Business Process Management with a Business Rules Approach: Implementing The Service Oriented Architecture |
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| Tom Debevoise |
| September 2007, BookSurge Publishing, Paperback, 232 pages, ISBN 1419673688
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| Can you imagine a business, government agency or nonprofit organization that does not incorporate business processes into its operation? Every enterprise mission is defined by the processes' cyclical series of operations. Computer systems support many of these processes, and systems need accurate information in order to decide what to do. These decisions, then, mediate the flow of information between the actors in the enterprise. The connection between business processes and business rules is important. In this book, successful consultant and author, Tom Debevoise explores and explains the interrelated methods of Business Process Management and the Business Rules Approach. |
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| Tom Debevoise is a highly successful technology consultant and co-founder of Business Knowledge Architects, based in Virginia. His clients include major energy, pharmaceutical, engineering and environmental firms and the US Department of Defense. An extremely popular speaker at business conferences, Tom has authored several books, including "The Data Warehouse Method" in 1999, as well as numerous technical and trade journal articles. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Review-Date: 11/29/2008 Rating: 3 Summary: Business Rules Driven Process Design
I have linked business rules with process design over the past three years. The author has a different background to me as my regard for business rules derive from work in government in New Zealand and latterly – 10 years – Australia. Ten years ago I determined for a major local government authority that their approach to development and building applications was to check every cell on every table on every page on every application – very time consuming! I recommended to the CEO that this talent in development and building applications should document their knowledge from local laws in a manner that will integrate with IT based workflow in an Extranet shifting the responsibility for compliance from local government to the applicant. He immediately understood the concept and removed 1 million dollars from the business unit‘s budget.
The source of my interest buying this book was to determine the wider context of business rules within BPM The book has provided me with a different insight which I am grateful to encompass within my skill set.
I recommend this excellent book.
Kenneth Mortimer [...]
Review-Date: 7/8/2008 Rating: 2 Summary: Uneven approach
As a knowledgeable architect wanting SME, this did not provide much help for me. Plus: OK treatment of BPEL and reasonable examples of code. Con: Riddled with ridiculous and poor cartoon illustrations. Too many descriptions of services as probable recapitulations of author‘s projects. Flow diagrams disorganized. Instead of teaching a subject area, this is a 1st person memoir of uninteresting, unchallenging projects.
Review-Date: 6/27/2008 Rating: 5 Summary: Next best thing to hands on experience
Throughout my professional life I have gained my best understanding of business principals through hands on experience with someone who has done the work before. Reading this book felt similar to such an experience.
Tom Debevoise takes realistic business goals and explains in detail how using Business Process Management and Business Rules can be used to acheive those goals. The book focuses on reaching business goals utilizing many skills relevant to both systems architects and business analysts. While some evangelists of the BPM discipline may focus only on effective use of Business Process Modeling Notation, Tom also shows what other IT tools and disciplines are still relevant for business success.
This is an excellent book for those preparing to consult in the Business Process Management space.
Review-Date: 5/22/2008 Rating: 1 Summary: Awfully written
I‘m sorry, perhaps I‘m missing the nuggets of gold other reviwers claim to have found but I simply could not finish this. It is a complete mess of information in my opinion. Sections ramble on and continuity is completely non–existent. The level of gibberish is also extremely high in places. Take this example:
"A .NET component is an Internet service that customers access from a variety of manners including Web browsers and spreadsheets. BPM and Business Rules software enables the publication of these Web services. By publishing the Web service, your customers and trading partners easily incoporate them into your Internet services. This is know as exposing the Web service to the public." (p22)
This paragraph offers nothing to either the business or IT ends of the potential audience for this book and, in my opinion, is representative of the book as a whole.
Review-Date: 11/28/2007 Rating: 5 Summary: BPM rules with clarity
Not only did I personally find this book complete with practical information, my IT department has as well. The review is similar to what my business is experiencing and has hit the nail on the head with the approach we need to take to steer our firm into growth mode, internally and in our market. I have recommended this book to other friends as their businesses are in a similar hold pattern as our was/is and they too have commented they found this book to be a valuable resource.
Review-Date: 5/9/2007 Rating: 3 Summary: Business Intelligence
The book could be an invaluable tool for designing SOA–based business intelligence. However, many typing errors exist in the text. Some statements in the book appear to contradict each other. The discussion on the business intelligence, Chapter 5, is difficult to follow. For example Figure 5.4 is very unclear. Specifically, how do the data from the dimensions in the data warehouse move from the data warehouse to the MQE? Where is the link from the data warehouse to the MQE? If the author can clean up all these issues, the book could be an excellent one for designing SOA–based business intelligence.
Review-Date: 2/8/2007 Rating: 4 Summary: starts out slow but gains value; good overview of technologies used in SOA
I was going to stop reading after Ch 2 of this book, since it was way more than I wanted to know about bulldozers, but Chapter 3 got into some useful information and detail on how the technologies integrate. Each chapter built and finally tied it all together: how BPM, BPML, BPEL, BI are used in SOA. Good big picture overview of all the technologies role. I especially enjoyed the discussion of brokers to retrofit legacy apps.
Review-Date: 1/26/2007 Rating: 5 Summary: Good Resource
This book helps you figure out the different roles of BPM, Business Rules, and Business Intelligence through a series of case studies written in simple English. It‘s goal isn‘t to guide you through your project from start to finish, but to get you thinking about how you want to accomplish your goals. I have been working with BPM technology for several years now and I wish I had this resource for my earlier projects.
Review-Date: 1/26/2007 Rating: 5 Summary: Must reading for enterprise architects and business strategists
In this book, Tom describes an incredibly powerful approach to application development: how to build systems that use Business Processes that decide with business rules. If you follow the industry trends in this area, this development approach is considered to be critical to achieving "business agility". If you had to read one book on either Business Process Management or Business Rules, this is the book to read.
Review-Date: 1/25/2007 Rating: 3 Summary: Average book, not stellar
I like Tom‘s approach to explaining BPM and a rules approach using a real world example. The book had numerous typo‘s, and I found it hard to believe it made it through the publisher with so many errors. I also found the overall organization of the book to be fair, but the details on each section were not so. Being in the industry, I was expecting more for the money. This book provides a good overview, but not recommended if you plan on moving from discovery into implementation.
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