Business Process Modeling User Requirements

Process Modeling User Requirements

What are some of the requirements for the 3D visualization of process via virtual environments?
In the large, the idea of using 3D for visualizing processes has not been exploited.  Reasons
given for not exploring VEs include the difficulty of use, the lack of maturity in business process
modeling with regards to 2D models of business processes let alone 3D, the extra effort to model
the details, and the lack of research into how one represents a business process in 3D.

Difficulty of use is a misnomer, as games have shown that 3D environments can and are being
used by people of many ages to entertain themselves, and soon we believe tools will emerge that
will be used for work more and more often, especially in product development collaboration
scenarios [15] [16].

Process modeling still has some way to go with regards to formalizing the process (forgive the
pun) of modeling business processes.  The use of complex visualizations of business processes
requires an appropriate layer of technology and expertise to be in place.  While BPM tools are
obviously well developed, there is a lack of standardization present to fully take up the offerings of
3D virtual environments.  Research has indicated that the tools present have an influence on the
success of process modeling projects, and thus we can hypothesize that the tools required to
develop such 3D visualizations are not present at the moment to create easily such
environments.

But, in the end, it can be argued that the major issue is the newness of the field.  Virtual reality
has for many years required high-end technology to be implemented, costing thousands of
dollars.  Games technology that now exceeds previous simulation system capacities is now
available in consumer form, and, along with high-speed home networking, has brought this
technology into home and SME business environments.  The research on how to use this
technology in the Business Process Management application domain in a broad sense has not
been performed.  Present research, while addressing in some way the issues of process
modeling, has not looked at developing technology to ease the modeling task in any way, let
alone rigorously investigated the techniques to visualize a business process in 3D virtual
environments. 

It must be stated, that in a manner similar to the present 2D diagrammatic representations,
business process modeling does not need high fidelity representations in 3D in order to be
successful.  3D Business Process Visualizations really only require a number of key components
to make the visualization usable:

1. Spatial organization of objects used in the process model – i.e., positioning tasks within a floor plan in a building or on a terrain. 
2. 3D representations of objects for use in world.  Entire websites are devoted to selling such artifacts, thus such representations can be easily extended to typical physical business system resources (photocopiers, terminals, mobile phones, and people, among other things). 
3. Object animations that illustrate the actions that resources perform, either on their own or
   with another resource. 
4. Representations of decision structures involved in the processes.  This means the
   translation of such choice representations from the 2D to a similarly recognizable
   construct in the 3D virtual world, via either an abstract representation as an artifact or the
   animation of a human resource involved in the decision process. 
5. Representation of the more abstract IT components of a process mode – for instance, the
   representation of the components of an IT transaction system being used in a bank.
   Visual fidelity, while useful, is not essential to  improving the understanding of a process.  So a
   business process 3D modeling tool used in a virtual world does not have to be photo realistic, but
   just good enough to assist the viewer in understanding the processes being illustrated. 
   Visualization is about elegant sufficiency of representation.  The use of obfuscating “Chart Junk,”
   as described by Tufte [17], is to be avoided at all costs, as it actually clouds the perception of the
   information within the representation.

 While this does not cover all the nuances involved in the representation of business processes, what it does provide is a basis for the development of process model proofs of concept in 3D, which can be further tested for utility in business process communication. Second Life Workflow Demonstration At QUT, we have begun to develop tools to  support this process of visualizing business processes in 3D worlds.  We have integrated a business process modeling tool we have developed at QUT with the Second Life 3D virtual environment.  Much work has been expended on the use of such virtual environments.  However, no research has been performed into the actual use of such environments in the specific visualization of process models that have been developed via typical 2D modeling tools, such as ARIS, VISIO, etc.  We have chosen this as the first entry point, as the industry has become comfortable with the use of such 2D modeling tools, and they represent a repository of verified and  validated process representations that can be used to test the efficacy of 3D in this domain. At QUT, a workflow tool has been developed called Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL), which enables the detailed modeling of business  processes using a sophisticated executable language [18].  YAWL is amenable to the task of linking to Second Life, due to its service oriented architecture, and encapsulated interfaces to the workflow being executed.

As a first entry point into this endeavor, we developed a custom service module to link the Second Life environment with the workflow interface in YAWL.  In effect, this meant that objects associated with workflow tasks within Second Life can animate the traversal of a workflow control network, causing an avatar to change locations  and act out the tasks contained within the business process model.


We decided to implement a working demonstration drawn from a project being run within the
research group called YAWL4Film [19].  This is a project seeking to introduce process modeling
to the film industry, to facilitate efficient management of the film production process, to assist with
multi-site film shoots, and to help the Australian film industry to be competitive via process
modeling efficiency gains.  The following process diagram in Figure 2 illustrates the process model
developed by the YAWL4Film team

YAWL is amenable software for such an extension, as it is designed from the ground up as a
Service Oriented Architecture.  Second Life is  also capable of accessing web services via its
scripting language.  So we were easily able to set up objects in the environment to interact with
the YAWL server, and animate according to the set of tasks within the workflow.  The following
figure shows still images from the animation generated by the YAWL/Second Life service.  Figure
3 shows a sample of snapshots of tasks being performed by an avatar controlled by the
YAWL4Film film process model.  Thus, according to the set of five points mentioned previously in
the Section Business Process Modelling User Requirements, we have representations of the
spatial locations of tasks, the human and non-human resources used, and animations illustrating
the execution of the film production process.