21 Questions to Ask a BPM Vendor
- Does your product support a standard external interchange format for process definitions?
- Does your product support XPDL?
- Can the product import that standard format?
- Can the product export that standard format?
- When the product exports a process, and then imports it in again, does it look that same?
- How many other products read that export format?
- What other vendor tools have you demonstrated the ability to exchange process definitions?
- Can you add or modify a activity in a process instance while it is running? What other modifications can be made to the process definition?
- Can one process be invoked as a subprocess of another? How many levels deep can this go?
- What kind of historical data is available? Can you see past values of process variables?
- Is there a way to send log events to an external analytics engine (Business Activity Monitoring tool)?
- Does your product support Wf-XML?
- Can you extend the system with new capabilities, and call those capabilities from within a process? How is this accomplished?
- Are process definitions exposed as web services (without the need of an additional component)?
- Can every data type supported by the product be mapped to an XML Schema data type?
- Can a non-programmer create a workflow?
- What platforms are supported. Are process definitions platform independent? Can a process developed on one platform (eg. Macintosh) be run on another platform (Unix)?
- Can an activity contain a timer that sends a reminder to the person doing the activity (without canceling the activity)?
- Can multiple reminders be sent on a single activity?
- If an XPDL is read with foreign Extended Attributes are they preserved and re-written when exporting?
- Can activities and other element be named with Kanji and other non-European characters?
http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/questions-to-ask-a-bpm-vendor/
http://xpdl.org/nugen/p/tkrzbtzwf/leaf.htm
