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Understand the Purpose of Toolkits in BAW 

Tue November 12, 2024 06:52 AM

Toolkits in IBM BAW serve as a container for reusable components. These components can include:

  • Business Processes: Process models that encapsulate the logic for executing a set of tasks.
  • Services: Web services, external service calls, and integrations with other systems.
  • User Interfaces (UI): Common UI components, such as coaches (forms) and widgets.
  • Decision Tables & Business Rules: Commonly used rules for decision automation.
  • Java Classes and Libraries: Custom logic and utilities that can be reused across multiple applications.

By organizing your work effectively, you ensure that toolkits can be maintained easily and reused across different business process applications and solutions.

the Scope of Each Toolkit

The first step in organizing work within toolkits is to clearly define the scope of each toolkit. A toolkit should have a well-defined purpose and contain components related to a specific business function or capability. For example:

  • Toolkit for Customer Management: Includes processes and services related to customer onboarding, service requests, and account management.
  • Toolkit for Document Management: Contains services for document storage, retrieval, and lifecycle management.
  • Toolkit for Business Rules: Contains decision tables, decision services, and business rule engines that support the organization's decision-making processes.

Avoid making toolkits too broad or too narrow. A toolkit that includes too many components can become difficult to manage, while one that is too specific might lack sufficient reusability. Striking the right balance ensures maintainability and scalability.

When structuring your toolkit, it's beneficial to organize it into logical layers or functional areas. Common ways to organize toolkits include:

A. By Functionality or Business Domain

This is the most common way to organize toolkits, where each toolkit corresponds to a business domain or function. For example:

  • HR Toolkit: Includes processes and services related to employee onboarding, payroll, benefits, and leave management.
  • Finance Toolkit: Includes processes and services for budgeting, accounting, invoicing, and compliance reporting.
  • IT Toolkit: Includes tools for managing incident tickets, change requests, and service requests.

B. By Architecture Layer

Toolkits can also be organized by the architectural layer they correspond to. Some common layers include:

  • Core Services Layer: Contains reusable services such as integrations, utility services, and system APIs.
  • Process Layer: Contains reusable business processes, such as approval workflows or exception management processes.
  • UI Layer: Contains reusable UI components like coaches, widgets, and form templates.
  • Rules Layer: Contains decision tables and rule sets that are common across processes.

By grouping components by their functionality or layer, you make it easier to find and modify specific elements without impacting unrelated parts of the toolkit.

Conclusion

Organizing your work within toolkits in IBM BAW is essential for efficient development, reusability, and maintainability. By defining clear boundaries for each toolkit, establishing a consistent naming convention, and ensuring proper documentation, you can streamline development processes, enhance collaboration among teams, and facilitate the scaling of your automation solutions. Toolkits are powerful tools for reusability, so following best practices for organization and structure will help ensure that your IBM BAW solution is maintainable and scalable over time.

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