The process of building a Process Manager: Architecture and design patterns

C. J. Paul Process Managers are applications that implement and manage process flows integrating people, information, and technology. They allow customers to improve organizational productivity while satisfying governance and compliance requirements. This paper describes the design challenges in building Process Managers in contrast with workflow-based applications. A methodology is presented which includes using industry best practice processes, usage scenario analysis, and architecture and design patterns that have been derived from lessons learned over the last few years of building Process Managers. Although the approach and design methodology are described for the information-technology-enabled service management domain, the overall design principles are expected to be of interest for most process management domains.