Analysis and modeling tools for work flow come in a wide range of capabilities and price
Thornton A. May
Work flow is fast becoming the glue that binds segmented client/server computer applications into a continuum of processes capable of supporting group work. What's most critical in making this work is providing the right support at the right times in the right places. Here, effective use of process-analysis and modeling tools could be the difference between a successful work-flow implementation and a disaster. Whether the goal is to reengineer operations, to add work flow to existing applications, or to lay the foundation for groupware applications, process-modeling tools provide a variety of support functions.
Analysis and modeling tools can be broken into four basic classes. Fir
st, at the low end are diagramming or drawing tools that help you depict work flows and link text descriptions of work processes to the drawings. Next come traditional work-flow tools that analyze and model using a variety of process templates and routing rules. Then, more sophisticated CASE and industrial-engineering software provides analysis and modeling support for systems designers and engineers skilled in the tools and their underlying methodologies. Finally, "religious" tools are similar to the CASE class of tool, but you have to buy into a conceptual framework for tool application and use.
Work-flow tools help break apart existing business processes and depict the individual processes using "maps" or other graphical aids. Next, they provide run-time statistics on processes and the resources the processes use. In other words, these tools help quantify productivity and quality for each connected user.
Modeling tools also help you develop new processes and provide a means of simulating the
new processes and understanding the operational and technical implications of each revised process. Finally, process-analysis and modeling tools let you see how new processes fit with older processes, applications, and platforms. Ideally, these tools will support the development of prototype applications that can be scaled into production. The problem is that it is not a simple matter to design easily mastered tools that enable you to take the abstract concept of empowerment and focus it on a specific work environment and the processes within.
Electronic Pencils
Diagramming or drawing tools, sometimes called electronic pencils, are products designed to support the drawing of "as is" and "should be" pictures of the processes and work flows. These products require few specialized user skills and in most cases, are not nearly as full-featured and functional as the technologies that systems analysts and design professionals typically use.
Consulting firms that practice reengineering are heavy con
sumers of electronic-pencil products, which are used behind the scenes to render the whiteboard scribblings "pretty enough" for presentation to senior management. As such, much of their value is cosmetic in nature. A number of internal reengineering departments use electronic pencils to graphically enhance their drawings of processes and work flows. This market subsegment is characterized by "shrink-wrap" pricing, typically $99 to $350.
HavenTree Software's (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) EasyFlow for Macintosh and EasyFlow for DOS are popular electronic-pencil packages. HavenTree plans to release a Windows version this summer. Other examples include Macflow from Mainstay (Camarillo, CA) and FlowCharting 3 from Patton & Patton (Morgan Hill, CA). Featurewise, most electronic-pencil packages are similar. People tend to choose the ones that best fit their preferred method of drawing.
Mainstream Work-Flow Tools
FileNet, IBM, Sigma Imaging Systems, and Wang lived through the early days of process mode
ling when the only way people could purchase proven work-flow engines was to buy a total electronic-imaging package. Then, image digitization and manipulation were considered the more valuable aspects of the packages. These vendors fought the architectural battles as they struggled to unbundle expensive (and frequently unwanted) optical functionality (e.g., optical jukeboxes, scanners, and so on) from work flow.
In the near future, work flow will be unbundled from process-modeling utilities, enabling customers to mix and match functions and products. The work-flow tools market is characterized by vendor-specific channel strategies with attractive high-volume, per-seat pricing going to high-impact reference accounts.
DEC's (Maynard, MA) LinkWorks defines the new age of work-flow software. It was designed with multiple users in mind, didn't arrive with a lot of legacy baggage, and never let the total life cycle cost (i.e., maintainability and expandability) get far out of sight. The DEC offering l
ets you customize the flow of information among database, spreadsheet, word processing, E-mail, and graphics applications. The LinkWorks application integration framework supports Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, and Motif clients; DEC OSF/1, OpenVMS, SCO Unix, Ultrix, Hewlett-Packard HP/UX, and IBM AIX servers; TCP/IP and DECnet network protocols; and relational databases including Informix, Ingres, Oracle, and DEC's Rdb.
The Bank of Montreal in Toronto, Ontario, recently implemented a work-flow environment for its credit applications using LinkWorks. The first priority of the project was to organize information around corporate client relationships. The second priority was to start delivering information in a more timely manner directly to people who needed it. LinkWorks became the technological glue for the project. It gave the project a unified and centrally managed, multiuser system environment.
The prototype system involved 25 users in Toronto. All desktop applications are run off of a
Novell NetWare server. Connectivity is provided via token-ring connections on each floor with an Ethernet backbone tying the floor-LANs together. The post prototype rollout involved linking Chicago operations with users in Toronto by means of a 128-Kbps line.
The current client architecture is based on Windows 3.1, DOS 6.2, and Intel-based PCs (with 12 MB of memory) connected to token-ring LANs. Each workstation supports the network protocols required to connect to the NetWare-based servers (IPX), as well as the LinkWorks and Sybase servers (via TCP/IP). This protocol coexistence relied on the standard Novell environment using ODI (Open Data-Link Interface) software drivers as well as Novell's LAN Workplace for DOS 4.1 for TCP/IP support. Fast DEC Alpha servers run Oracle or OSF/1. The power of the LinkWorks framework is evidenced by the fact that the platform and database migration (historically a major source of trauma to end users) is transparent. End users' interface to the machine remains unchange
d.
The bank didn't want to be tied to a particular system or a particular vendor. It needed to accommodate Unix, Macintosh, and PC platforms--both at the front end and the back end. LinkWorks provided the framework to accommodate all the disparate servers and connectivity needs. A variety of servers emerged in the production rollout. A Sybase server is a gateway to the DB2 databases; a videotext server provides access to a repository of procedures and customer service information; and an OS/2 server running NewsEdge from Desktop Data (Waltham, MA) provides access to real-time news and events.
