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

WHAT ANALYSTS NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT
BUSINESS EVENTS...

Paul Vincent, TIBCO Software

© Copyright 2000-2011 TIBCO Software Inc.

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 Data IO
• Input / output Data
• Events

Some item of work
Start Event
+
End Event
Occurs over some time /
Progress Event
at some time
Data Access Event
Timeout Event
.... © Copyright 2000-2011 TIBCO Software Inc.

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
Relevant event of interest
• Fraud / Theft
– Thousands-millions of high-value small-size product items
Product location
– Complex production & supply chain change

• Logistics / Scheduling
– Raw material, production & delivery scheduling and
resources Resource, requirement
change

• Activity Monitoring
– Complex production and supply process with multiple
actors
Resource, requirement
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
Relevant event of interest
• Fraud / Theft
– Thousands-millions of high-value small-size product items
Product location
– Complex production & supply chain change
– How do you identify known patterns of “suspicious”
behavior?
• Logistics / Scheduling
– Raw material, production & delivery scheduling and Resource, requirement
change
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 Resource, requirement
change
– Complex production and supply process with multiple
actors
– Key Performance Indicators need to be directly actionable


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 %

Missing events
Reinforcement events
Aggregate events
Weakening 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

Upon Assign
Suspicion Investigator
of Fraud

• 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?

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 Reaction
Assessment, Routing, Prediction,
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
Complex Event Detection
Consolidation, Composition,
Aggregation
0..*
Event Analysis
Analytics, Transforms, Tracking,
Scoring, Rating, Classification
0..*
Event Preparation
Identification, Selection, Filtering,
Monitoring, Enrichment
0..*

Event Production Event Consumption
Application Time Dashboard, Apps,
Publication, Retrieval External Reaction

Event Channels

Event Reaction
Where do events come from,
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
Complex Event Detection and
Consolidation, Composition, they go?
where to
Aggregation
(producers, consumers)
0..*
Event Analysis
0..*
Event Preparation
0..*


Event Preparation

Event Reaction
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
What selection operations
do I need to perform?
Aggregation
0..*
Event Analysis
0..*
Event Preparation
0..*


Event Analysis

Event Reaction
What computations
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
Aggregation
0..*
Event Analysis
0..*
Event Preparation
0..*



Event Reaction
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
Aggregation
0..*
Event Analysis
0..*
Event Preparation
What event correlations or patterns
do I need to0..*
find?

Event Reaction

Event Reaction
Discovery, Learning

State Management
0..*
Aggregation
0..*
Event Analysis
0..*
Event Preparation
What event actions
0..*


Event Lifecycle

Event Reaction
Discovery, Learning

State Management
Score as high risk 0..*
Aggregation
Match id change to new 0..*
listing risk
Event Analysis Invoke
AntiFraud
Procedure
Nth Listing in time m 0..*
Event Preparation
Listing / id change
0..*


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 • Process changes + rule changes
– Respond to change are
• We want agile decisions Events!
– Change over time? • 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

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