How can Virtual Environments be used in BPM?

Virtual Environments

When modeling business processes, typically a  set of 2D static diagrams, are generated, and
maybe a number of packages are used to indicate the workflow of an organization over time in a
simulation, these tools are often noted to be an  important factor in the success of process
modeling projects [4].  A number of notations are used, and frequently discussed for their relative
merits in these and other locations by my colleagues at QUT amongst others [5].

The content of such Business Process Models is, however, very arcane to naive stakeholders. 
My background is in Games Technology and Information Visualization, and we have attended as
many BPM seminars and conferences as possible in order to understand the different culture of
my new research domain.  The one question we ask people at such seminars is, “How easy is it
to get people to understand your process model that you have developed?”  The answer is
usually, “Difficult,” linked with a bemused look  on the consultant’s face.  This problem is
exacerbated when dealing with large enterprises that may have thousands of models in a
repository.  

Compact 2D notations are exceedingly efficient representations for experts, but very difficult to
understand for the clients, and other non-process cognizant stakeholders in an organization being
modeled.  The confusion in the validation process translates to a number of problems for the
business process lifecycle:

1. Confusion during the validation stages with clients – How can they communicate back to the modeler that they have captured the subtleties of the process in the diagram, without an understanding of the subtleties of the diagrammatic notation used? 
2. Inconsistencies in any final implementation, whether executable or not in nature.  Any mistakes are embedded in the process models as conceptual and configuration errors, thus misleading people who access the repository to ascertain how an organization performs its work. 
3. Follow on losses from the incorrect modeling of the processes in process improvement stages.  Any of the gains from process improvement may be affected due to incorrect modeling of the processes in the first place.

We believe that the value proposition to process modeling community is that any increase in
insight and understanding of process models will by default reap savings in the development of
any future processes and their optimization thereafter.  3D Virtual World visualizations of
business processes offer intuitive simulations that every stakeholder can engage with easily. 

However, this modeling benefit must be weighed up against the effort involved in performing 3D
visualizations of said business processes. The benefit must be seen from a company’s bottom
line perspective, but we believe there is a strong case from other manufacturing process domains
that the use of such 3D simulations can reap savings, as long as modeling costs are kept low.

Companies have for some time now routinely use simulation software in order to test the product,
to make sure that it meets client specifications [6].  Surely it can be argued that this is the same
for developing a complex process model!  Clear communication of the structure, both in space
and in time of a business process, will lead to  fewer misunderstandings, and thus less loss of
resources in the process.  But to do this we need easy to use 3D process modeling tools.

By analogy, we may look at the history of desktop publishing.  Early 80s word processors were
hard to use, involving arcane text commands and mark up in order to format a document. 
Professional publishers needed highly skilled operators to generate professionally formatted
books.  Now ordinary people can create polished documents using templates that are
presentable for the use of communicating their ideas.  Virtual environments are at the same
stages as these word processors were in their infancy.  Tools are powerful, but difficult for the
naïve to use, and, as such, require much training to use effectively.  Environments such as
Second Life [7] have gone a long way to providing modeling and animation toolsets, but they still
exhibit a lack of affordability for the task of modeling business processes.  

Technology being developed by the games industry  offers insight into solving this problem. 
Games often ship with design tools for users to augment and modify game environments.  These
tools are typically used by game designers  in games studios that will not have a heavy
programming background, and will have the design tools developed for them by programmers to
build game levels easily [8].  Often these editors allow the integration of models and pre-created
animations to create lively interactive environments for the carrying out of game mission.  These
missions can be seen by analogy as a form of game workflow [9], similar to the concept of
workflow as used in Process-aware Information  Systems.  These similarities are striking. 
Furthermore, games companies release these game editors to the public to enable people to
easily modify their games with these tools; thus, the tools are highly developed and easy to use
for non-game development experts.  

Present modeling tools in the BPM community may come with components that support discrete
simulation methods.  A number of products have the ability to simulate the execution of business
process models, including ARIS [10], Casewise [11] and others. These  tools have sophisticated
simulation capacities for the time-based generation of process events to drive a business process
simulation.

But what has to be said is that the simulation models are still 2D, and often do not incorporate
spatial information or effective representations of the objects in question being used in the
process model being developed.  While 2D is, of  course, very useful, it is missing a vital third
dimension that is useful in representing complex representations [12].  This dimension by default
allows the encoding of extra information, and provides the extra interaction possibilities that allow
deeper insight into the model by giving the ability to literally manipulate in three and not two
dimensions.  So why has this not been addressed, and, in particular, why has the whole area of
business process visualization not been addressed with real rigor?  It should be noted that a
search performed on the BPMTrends site using the term “visualiz(s)ation” turns up one reference,
that is not about process visualization. 

Other work has proposed the use of role-based visualizations for the representation of process
models [13] and some have developed 3D visualizations for process modeling [14].  But none
have approached this work in a thorough manner, defining a complete approach to such
visualizations or a set of novel visualization techniques.  We believe there are a number of issues
that need to be addressed in order to advance the possibilities of business process modeling and
execution within such 3D Virtual Environments, and a lot of this revolves around the nature of the
BPM tools being used.