BPM Standards
Standards organizations have been contributing to the lack of synchronization in the process development environment. The Object Management Group (OMG) defined the BPMN specification, which standardizes a visual notation for business process models - defining a system of graphic symbols for expressing process models. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), another standards organization, defined the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) standard, which describes how business processes can be executed. BPEL, with further enhancements in BPEL4 people, facilitates both system- and human-centric processes. This split between OMG and OASIS business process standards just encourages the gap between tools for business and IT - or the development of proprietary implementations. We should note that OMG saw fit to equip the BPMN standard with rules that detail how each BPMN activity maps to a BPEL activity - a start toward closing this model to execution gap. However, since BPMN allows arbitrary directed graphs, while BPEL is a more structured flow language, mapping between the two requires more than just mapping activities. It's also possible to create process maps in BPMN that are very difficult to implement in BPEL. Any solutions in this area must take these factors into account.

Fundamentally, we believe a key for contemporary, standards-based, continuous business process management is to bridge this gap between modeling (BPMN) and execution (BPEL, etc.) more effectively.

Process Blueprints
The rapidly maturing SOA standards have opened a new road to BPM. The solution we describe here provides for BPMN models tightly coupled with BPEL for process execution through a BPEL-based shared metadata format that we call a "process blueprint," enabling closed-loop business optimization. This approach allows for capturing process definition using best-of-breed tools supporting the widely accepted BPMN industry standard. The metadata is shared with IT as a process blueprint that basically defines an abstract BPEL process. This model may be thought of as the contract between the business and IT; it's the lowest level of modeling for business analysts and a living specification for the IT developer. The process blueprint describes an explicit business process layer, abstracting process logic from existing applications - enabling a more agile enterprise. It facilitates both business and IT having a common understanding of the process definition. Additionally, closed-loop business optimization supports a model-driven iterative development approach and integrates the design and execution phase in real-time for synchronous process development between business and IT. Therefore it represents a better approach for continuous collaborative development, and helps overcome the discontinuous nature of the waterfall model.

Benefits of Closed-Loop Business Optimization
With that proposed solution, business users can document their business processes in a common, understandable notation across the enterprise, guaranteed by the standard modeling notation BPMN. These process models can be maintained in a distributed fashion, published to a wide audience and continuously monitored and optimized. These business process assets not only promote common understanding but also represent strategic differentiation for many companies. Most importantly, those business process models represent input for implementing and executing business processes, the underlying foundation for iterative closed-loop business process optimization, which represents an innovative tools approach for business process development.

With closed-loop business optimization, business processes originated by business users in the form of models are immediately available for IT to implement. Requirements definitions are captured through the model's standard metadata and are transparently viewable and editable by IT. Organizations can then tailor their applications as services, which can be deployed, discovered, and invoked, and potentially shared across many executing processes. With SOA standards like XML, WSDL, UDDI, and BPEL, deployment of services and their discovery and orchestration has become mainstream. This lets IT use tools that are right for the job and retain their investment in existing platforms, hardware and software, and people skills. A BPM infrastructure on top of service-oriented system interfaces unlocks the potential of IT assets, and enables the processes that orchestrate them to be changed more easily.