CASE-Style Tools
Products in this category come from two primary sources--CASE vendors and specialized purveyors of industrial-engineering software. These products make no bones about ease of use. They're meant for experienced professionals to use.
Unlike electronic pencils or an increasing number of analysis and modeling tools with origins in work flow, CASE-style tools are probably inappropriate
for use by individuals outside the systems design and development domain. If would-be users don't understand industrial engineering or structured programming disciplines or if they do not have process modeling or reengineering expertise, the tool will prove frustrating, and its results will be less than optimal.
CASE-style tools have developed strong followings among business analysts working in the headquarters of corporate planning departments. The reengineering projects in these corporate planning departments are characterized more by their significant role stratification (i.e., corporate planners create the models, another set of people verify the models, and still different people implement them) than by their ability to generate order-of-magnitude process improvements or other business benefits. Further, CASE-style analysis and modeling tools wielded by headquarters planners do not typically produce results quickly, because they are hard to learn and take a long time to execute. Much of the vend
or activity in this niche market has been confined to refocusing, repackaging, and remarketing older products.
CASE-style tools exhibit a wide range in pricing. Tools evolving from traditional CASE product sets define the top of the market, $10,000 to $40,000. These prices, however, are subject to negotiation. PC-based CASE-style tools are more attractively priced in the $1000-per-seat range.
Examples of CASE-style tools include SIMfactory from CACI (Arlington, VA), which features animated work flows, and Business Design Facility from Texas Instruments (Plano, TX), which features extensive training support. TASC-Flow from TASC (Reading, MA) is used extensively by systems integrator GTE Vantage Solutions (Chantilly, VA). One of the reengineering teams at the Bank of Boston has recently chosen Workflow Analyzer from Meta Software (Cambridge, MA) as its process-modeling tool.
Dictionary Software's (Sydney, Australia) InCASE is an easy-to-use PC-based CASE tool for Windows or Windows for Work
groups. It supports entity relationship diagrams, business-process reengineering, data-flow diagrams, and SQL table generation. In addition, InCASE provides an open repository (accessible from ODBC [Open Database Connectivity] databases, PowerBuilder, or Visual Basic), a report writer, and a query facility. InCASE offers a lot of functionality for its $1000 price.
Religious Tools
These tools could be placed in other categories if they did not require the end user to go through a religious conversion to the assumptions and beliefs of the products' architectures. While Lotus Notes is probably the best-known groupware product and is clearly a "convert-creating" kind of tool, it does not include work-flow analysis or modeling functions. Third-party products like Clear Software's (Canton, MA) allClear (which is stronger on analysis, weaker on development support) and Reach Software's (Sunnyvale, CA) WorkMan for Lotus Notes (which is weaker on analysis and stronger on development) are starting to fill tha
t gap.
Most religious tools reflect the efforts of social scientists to impose their conception of how work should happen in real-world operations. For example, when Action Technologies (Emeryville, CA) created its Coordinator product, Stanford University computer-science professor Terry Winograd and management consultant Fernando Flores categorized group activity using models drawn heavily from linguistics. (Coordinator is now sold by DaVinci Systems in Raleigh, North Carolina.) Coordinator postulates a finite number of interactions or conversation types between workers. Their tool forces workplace communications to become very explicit, but it does not necessarily force the desired action to occur.
Consequently, what is being sold is not so much software as it is cultureware. Additionally, because the insights generated by these tools are not linked to code-generating utilities such as DEC's Reliable Flow Manager, the economic power of the ideas are not implemented (see the text box "DEC and W
ang Put It All Together" on page 106). The models or maps that these tools generate might tell you what is wrong or how the work flows, but they don't fix the problem.
CM/1 from Corporate Memory Systems (Austin, TX) and OrgMap from NetMap International (San Francisco, CA) are two other examples of religious tools. CM/1 provides a fascinating visual method of working out complex, multifaceted, multitime-period strategic problems. It is based on a social-science methodology known as Issue-Based Information Systems. OrgMap redraws the organization chart based on the hidden power structures revealed in person-to-person and department-to-department interactions.
The program queries top executives about whom they have regular contact with. The executives then rate the importance of that contact on a scale of 1 to 10. Both sides of the contact must confirm the significance of the link. For instance, if one party assigns a 10 and the other a 2, then OrgMap lowers the overall rating of the link to reflec
t the disparity. Once all the links are rated, OrgMap groups employees into networks according to where they have the most significant contacts. Each network is represented as a circle, and within that circle, employees are linked by lines according to confirmed links.
Which analysis and modeling tools you use depends on the task at hand, the hardware and software infrastructure of the organization, and the skill sets of the personnel involved. Ideally, organizations will aggressively manage a portfolio of tools and competencies, having developed broad and deep expertise on multiple products. Organizations able to do this will be in a position to mix and match products for "best of breed" performance.
Illustration: Classes of Process-Modeling Tools
Work-flow tools differ widely in terms of ease of use, functionality, and popularity. Each class is represented proportionally according to its 1993 sales revenue.
Illustration: EasyFlow from HavenTree Software allows you to d
raw flowcharts of processes and work flows.
Illustration: Corporate Memory Systems' CM/1 lets you visually analyze strategic problems that occur over multiple time periods.
Thornton A. May is vice president of Research & Education with Cambridge Technology Partners (Cambridge, MA), a global consulting firm. He is a recognized leader in the designing and delivery of internal management development programs for senior executives and CIOs at Fortune 500 companies. He can be reached on the Internet or BIX at
tmay@ctp.com
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Know Your Work-Flow Tools
