I’ve always been a big fan of end of the world fiction. I think it goes back to me reading ‘War of the Worlds’ when I was a kid, and seeing an early BBC adaptation of ‘Day of the Triffids’. It was repeated on a cable channel a few months ago, and although the walking plants looked exactly like large wood and rubber models, some of the images of deserted London still struck home. It seems every disaster movie now has to have that iconic image of an empty city, abandoned transport and a fluttering newspaper with the revealing headline.

The 70′s and 80′s were a great time to grow up and develop a healthy fear that the end of the world was nigh. From big budget disaster movies about earthquakes and meteors striking the earth, to cruise missiles being positioned in Western Europe I was convinced we were heading for the same dark future Judge Dredd faced every week in 200AD magazine.

It’s difficult to plan for what action to take when systems we’ve built go wrong, and especially so for software designers and developers. Our minds seem to naturally flow down the path of ‘everything normal’, and we have to actively force ourselves to think against the flow. Any help a design tool can give in these circumstances is of huge benefit. In the Singularity Process Platform there is support for exceptions, and escalation management. For any activity the designer can define service levels (e.g. completion times, costs, turnaround time etc). When this service level is exceeded, then another process (the escalation process) is started. The process platform has a number of built-in escalations, but the real power of this type of design is the ability to design a process which will take exactly the required action at that time. To allow even greater flexibility, the designer can include advanced exception management, which will trigger exceptions when a SLA is approaching – giving the process owner early warning of a potential problem.

For a totally gripping account of a real world disaster I can highly recommend 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. It’s a series of stories and accounts by people caught in the twin towers on the 11th September 2001. The accounts are compelling and highly personal, describing how some of the survivors managed to get down the staircases and out before the Towers collapsed – 102 minutes after the first plane struck. Powerful and moving, for me it highlights that the best tool in such a crisis situation is your mind, coupled with a positive attitude to getting through.

About the author: Manus Savage is the Partner Manager at Singularity, a leading BPM vendor (www.singularity.co.uk).

Author : Manus Savage

Tags: BPM, Design, Escalation-Management, Flexibility, Process, Service-Levels

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