Factoring has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years and today the global worth of the factoring business is estimated to be over €2.25 trillion. 

Partho Chakraborty and Arvind Sonmale, recently published a book called “Factoring - A Powerful Tool in the World of Finance”.  In this publication Enterprise Architect  was used to create the Business Process models using BPMN 2.0. 

Factoring as means of finance is very ancient and there has been much written on the topic. What we currently see on Factoring can be considered the classical form.

Today the customer is very discerning and wants more and the aim of this book is to go beyond classical factoring. 

This book is in 3 parts and introduces new topics and techniques, with a lot of examples and some live cases.  It contains many graphical examples, some of which are unique as it gives information on and traces our history on this ancient monetary system while providing a view of factoring and it’s value in a modern context.

Published by Notion Press, the book is available through Amazon.

EA User Group Conference; London - The agenda takes shape...

We have received an amazing level of response to the call for speakers for the London conference and can now provide a preview of how the agenda is shaping up for London; 

We're still in the draft stages and so timings and presentations are still subject to change.

The call for speakers doesn't close until the end of the month so if you have a story to share and would feel like sharing it with the community then This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The conference will be taking place at the Park Plaza County Hall, 1 Addington Street, London, SE1 7RY, United Kingdom.

Tickets for this event are already on sale via the EA User Group website.

We look forward to seeing you all in London.

European Enterprise Architect User Group 2015 in Zürich, March, 10th 2015

After a series of highly successful German Enterprise Architect User Community events in previous years, it is my great pleasure now to be able to announce a first time event in Zurich. Thanks to the support of UBS AG, the European Enterprise Architect User Group event will be held in Switzrland at the company's headquarters in Zurich. The event will include a series of lectures and a permanently-staffed Experts Corner, and during coffee breaks and lunch there will be plenty of time for more in-depth conversations with users and lecturers alike.

The lectures will be held alternately in English or German. In his keynote speech, David Würth, Enterprise Architect Specialist at UBS, explores the standardization activities and use of Enterprise Architect, and shares some of his enterprise-wide initiatives. Phil Chudley, TOGAF and BPMN specialist since their very beginnings, will illuminate us on the topic "Enterprise Architecture" and associated technologies...and of course you won’t want to miss presentations by Swisscom and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).

Save the date: Tuesday, March 10th, 2015, from 9.00 till 17.00 at UBS AG in Zurich

Registration at http://www.eausergroup.com/events

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a great tool to produce and organise your models using UML, SysML, BPMN or other modelling languages or notations.

In some cases, the default rendering of elements on certain types of diagrams lacks a suitable colour scheme and font.

This article deals with two topics :

• Highlight the strengths of Enterprise Architect as a modelling tool versus that of a drawing tool,
• Applying visual styles to improve the look and feel of your diagrams.

A vital switch from a drawing tool to a comprehensive modelling tool

Initial context : A colleague and I discovered a set of BPMN diagrams maintained by a team using a BPM modelling tool, Bizagi BPMN Business Process Modeler. Being a freeware must have helped to quickly try and adopt this tool for the project. I have to say that the rendering of the diagrams looked rather attractive and modern. As a UML and BPMN expert, my colleague was the first one to get involved in this task. He started to model new business processes, and update existing ones as requested. He noticed a number of mistakes (e.g. broken sequence flow, missing end event) that he promptly fixed.

As things went on, we had a chat and I asked what he thought about this tool compared with Sparx Enterprise Architect. His feedback was interesting ; Bizagi was more or less a drawing tool like Ms Visio, that can be used to create a couple of UML diagrams. A project browser was  missing from Bizagi i.e. when you create a BPMN node like an activity or gateway, you have no access to this element so that it can be reused into several diagrams. Not to mention all the other powerful advantages from Enterprise Architect including traceability with other model elements from the same project, e.g. to link an activity with a requirement it fulfils, or with a use case to establish links between the business and system analysis models.

The need for a real modelling project quickly lead to a move from Bizagi modelling tool to Enterprise Architect, as agreed by the client.

Applying visual styles to improve BPMN diagrams rendering

As I started to create and maintain BPMN diagrams in Enterprise Architect, I looked at simple ways to reproduce a similar look and feel from the original tool (Bizagi).  The aim was to improve the default rendering of Elements in Enterprise Architect.  Below,  I managed to reproduce a similar visual style using the following colour schemes:

• BPMN2 start event : light green background + dark green line

• BPMN2 end event : light red background + dark red line

• BPMN2 activities and gateways : light blue background + dark blue line

The procedure to create those visual styles is quite easy:

• 1- I first defined the visual settings on a selected element using the diagram toolbar by setting the background colour, line colour and width, and the font.
• 2- Then I clicked on Save as New Style icon from the toolbar, and entered the style name as prompted by Enterprise Architect, e.g. start event.
• Alternatively, having an element with its visual settings already done, a new style can be created using the Get Style icon from the toolbar, followed by Save as New Style.
• 3- Having repeated this process for each new visual style, I ended up with a list styles ready to apply onto my diagram's elements.

