Creating a Process Project in the KIE Workbench - jBPM6 Developer Guide - page 161

Testing the process definitions
By now we should have a process definition ready to be executed in the jBPM6 engine if
we've correctly followed all of the steps so far. We should save the process by clicking on
the Save button at the top-left corner of the designer screen and clicking on the Save option
when the drop-down menu appears. We have two ways to test our processes: running pro-
cess simulations in the designer or writing a unit test in Java code.
Process simulations
The Properties panel provides different sets of properties for different situations. By now,
we are familiar with the core properties (the ones shown by default), but there are also ex-
tra properties for the least common core properties, graphics properties for color selections,
and another set for statistical analysis of process models over time, the simulation proper-
ties . On these properties, we will define statistical information for our processes, tasks, and
flows, which will later on allow us to determine the costs of our process executions, pos-
sible bottlenecks, statistical distribution, and likeliness of each path to execute.
We won't be able to get into the details of all of the simulation properties, but we will men-
tion that they allow us to configure how much time each task can take with properties that
will be determined by the statistical distribution of each task. Also, for diverging flows,
they will allow us to determine the probability of following each different path. After that
configuration is done for each task, we can execute simulations by clicking on the simula-
tions icon shown in the following screenshot, and by configuring two parameters—the
number of instances that will be simulated to run, and at an interval of time (specified by a
number and a time unit).
The results of the simulations will be then shown in the Simulations tab, located in the top-
left corner of the editing canvas. Simulation results include graphics and tables, with prob-
abilities of each path, associated costs for each task, and resource utilization and idle times.