Using BusinessOptix for Architecture and Technical Diagramming

The company I work for, recently has adopted BusinessOptix as BPMN tool for the Business Analysts (BA) group to map out business processes within the organisation. I have been asked to be a co-administrator of BusinessOptix representing the Architecture team. Given my years of creating Architecture artifacts with Microsoft Visio (and iServer as a repository), naturally I was skeptical about the change of the toolset for us. Afterall, a tool is a tool right? And we have been using Orbus iServer (https://www.orbussoftware.com/products/iserver/) as an architecture repository for a couple of years and fairly accustomed to putting everything into iServer.

But you see, the BA team has an ongoing love-hate relationship with iServer. Actually their problem boils down to their inability to use Visio to easily create BPMN diagrams and especially creating drill down processes, and cross-linking BPMN diagrams together in Visio. Furthermore, mapping business processes to Applications or systems in Visio/iServer is nearly impossible without an architecture being involved and creating a Business Process Co-operation Viewpoint or an Application Usage viewpoint.

Why BusinessOptix?

This is where BusinessOptix (https://www.businessoptix.com/) comes in handy to resolve a long overdue challenge, how can Business Architects and Business Analysts produce BPMN process maps and diagrams, and effectively being able to map business processes to application systems or services? How can they do this independently without a Solution or Application architecture always being available to do the Business Process co-op or Application Usage viewpoints at the same time? How do we also discover what processes are utilising what application service or systems? One would argue that you can do that in iServer, but what we have discovered is that iServer requires a lot of coordination between the BA groups and the architecture groups to do mapping. But with BusinessOptix, it is so much easier to do this because they use the concept of systems being defined in a Master Data list.

Bingo! that's it, with Applications / Systems being first defined in a Master Data list, all processes now map to the systems defined in the Master Data list. The same list in BusinessOptix is now also used to discover all diagrams and processes that are tied to specific item in the Master Data list. Perfect! Now, BAs can easily tag ever processes within their BPMN diagrams to systems without having the Solution or Application architects working on the Business Process to Application mapping at the same time.

Now, What about Technical Diagrams?

I wouldn't start to pretend that BusinessOptix is a be-all, end-all diagramming tool, or could be used as an effective Architecture Repository. It fact, it offers some basic, albeit easy-to-use, diagramming capability out of the "box" (funny enough, it's a SaaS cloud offering and not an on-premise software).

The most useful "out-of-box" diagramming stencils I find are the Diagram model and Process Model.

Some Standard businessOptix stencils

The Process Model

The Process model is predominantly used for creating BPMN diagrams. The stencil utilises "Swim lanes" just like what you would expect in most BPMN diagrams. BusinessOptix supports the typical shapes such as the Event (Start, End, etc) circles, decision gates, activity (Process), etc.

Out of the box, this stencil can be challenging to use for producing technical diagrams such an application process flow. There are a few things I would like to tweak to makes things easier and useful. So, I've created a new stencil (which I called it "Application System Process Flow Model") based on the original Process diagram stencil to produce this:

As you can see, I've added a few custom shapes in my stencil (such as pop-up annotations, numbering labels) and even made the Swim lanes automatically named after associating it with them with systems or applications in the Master Data.

How cool is that????

What about Technical or Architecture Diagram, say ArchiMate

Good question, BusinessOptix will be quick to point out that their objective is NOT to replace an incumbent architecture or diagramming tool like Sparx EA, iServer or Archi. The Diagram stencil is fair simplistic and admittedly can be quite frustrating to use if one is to attempt to draw sophisticated technical diagram. BusinessOptix also does not support ArchiMate shapes out of the box.

Drawing a simple context or conceptual diagram is one thing, but to use BusinessOptix to produce technical viewpoints (read: ArchiMate) out of the box, now that's a real challenge!

However, nothing is impossible right? Here's something I've attempt with some success:

Customising BusinessOptix

I found that BusinessOptix stencils are highly customisable. However, it is really not something a non-technical person or the faint hearted should attempt. It involves understand the BusinessOptix object model, and customising everything in an XML document. For the bravest, I would strongly suggesting downloading the Stencil Author's Guide while you attempt to create your own custom Stencils!. Here's the link:
https://businessoptixhosted.com/docs/5docs/Author%205.0%20Library%20Service%20-%20Stencil%20Guide.pdf.

I hope to write more posts on BusinessOptix and share my experience and journey on BusinessOptix.

Perhaps, it is really time to say Adios iServer.