Workflow and BPM

What is the difference between workflows and Business Process Management? If we say that the difference between them is a quantitative difference, we can summarize one of the items I have recently come into contact, there is a qualitative difference in the differences between them.

In general, workflow is a technical concept, while BPM is a management concept (BPM is also technical under the flicker of such hateful big companies as IBM ), my new understanding is that workflow is a technical method for business process management (note that it is only one method ), advocates the process of business process management modeling, operation, control and management. The first step must be modeling. Therefore, the relevant specifications of workflow (such as xpdl and BPMN) are all about modeling first, and the second step is the operation control, therefore, the relevant specifications of workflow are also trying to define some standardized process-driven interfaces (although there has been no real standard for everyone ). Business Process Management emphasizes not only positive processes, but also results and responses. In a positive process, the process management process provided by workflow technology is only a method of implementation, rather than a unique choice. In fact, the Business Process Management of many enterprises focuses on the analysis of running results rather than modeling. For bpm, modeling actually provides a template for the production process plan. You can use this template to create a specific production plan. For many enterprises, templates are sometimes not required for the formulation of production plans, or templates only need to provide an optional range of activities, the sequence between activities can be unscheduled (determined at any time during the production process) or rescheduled as needed. Because of the different planning methods, the driving method of the process running process is not necessarily a standard method of workflow. That is to say, the BPM engine must be more flexible and more complex process-driven than the workflow engine. No matter where the plan comes from, after a period of operation, the last step of the positive process of BPM is Bam, that is, the analysis of various indicators collected during the operation, this is also not standardized by workflow.

Perhaps because of these features of BPM, BPM and SOA are getting closer and closer, so that when IBM and other companies mention bpm, SOA is necessary, we need to talk about Application Integration and service integration.