Chapter Four. Process Design Patterns

GOOD SOFTWARE USES, AND IN SOME CASES INVENTS, REUSABLE SOLUTIONS TO RECURRING PROBLEMS. Expert developers never begin a new project from scratch, but harvest tried-and-true ideas, selecting and morphing existing code snippets. Junior developers, in a similar position, borrow snippets from the experts, or, if they are unusually precocious, originate their own strategies. In BPM, a design pattern is a formalization of these prosaic snippets, consisting of a publishable specification of a problem-solving strategy or recipe, of sorts, for consumption and reuse by the larger development community.

Though BPM is known for its practicality (offers business benefits to its customers and an easy sell for its vendors), it cannot succeed without good, careful, deliberate design practices. Too many processes are designed too quickly, high on the hype that business requirements can be realized in executable digital form rapidly with drag-and-drop flowchart editors. Such processes are created without a strong foundation of previous experience. This chapter examines the use of design patterns in BPM as such a foundation to aid in the construction of better processes.