Sopra Consulting SOMA and BPMN

Hi all.

This week I took the "Applications Architecture" exam, at the Master on ICT Management (University of Seville). This subject is about SOA and BPM. I also gave a presentation of a SOMA and a BPMN diagram that I would like to share with you. A requisite was that the SOMA and the BPMN explained services in my Organization, so I showed Sopra Consulting (a Sopra Group division) services.

You can get the slideshow in my web site https://sites.google.com/site/josemartinezbenavides/, in the BPM section. I recomend you to dowload it, because I'll refer to it as an example in order to explain the methodology to identify services. We'll answer the questions What? Who? Why? How?

What? (slide #2)

In this stage, you shoud identify the departments or functional areas in the Organization. In the example, if you look at slide #2, you'll see Sopra Consulting departments:

• IT Governance: enables the IT strategy alignment with the bussiness strategy.
• Technological Strategy: helps customers to find and deploy a suitable sourcing strategy.
• Software Engineering: mainly, dedicated to improve customers business processes.
• Project Management Office: services and projects management.
• Production Engeering: ITIL processes implantation and enactment.

Who? (slide #3)

Now, you have to find actors outside the Organization. In the example, actors outside Sopra Consulting are:

• Internal Customer: departments in Sopra Group, outside Sopra Consulting.
• External Customer: Sopra Group customers.
• Press: we contact them to publish news or events.
• SEI (Software Engineering Institute): Sopra Consulting is a SEI Partner, and we ask them to publish our customers' CMMi certifications.

Why? (slide #4)

The next step is to identiy relationships between departments and bewteen departments and actors. A relationship between two entities is represented by an arrow. The source is the customer in the relationship, while the target is the provider. Each of the relationships is a services.

You can see many relationships (services) in slide #4. For example, the marked one "Process Reengineering" is a service that the External Customer (source of the arrow) consumes, and is provided by the Software Engineering department (target of the arrow).

This is a very natural notation, because we are using services, wich is a real life concept.

How? (slide #5)

We have finished the SOMA. Now, we must specify each of the services in a BPMN diagram.

In slide #5, you can see the BPMN for the "Process Reengineering" service. After the proposal is approved by the customer, the project starts. First of all, the AS IS is modeled and evaluated against normatives and best practices. Then, the TO BE is modeled. A human resources and information systems gap study is accomplished, in order to define the implantation plan. The implantation plan is executed. A support period starts, until an evaluation is performed and corrective actions are identified and executed. In the BPMN you can also see three PPIs (Process Perfomance Indicators) defined in order to measure and improve the process.

Today's questions:

• Did you find it interesting? Useful?