what analysts need to understand about business events - v1.2

© Copyright 2000-2011 TIBCO Software Inc.

WHAT ANALYSTS NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT

BUSINESS EVENTS...

Paul Vincent, TIBCO Software


What we shall cover in this session

1. What are “events”…

Business building blocks: events, processes

2. Events in Business Analysis

Events in REA, EPC etc

3. Identifying Events in Business Processes Events in Processes, BPMN

4. Events as Goals Can we detect other events of interest? Can we predict events?

5. The trend to Event-Driven Corporations and Vendors moving in this direction…


What are Events?


What do we mean by “Event”

• Observation or some Happening

– “customer order arrived”

– “policy form completed”

– “policy form checked as valid”

• Change in State

– “policy activated”

– “customer order processed”

– “goods in-transit”

• Message

– Customer order message

– Stock situation update

– New policy for new product


Why Do We Care About Events?

• Life is event-driven. People are event-driven.

Customers are event-driven.

– Learning to ride a bicycle

– Responding to flame and fire

– Crossing the street

– Purchasing food

• Government & Business is also event-driven

• Traditional IT systems are less so

– Batch

– … but this is changing


Events are one of the fundamentals of

business systems

• Process tasks / work

• Actor / Role

• Time

• Input / output Data

• Events

Some item of work

Occurs over some time / at some time

Start Event + End Event Progress Event Data Access Event Timeout Event ....

Data IO


How can I model Events at the business-appropriate level?


Business Models for Events

• Event Classifications

– E.g. List all customer events

– E.g. List all events that affect a customer contract (/entity)

– E.g. List all events that need procedure statements / documented actions

– GOOD: initial starting point

– BAD: what is the context?


1. State Models

• A “lifecycle” model

• Relates events to states of some entity

– E.g. Customer: prospect, customer, ex-customer, repeat-customer, ...

• GOOD: easy to relate to, common standard (UML)

• BAD: what aspect / characteristic should “state” refer to? Status with

respect to what?

Level of detail or granularity?

“UML is an IT standard and

therefore not relevant to me”


2. Event Process Chain Models

• A high-level process model

• Relates events to functions (processes)

– E.g. Customer: receive order, check stock, ...

• GOOD: simplistic process model

• BAD: high level detail only

Not a standard (Aris)


3. Resources Events Agents (REA) Models

• A resource model

• Relates economic (increment and decrement) events between agents

– C.f. transactions

– E.g. Customer: receives-goods, provides-money, ...

• GOOD: maps to organisation (agents)

supports value-chain perspective

• BAD: economic aspect

might be limiting


How can I model Events at the “process” level?


4. Business Process (BPMN) Models

• A process / task model

• Relates events as drivers of process tasks

– E.g. Customer: application-received, application-confirmed, ...

– Also: events of process-start and process-end

• GOOD: relates to activities

• BAD: simple orchestrated

processes only


BPMN is the Pro Standard for Process Models

• 63 types of event!

– Message

– Timer

– Escalation

– Conditional

– Link

– Error

– Cancel

– Compensation

– Signal

– Multiple

– Parallel Multiple

– Terminate


Event Analysis


What are events in our business / systems?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case


Events of Interest

• Fraud / Theft

– Thousands-millions of high-value small-size product items

– Complex production & supply chain

• Logistics / Scheduling

– Raw material, production & delivery scheduling and

resources

• Activity Monitoring

– Complex production and supply process with multiple

actors

Product location

change

Relevant event of interest

Resource, requirement

change


change


Event identification / discovery

1. Identify actors and roles

2. Identify what they do

and when they do it

3. List the events

+ sources and destinations

+ preconditions

+ timescale for usage


Events Usage

Note – is this event

related to a

process

or a

lifecycle?


Events as Goals


Events of Interest

• Fraud / Theft

– Thousands-millions of high-value small-size product items

– Complex production & supply chain

– How do you identify known patterns of “suspicious”

behavior?

