couple observations from that work;

• I have found that separating the process from the human and system interfaces is a great tool to really understand “the process”, but also what information is flowing back and forth between the process and a given interface (whether human or machine). It forces you to better articulate the task or function you expect the interface to accomplish (again human or machine)

• Building process services is a different mind set. Rather than building large, wall size processes. I am building small, specific process that accomplishes a specific task and then “calling” them from other processes. So far, I find each individual process easier to understand, validate, and potentially automate. I have even created separate “pools” for each interface so that it is more clear whether I am “calling” a human, system, or process for a given task.

Since I have minimal interfaces that are actual services today, some of the work to keep the process “executable” is more academic than reality at this point. However, by treating each interface as a potential service, it is forcing me to define what I expect the service to do, hence starting the journey toward automating the task via a service with the packaged applications.