The 2005 Enterprise Architecture, Process Modeling & Simulation

BUSINESS PROCESS TRENDS A BPT Report The 2005 Enterprise Architecture, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Report Version 1.0 April 28, 2005 Curtis Hall Paul Harmon www.bptrends.com BPTrends The 2005 EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Report Contents Foreword by Celia Wolf …………………………………...………………..……………….. 1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………….………………… 4 A Detailed Analysis of EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools …………………13 CACI’s SIMPROCESS ………………………………………………………………………. 25 Holocentric’s Holocentric Modeler ....……………………………………….……… ……… 41 IDS Scheer’s ARIS ………......………………………………………….…………………… 57 iGrafx’s iGrafx ……………....…………………………………………......………………… 72 MEGA’s MEGA Suite ……………………………………..…..……………………………… 87 Popkin Software’s System Architect ……….……..................…………...……………… 104 Process Wizard Ltd.’s ProcessWizard ……………………………..…………..........…… 118 Proforma Corporation’s ProVision ………………………………………………………… 133 ProModel Solutions’ Process Simulator ………………………...………………...……… 147 xBML Innovations’ xBML Modeling Suite ……………………………….…..……….…… 158 EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Matrix ……………………...…………… 174 Author’s Bios ………………………………………………………………………………… 182 Copyright (c) 2005 Business Process Trends. www.bptrends.com BPTrends The 2005 EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Report Celia Wolf Foreword Foreword This is the second in a series of reports that BPTrends plans to produce and publish on business process software products. We are producing these reports to provide our members with an overview of the various types of business process software products available today. In each report we will define the specific market, describe the features important in tools designed for that market, provide detailed reviews of the leading players and their products, and provide a comparison of the key features of the products. Figure 1 provides an overview of the business process software products market as BPTrends currently defines it. We use circles to represent the major product groupings and have overlapped circles to suggest key relationships. The olive area in the center of Figure 1 represents the product groupings we focused on in the BPTrends 2005 Enterprise Architecture, Process Modeling, and Simulation Tools Report. Drawing Tools Process Organization Modeling Simulation and Enterprise Tools Tools Modeling Tools BP Business Rule Languages Management Tools Workflow Business Process BPM Tools Management Suites Applications EAI Tools Business Process Software Monitoring Tools Modeling & Development Tools Figure 1. The Business Modeling Software Product Market. What Are Enterprise Architecture, Process Modeling, and Simulation Tools? This report focuses on tools that companies use to analyze and modify business processes. The core tool for this task is a tool that lets business managers or analysts create a diagram or model of a business process and then change that diagram to explore how the process could be improved or redesigned. Some business process change teams prefer process modeling tools that are simple and easy to use. Others prefer more sophisticated tools that can support additional tasks. Many organizations use the same process modeling tool to analyze many different processes. Some create Copyright (c) 2005 Business Process Trends. www.bptrends.com 1 BPTrends The 2005 EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Report Celia Wolf Foreword diagrams of entire value chains and then subdivide the chain into separate processes and subprocesses to understand how everything works together. Similarly, many companies analyze their organizations as a whole to define how all the processes or value chains work together. At the same time they extend the process models to show how resources flow into the processes and how employees and software systems support processes. Others use their process modeling tools to gather cost data on processes. Some use process simulation tools to explore how a process will function before they make physical changes in actual processes. Tools that provide support for organization analysis and modeling are, today, usually termed Enterprise Architecture tools. Tools that focus entirely on simulation are termed Simulation Tools. Increasingly, however, companies are using business process modeling tools that also incorporate support for enterprise modeling and simulation. Thus, we decided to include all the tools that can be used for Enterprise Architecture, Business Process Modeling, and Process Simulation in the same report. To simplify the language of the report, we will use the term modeling tool as a generic phrase whenever we want to refer all the tools being considered in this report. We will use the terms enterprise architecture tool, process modeling tool, or process simulation tool only when we wish to refer to tools that provide these specific functions. We have consciously excluded three other types of tools from this report. We do not consider the simpler graphical drawing or diagramming tools. These tools are widely used for creating simple process diagrams, but they cannot support sustained modeling and redesign efforts. The key to discriminating between the drawing tools and serious process modeling tools is whether they store data about the models in a database or repository. Serious modeling tools create data entries in a database. Thus, a box drawn in a process modeling tool is not simply an image of a box; it is an object in a database. Once you give the box a name you can begin to record information about that process or activity. You can record costs and associated business rules. You can indicate where inputs come from and where outputs go, and you can name the software applications that support that activity. More important, you can create a new diagram and create a new box with the same name and immediately inherit all the data you have already entered to describe that activity. In other words, a serious process modeling tool is the interface for a database that allows you to organize and save information about your business processes. All of the process modeling tools considered in this report store data about processes and can be used to create and manage a database of information about your organization’s processes. Second, we do not consider either BPM Suites or Software Modeling Tools in this report. The BPM Suites are considered in a separate report, The BPTrends 2005 BPM Suites Report, which we published and posted to BPTrends in March, 2005 BPM Suites include process modeling tools, but they are primarily used to manage the day-to-day execution of business processes. They also provide other capabilities used by those managing processes, including business rule execution engines and real-time process monitoring. Similarly, we have not included the various Software Modeling Tools in this report. Those tools are used by software developers to capture business requirements and to design software applications. A glance at marketing data reveals that vendors in the Process Modeling, BPM Suites, and Software Modeling markets are not competing with each other. In essence, there are three separate market niches. The leading Process Modeling vendors are all flourishing and Process Modeling tools are being used by business managers and analysts who want to create or improve their business processes. Our objective in this report is to describe the various options available from Enterprise Architecture, Process Modeling, and Process Simulation vendors. Different companies are using these tools for very different purposes. It does not make sense to argue that there is, or should be, a “best” tool with a specific configuration that would be best for all. Thus, we have avoided any comparison that suggests that some tools are the “winners” while others are “less desirable.” Instead, we analyze each Copyright (c) 2005 Business Process Trends. www.bptrends.com 2 BPTrends The 2005 EA, Process Modeling & Simulation Tools Report Celia Wolf Foreword product, explain what specific markets the vendor is pursuing, consider how the tool is adapted for that market, and identify what is special or unique about each product. To make comparisons as easy as possible, we have explored the capabilities of modeling tools in several ways. These are discussed in the section entitled, “A Detailed Analysis of Enterprise, Process Modeling and Simulation Tools.” Some vendors only implement a subset of the features we describe. That does not necessarily detract from their offering. It could mean that the vendor does not think the feature is required for its target market. Or it could mean that the vendor thinks it is more efficient to partner with another vendor who provides that specific feature. For example, we asked each vendor how it supports simulation. Some have built their own simulation engine into their tool. Others provide links to another simulation tool developed by a third party. Still others do not provide a simulation engine, allowing users to select their own. No one of these solutions makes the underlying Process Modeling tool better or worse, although it may make it more or less popular with a particular user. Users that already have a simulation tool may prefer a business modeling product without an embedded simulation system. Users at companies that do not currently have a standard simulation tool may prefer a modeling tool with its own simulation engine. As we said, it is impossible to say exactly what the ideal business modeling tool should have or not have. We have sought to provide a

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