IMPORTANT UPDATE!

The book is out, please visit the final release blog post instead this one: https://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/publishing-practical-process-automation-with-oreilly-db993db68411

In today’s IT architectures, microservices and serverless functions play an increasingly important role. But how can you create meaningful, comprehensive, and connected business solutions if the individual components are decoupled and independent by design? How does this all affect business processes and process automation?

I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time now, and I discussed it with many customers in real-life scenarios. This resulted in many blog posts, conference talks and articles. This again led to countless discussions, that showed one thing clearly: We need guidance.

Today I am thrilled to announce that I’ve condensed my experience (and of course the whole Camunda team’s to some extent) in a book called “Practical Process Automation” published by O’Reilly.

The book provides a framework through examples and practical advice, and reveals how you can design complex processes in modern architectures to deliver true business value.

I will demonstrates how to use process automation technology to apply typical long-running patterns around resiliency, messaging, orchestration, or consistency, without forcing your service implementation to become stateful itself. This is especially important, as modern systems become more distributed, asynchronous, and reactive and thus require state handling to deal with long-running interactions.

I further describe how process automation compares to business process management, service-oriented architecture, batch processing, event streaming, and data pipeline solutions.

From the cover:

• Learn how to utilize process automation in cloud-scale or low-latency scenarios
• Explore options for designing architecture that facilitates process automation
• Learn methods for modeling processes properly to avoid potential pitfalls
• Understand the difference between orchestration and choreography and how to balance both
• Examine process automation use cases to learn viable solutions and appreciate the possibilities

Status

I am excited that this book is now available in early release. The first four chapters are already live, and more will follow soon.

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-process-automation/9781492061441/

I plan to finish content end of Q1/2021. As I already have a first draft of the whole book, so I am confident :-) By the way: If you fancy doing a review of the content, contact me!

There will be

• A webinar walking you through the content in September 23rd. I will reveal a sneak preview of the complete TOC there, and attendees receive a copy of the early release content. The one and only Mary Thengvall will host it — so make sure to save your spot!
• I am giving a related online training course on the O’Reilly platform: Process Automation in Modern Architectures. First run is on September 16th — see you there!

I am happy that I can share a 30 days free trial code for the O’Reilly platform. So you can check out the early release of the book and event attend my training if you like. Send me an email if you are interested.

Bernd Ruecker is co-founder and chief technologist of Camunda. He likes speaking about himself in the third-person. He is passionate about developer-friendly process automation technology. Connect via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter. As always, he loves getting your feedback. Comment below or send him an email.