• Logistics / Scheduling

– Raw material, production & delivery scheduling and

resources are complex, human- and time-dependent, and

prone to change

– Changes and production switches can lead to

misallocation of resources - How do we do this better?

• Activity Monitoring

– Complex production and supply process with multiple

actors

– Key Performance Indicators need to be directly actionable

Product location

change

Relevant event of interest


change


change


Classifying Events

• Positive Events

– Product item X arrives at Production station S from Store T

– Production worker Y arrives at Production station S

– Production contract for item Z by time T is posted

• Negative Events

– Product item X has been in transit to Store T for >15 minutes

– Subcomponent Y hasn’t arrived at the Production station by the ETA

– Delivery of contract Z has not taken place

• Sets of Events

– 5+ items of Product item type Y failed to arrive at destination

– Supplier Y was 5 mins late for 1 delivery, but made it early to the next

– Return rate on component Z exceeds SLA %

Reinforcement events

Weakening events

Missing events

Aggregate events


What Events do you Really Want to Find?

• Customer Service Failure

• Customer Churn

• Equipment Failure

• SLA Exceeded

• Sales Opportunity

• Improve Customer Satisfaction Opportunity

• Reduce cost-of-business opportunity

• ...

These are not simple events


Event Definitions vs Business Rules

• Capturing Business Rules from Business Processes:

Example = “Spontaneous Event Initiating a Process”

• Pattern Question: what specific conditions produce a spontaneous

event that initiates a business process?

Assign

Investigator

Upon

Suspicion

of Fraud

Building Business Solutions:

Business Analysis with Business Rules

Ch7 Business Rules and Business Process Models

R Ross and G Lam, 2011


Introducing “Complex Events”


EPTS Event Processing Reference Architecture

Event Production Application Time

Publication, Retrieval

Event Preparation Identification, Selection, Filtering,

Monitoring, Enrichment

Complex Event Detection Consolidation, Composition,

Aggregation

Event Reaction Assessment, Routing, Prediction,

Discovery, Learning

Event Consumption Dashboard, Apps, External Reaction

Event Analysis Analytics, Transforms, Tracking, Scoring, Rating, Classification

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Event Channels






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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t Where do events come from,

and where to they go?

(producers, consumers)


Event Preparation






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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What selection operations do I need to perform?


Event Analysis






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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t What computations

do I need to perform?


Complex Event Detection






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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What event correlations or patterns do I need to find?


Event Reaction






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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What event actions do I need to perform?


Event Lifecycle






Aggregation


Discovery, Learning



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Listing / id change

Nth Listing in time m

Match id change to new listing risk

Score as high risk

Invoke AntiFraud Procedure


Business Models for Events...


5. Event Dependencies

• Expressions of event orderings

• Relates events together as meaningful facts

– E.g. Customer application-started

followed by a Custom web session-timeout within 20minutes

but not followed by a Customer application-completed within 20 minutes

• GOOD: relates events to events

• BAD: not a common practice in modelling OR technology


What Businesses are taking an Event-Driven Approach?


A Simpler Model for Processing Business Events


FedEx

“We need Event Decision-making Capabilities ... “

“That’s where we are moving to

event-oriented systems ...”

“We need to make very real-time decisions

about these shipments... “


You need to find the light at the end of ...

...the Decision Tunnel.


AllState

“We feed the ESB business events to our process

and CEP engines, and to our Data Warehouse.”

“... We have 800 [CEP] rules engines

and its the

fastest growing [service] technology we use...”

“... We monitor BAM reports to change rules

overnight...

and increased closing rates by 15%”


Forrester


Something to think about...

• We want agile processes

– Respond to change

• We want agile decisions

– Change over time?

• Process changes + rule changes

are

Events!

• Change process / performance

monitoring are related / can be

managed...


Summary:

Analyzing “business events” = Good

Exploiting “business events” = Better


Q&A

what analysts need to understand about business events - v1.2

Business

interest relevant event

supply process

business process

business models

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2011 tibco software

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