Note : Visual styles are stored within your Enterprise Architect project (e.g. the EAP file) but I haven't found them yet from the Reference Data to export them and share with others.

Once all visual styles have been defined, the following list can be opened from the diagram toolbar :

Here is an illustration of what I came up with, having applied the new styles :

CRaG Systems has scheduled a number of public courses in Johannesburg, South Africa teaching model-driven development with UML, BPMN and Enterprise Architect. The courses take place over the five days of one full working week on a regular basis at the CRaG Systems Training Centre in the heart of the central business district of Sandton in the north of Johannesburg.

Over the 5 days students will learn the use of Enterprise Architect for business analysis, requirements definition and system analysis using the most appropriate syntax for the job in hand. Students can choose which of the three sections they would like to attend enrolling for one, two or all three sections in any one week.

Industry best practice is taught for business process modelling, system use case modelling and system analysis at every appropriate level of abstraction based on the Business Process Modelling Notation v2.0 for business process modelling and on the Unified Modelling Language v2.4 for systems modelling. The techniques are taught within the context of a business process management (BPM), improvement or re-engineering strategy and a model-driven development process in a way that satisfies the needs of both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Enterprise Architect is used for the exercises throughout the course and the relevant details of the use of Enterprise Architect for modelling, reporting, traceability and change management are taught.

Currently scheduled dates:

• August 19th - 23rd 2013
• October 7th - 11th 2013
• November 18th - 22nd 2013
• January 27th - 31st 2014
• March 10th - 14th 2014
• May 5th - 9th 2014

For more information see the CRaG Systems BPMN and UML using Enterprise Architect Training Courses in Johannesburg page.

CRaG Systems' Johannesburg Training Centre

Changing the Appearance of BPMN 2.0 Elements 

 Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect provides a very rich modelling toolset for Business Process Model and Notation2.0 (BPMN 2.0), which is increasing in popularity particularly amongst Business Analysts.

The BPMN 2.0 notation uses a common set of symbols, which have an icon to show their meaning, for example, the type of event that triggers the start of a business process.

Each BPMN 2.0 element has a set of tagged values identified by the label BPMN 2.0 in the properties dialog.  The value in these tagged values affects the appearance of the associated element.

Enterprise Architect can generate Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) directly from BPMN 2.0 models. This code generation uses tagged values also identified by the label BPMN 2.0. 

This use of tagged values results in a large number of them to choose from and for modellers beginning with Enterprise Architect, this prospect can be rather daunting. Sparx Systems have tried to resolve this problem by grouping the tagged values into sections, but it can be challenging to know which tagged values to use.

Business Analysts will not be using the BPEL tagged values and this article presents a tabular summary of just the tagged values, which affect the appearance of BPMN 2.0 elements.

This information is in the on-line help and user guide, it is presented here for convenience.

The Activity element used on Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The Gateway element used on Choreography, Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The Start Event element used on Choreography, Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The End Event element used on Choreography, Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The Intermediate Event element used on Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The Pool element used on Collaboration diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance, for which there are no groups.

The Data Object element used on Collaboration and Business Process diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

The Sequence Flow connector drawn within Pools and Lanes on a Collaboration diagram uses the following tagged value to change its appearance, for which there are no groups.

The Message Flow connector drawn between Pools or elements in different Pools to model B2B communication on Collaboration diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance, for which there are no groups.

The Participant element drawn on Conversation diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance, for which there are no groups.

The Conversation element drawn on Conversation diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance, for which there are no groups.

The Choreography element drawn on Choreography diagrams uses the following tagged values to change its appearance.

This document aims to highlight those BPMN 2.0 Tagged Values used to change the appearance of BPMN 2.0 elements. It presents them grouped into tables according to BPMN 2.0 element type.

I hope you find this to be a useful and valuable resource when using Enterprise Architect for modelling business processes in BPMN2.0

Future Networks and Policy at Scottish & Southern Energy Power Distribution are researching new systems and building foundations for Smart Grid Networks. This paper tells of a journey based on a vision to introduce more formal modelling methods using an IT practice to allow the company to deliver business-driven end-to-end solutions that meet business needs.

This E-book presents a practical approach to modeling Service-Oriented Architecture solutions from concept to code. The author helps us to understand key SOA concepts and demystifies the "acronym soup" surrounding service-oriented development. Using an illustrated example, the reader is guided through the 'hands-on' ICONIX Process Roadmap for Service-Oriented Architecture. Each step of the roadmap is brought to life using Enterprise Architect Business and Software Engineering edition to derive concrete deliverables from visual models.

Topics include: business rules identification, generating web service interfaces from visual models, BPEL engineering and behavioral code generation.

The eBook is accompanied by an "SOA Project Template" EA model.

The SOA Project Template model contains our SOA Roadmap, a pre-fabricated project package structure, and a Car Rental example which includes:

• a Domain Model
• a WSDL package
• a BPMN model
• example of BPEL code generation from the BPMN model
• a Rule Flow diagram containing Rule Tasks for use with the Business Rule Composer and Behavioral Code Generation

ICONIX now offers JumpStart training on the process described in this eBook, details are available at http://www.iconixsw.com/soajumpstart.html