i everyone,

New poster here. I recently landed a job as a BA at a large university, and I'm new to the field but I have background in IT systems administration. I'm being put on a new project and would appreciate some advice. I need to research and discover workflow maangement systems that allow my organization to design and manage workflows. One such product I'm aware of is Sungard (banner) Workflow, which allows users to move information or forms along a path to achieve a desired goal.

Some basic requirements (we're very early in the process, so requirements are scarce):

1. The product would need to world with Java, web services, and oracle/sql in order to communicate with our existing systems.

2. Example of a simple use case: Workflows can be designed to interact with workers/approvers to automatically/manually move forward a process. For example, user1 submits document via web, user2 approves and adds document, and finally it is finished. The software should be able to keep track of the processes for everyone, so workers can keep track of the work and other users such as submitters/managers can see how the process is going. Processes also need to interact with our oracle/sql dbs and cold fusion envrionment.

Does anyone know of other popular products? Also, in what way would you present the findings? Have a matrix to show all the business/functional/technical requirements, and how well each product fit our needs? What other artifacts can I consider?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi:

You said:  "Example of a simple use case: Workflows can be designed to interact with workers/approvers to automatically/manually move forward a process. For example, user1 submits document via web, user2 approves and adds document, and finally it is finished. The software should be able to keep track of the processes for everyone, so workers can keep track of the work and other users such as submitters/managers can see how the process is going. Processes also need to interact with our oracle/sql dbs and cold fusion envrionment."

My comment:  Sounds like you are trying to jump into a solution without knowing the system end-user's world, ie, the business at hand. 

My suggestion: Let your imagination run wild and imagine that you have perfect technology at hand.  In this imaginary scenario, there is no need to develope a solution; a black box solution just magically appears when needed.  The system users simply state what info they need and "puff", like magic, it instantly appears - no work is required to retrieve it. 

Now ask yourself, in this world of perfect technology, what info does does the user need to get business done.   Such info is called the essential business requirement.  After you get the essential business requirements, and most of all, have an understanding of logically how they all initerrealte, THEN think solutions.

Tony

It is a kind of software that helps to define,administer and coordinate different business processes and every businesses have their own system for that.