What is Pega?

What is BPM?

What is Pega used for?

What does Pega stand for?

What are Pega rules?

What are Pega Guardrails?

What are Pega Terms & Concepts?

Introduction - BPM

BPM -  Stands for Business Process Management.

So BPM is managing a ‘Business Process’.

Then what is ‘Business Process’? 

Any Work  in a business is a ‘Business Process’,

Examples :

 ‘Account Opening’, ‘Cash Withdrawal’, and ‘Applying Loan’ are kinds of works (Processes) in Banking Business.

‘Applying for Leave’ is one kind of work (Process) in an Organization,

‘Rent-a-car’ is a work (process) in Travel Business.

If we can go on talking about examples in the real world, every business is a set of processes, and our duty here is to automate that business process

BPM Definition :

BPM is defined in many ways, let us see some of them:

BPM automates the business processes, with a vision of constant improvement and optimization of the business process.

BPM is the organizational activity for maintaining & improving the business process.

BPM is for business effectiveness & efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with the technology.

Life Cycle of BPM

   Business Process is studied, modified, automated, updated, executed, and optimized in a systematic manner, which we call as Life Cycle of BPM.

Six stages of BPM:

1.VISION        : Work on strategic visions of the business.

2.DESIGN      : Design the existing and ‘to-be’ business process.

3.MODEL       : Creating models for ‘What-if’ analysis.

4.EXECUTE   : Creating and executing the Application.

5.MONITOR   : Monitor the application like Cycle Time, Defect rate

6.OPTIMIZE  : Work for Improvement / Enhancement of the process for greater business value.

BPM around R’s - 6R’s

Pega BPM follows 6 fundamental capabilities known as 6 R.

1.RECEIVE:  Receive Data from any source such as keyboard, scanner or any external system.

2.ROUTE:  Route the Data, depending upon the characteristics of work and make intelligent matches.

3.REPORT: Report the stages of work/process provide the real time visibility of work in progress, work completed, productivity, bottlenecks and quality.

4.RESPOND: Responding to the Administrators/Managers/Users. Communicating status of work by E-mail, fax, etc,

5.RESEARCH: Research the existing and ‘to-be’ process for optimization with tools for analysis and decision making.

6.RESOLVE: Resolve the work/process with automated process

What does Pega stand for?  

Pega is a BPM tool. BPM tool can be defined as an integrated tool for designing, verifying, simulating, and operating business processes, as well as automating & improving them.

Pega is generally termed/referred to as PRPC, PRPC stands for Pega RULES Process Commander. . PRPC also referred to as smart BOM

Some of the available BPM tools in the market:

1.FileNet, ILOG, Lombardi (all these Three are now with IBM).

2.Webmethods, ARIS (from software).

3.Oracle BPM from Oracle.

4.Appian6 and AppianAnyWhere from Appian.

5.And one from Indian origin that is TIBCO. 

Pega is a product from Pega Systems Inc., Pega Systems is started in 1983 with head office in MA, USA. Alan Trefler is the founder and CEO of Pega Systems. Alan Trefler, the world’s best chess player, his interest in computers started from playing a computer chess game. Alan Trefler is the co-champion of the 1975 World Open Chess Championship.

Since its inception, Pega Systems has travelled a long journey with lots of updates to its tool, the latest version of Pega in the market is V8.4.

What is Pega used for?

We automate the works/ services/ process . The unit of work in a business process is called "Work Object".

The whole Pega application development is to deal with ‘Work Object’. We Create, manage, route, update and resolve a ‘Work Object’ throughout the life cycle of a Pega application.

‘Work Object’ is sometimes also known as ‘Work Item’.

Work Object

‘Work Object’ records processed work in an application. 

Types of work objects.

1.Work-Object-: To Capture and process information about an individual unit of work.

2.Work-Cover-: To group distinct and closely related work objects.

3.Work-Folder-: It is a collection of one or more other work objects (which themselves may be basic work objects, other folders, or covers.).

Pega  Guardrails

Top TEN guardrails for Pega application are

1.Adopt an Iterative Approach.

2.Establish a Robust Foundation.

3.Do Nothing That is Hard.

4.Limit Custom Java.

5.Build for Change. ™

6.Design Intent-driven Processes.

7.Create Easy-to-Read Flows.

8.Monitor Performance Regularly.

9.Calculate and Edit Declaratively, Not Procedurally.

10.Keep Security Object-Oriented, Too.

