AgilePoint makes I.T. Shine

Some Business Process Management System (BPMS) providers expect that all process definitions will get “thrown over the wall” to IT.  Some BPMS vendors think that all business processes should be defined and managed outside of IT—you hear them say “no code” in a never-ending mantra that simply doesn’t ring true in today’s ever-more-complex world.  At AgilePoint we know that both extremes are wrong.  If the entire process is defined by IT, then there is room for miscommunication.  By the time you finish creating the process, there may already be changes in business policies, routing rules, escalation procedures, and other frequently-changing business factors.  Before you know it, you’re caught in the churn. 
At the same time, you know that there are many aspects of business processes that business analysts and stakeholders don’t understand at all.  They’d rather just treat those portions of the process as a technological “black box.”  The understand what goes in, and they understand what they need out the other end, but they don’t even want to know about the many legacy systems, internal and external web services, and data sources that you may interact with in between. 
AgilePoint is built by people who understand these real-world dynamics.  AgilePoint supports a better way of working.  Envision, the AgilePoint process design interface is built on top of Visio—a modeling interface that is as comfortable for IT personnel as it is for business analysts and stakeholders.  Business analysts can define and manage the portions of the process that they understand well, and IT can create and maintain the many portions of the process that are truly in the IT domain.  Miscommunication is avoided.  Churn is avoided.  Collaboration is achieved.
There are several factors that make AgilePoint the clear choice for IT:
1. AgilePoint has a flexible and open architecture making it easy to encapsulate functionality for reuse:

a. As a sub-process
b. As a custom task component in Envision (the Visio-extending process design interface)
c. As a custom automation component in Envision

2. AgilePoint’s architecture also makes it easy to extend AgilePoint if needed, referencing the robust and open web service API.
3. AgilePoint allows you to expose any SOA assets or legacy systems.  You can create process-driven “application compositions” that can then be reused.  Composing applications in AgilePoint also means that you can move frequently-changing elements to the model—improving maintainability and keeping instance-specific code separated from more generic code.
4. AgilePoint facilitates rapid application development, without dictating development approach or methodology.  AgilePoint will fit your organization and your standards, not the other way around.
5. AgilePoint has a loosely-coupled “model-preserving” design.  The preservation of the model throughout the process lifecycle is illustrated in the diagram below:

AgilePoint’s “model-preserving” design provides a much higher level of run-time adaptability and capability for real-time, in-flight change.  Here is a small sample of the powerful capabilities provided through this design:

a. Process migration (single process instance, select group of process instances, or all instances)
b. Dynamic task reassignment
c. Process rollback
d. Dynamic addition of participants
e. Explicitly skipping process steps
f. Intentional modification of process instance data

6. AgilePoint allows IT to set granular policies that provide the right level of access and empowerment to non-technical users.
7. AgilePoint automatically creates a detailed audit trail, keeping track of who made each change, when they made it, and what the context was. 
 

AgilePoint is the product of an understanding that fundamental effectiveness, efficiency, and agility is achieved when  the work should stays close to where the knowledge is.  This means that both IT and non-technical power users and knowledge workers need to be able to create and maintain the portions of the process that they understand best.  AgilePoint then provides simple and seamless mechanisms for integrating these two bodies of work.  There also has to be adequate safeguards, appropriate levels of IT governance, and assurance of regulatory compliance.  AgilePoint is the choice for IT departments that want to perfectly balance these many imperatives with fruitful collaboration and high productivity.