Sim4BPM

[John]

Regarding a discussion earlier this year in this forum regarding
simulation and BPMN models, I mentioned working on a project whose
goal was to make a proposal for standardizing what I called "scenario
parameters": a description of the specific events that occur, the
instances of work that are processed, and the resource instances that
are utilized during a specific time frame, or within a specific
context.

The basic idea is that a process definition (e.g. in BPMN or XPDL)
*plus* a definition of these scenario parameters would together
describe a business process scenario that could be consumed by any
scenario based application. The obvious consumer would be simulation
and the original discussion was based on that use case. However, other
applications like workforce management and activity based costing
required the same, or at least a portion of the same, set of data.

I've published the first draft of this specification (which I've
called "Sim4BPM") at the following site:
http://sim4bpm.com

This draft has been heavily influenced by the work at Cape Visions
which Kieth mentioned in the original thread, work at Meta Software
which has developed process modeling and simulation software for quite
some time, as well as my own experience. I was also slated to give a
talk on this effort at process.gov in April but had to pull out at the
last minute due to a broken leg.

It would be great to get some feedback. It's early days, and some of
it is a little rough around the edges. Any comments/questions that
could help with the clarity of the spec would also be great. Also, if
anyone is interested in getting involved in this effort, please let me
know.