Pega – Terms & Concepts

Pega Vocabulary

What are Pega rules?

Pega’s Vocabulary revolves around the word  RULE,

Almost anything and everything in Pega is a Rule

So, talking  about the Pega Terms & Concepts, means, talking about the Rules,

Here in Pega we create and  extend  different kinds of Rules,

We pack all the related Rules in a RuleSet.

The fundamental unit of work is ‘Work Object ‘/ ‘Work Item ‘ is also a Rule.

Class -- Object

Like any other OOPs / Java language definition for ‘Object’ is :

It is an instance of ‘Class’, here also in Pega we define ‘Work Object’ as an instance of concrete class derived from ‘Work-’ base.

Now we have to learn about the ‘Class’  concept in Pega

Class’ in Pega defines the capabilities (rules such as Properties, Activities, and HTML form and so on). Classes in Pega are of two types, they are

1.Abstract Class.

2.Concrete Class.

The abstract is a rule created to support the definition of rules, including other classes. Instances of Abstract classes are not stored in the database. Abstract classes end with hyphen/dash.

Concrete are the classes that we use to build our application and its instances are stored in the database, these classes will not end with hyphen/dash.

Ultimate Base -- @baseclass

In Pega, the class hierarchy starts with the ultimate base class, identified by the symbol ‘@baseclass’, this class is the topmost class in the class hierarchy. All other classes are derived from this class. This class is similar to the root class (‘Object’ class) in Java.

@baseclass  is the topmost class and all the class derived from this class are called top-level abstract base classes, in total there are 14 top-level base classes, from them 12 are standard and 2 are reserved.

1.Data-  2.Work    3. -Assign-  4. History-  5.  Code- 6.Embed- 7.Rule- 8. Index-  9.Link- 10.Log- 11.System- 12.Pega Accel- 13. DCOMS Office- 14. Doclet Generator-

From the 14 base classes:

1. ‘Rule-’ and ‘Data-’ holds rules and data instances that application developers create and update to build their application.

2.‘Assign-’ and ‘Work-’ hold the dynamic transaction data and status details as the process commander application operates.

3.‘History-’ is created automatically, and all other classes are rarely / occasionally used

Other important terms & concepts

we have to know few more basic terms before we go deeper into Pega learning

They are :

•Organization –Division – Unit

•Operator ID

•Access Group

•Class Group

•Work Pool

•Work list

•Work basket

Pega – Application

First Step of Pega Application Creation.

A Pega Application can be created in many different ways,

Pega suggests the best is to use DCO.

DCO – Direct Capture of Objectives

The success of any application implementation roots in the exact catching of the business specifications and the passing of the captured details to the project team members or Project Stakeholder. 

This can be achieved by DCO.

Direct Capture of Objectives (DCO) is a suite of features that enable to directly CAPTURE, ORGANIZE and MANAGE business specifications. 

DCO not only captures but also associates the business requirements to the parts of the application which implements those requirements.

DCO’s initial users are Business Analysts and Business Users to define the Use Case and Requirements of the application, then subsequently Developers and QA team uses DCO to develop and assure the quality of the application.

DCO’s ultimate result is a 360-degree view of the application, Every stakeholder of the application can view the application from their point of view.

Direct Capture of Objectives is achieved by the set of tools provided by PRPC, following are the tools

•Application Profiler.
•Application Accelerator.
•Application Document Wizard.
•Application Use Cases.

 

Application Requirements.

        

Application Profiler:

Application Profiler is a tool for creating the Profile of the Application "What will we build?”. The Profile of Application is created by Uses Cases, Requirements, Business Process, and Case Types. 

Application Profiler is much with Business Terms then Technical Terms, which helps as the initial step of capturing objectives of the business in business terminology, avoiding ambiguity in capturing core business requirements.

Application Profiler’s end results are a ‘Document’ and a ‘Profile ‘which can be consumed by Application Accelerator for further step.

Application Accelerator

Application Accelerator is the next step of DCO which takes Profile generated by Application Profiler as Input and then generates elements required for working application.

Application Accelerator generates the base foundation of the application, creating organization and class structures, draft versions of processes, user interface elements, and other items as defined in the application profile.

The accelerator supports an iterative development approach that allows us to enter, update, and save data until we are ready to create the application.

Application Profiler and Application Accelerator are the first two important tools of guided DCO, the other three tools come next to these two for further refinement of the Application Document, Application Uses Cases, and Application Requirements.