BPMN in plain language
For prospective students course “BPMN: Business Process Modeling” prepared a useful article, the author of which is Natalia Zhelnova, the course teacher.
We also invite everyone to sign up for open webinar on “Introduction to Business Process Modeling”.
This article series is for anyone looking to get started building models using BPMN.
Part 1. Why do people model business processes
Business process modeling is usually considered in the context of their optimization in order to improve the efficiency of the business in the company as a whole. Typically, such a need arises when the company has problems: for example, low efficiency of its employees, not optimal organizational structure, confusing communications or incorrect delimitation of areas of responsibility between its divisions can limit the organization’s capabilities, lead to a decrease in its profits, restrain its development, do it less competitive.
Problems associated with a suboptimal approach to building and managing a company’s business processes can manifest themselves at all stages of its development. In the early stages, when the company is still being formed, the lack of a strict delineation of responsibilities and areas of responsibility of employees and entire structural divisions of the company often leads to conflict situations. The lack of qualified personnel in various fields and the inability to accurately predict when and where a particular specialist will be needed hinders the development of the company. The lack of a culture of transferring knowledge causes problems when firing and replacing employees, and negatively affects the company as a whole.
The growth in the size of the company, the increase in the number of its employees often leads to the fact that its activities become more complicated, business processes become confusing, and it becomes difficult to manage them.
As a rule, in such situations, a decision is made to form new or radically improve old approaches to management, forming a clear and well-thought-out management system of the organization. It is almost impossible to carry out such a transformation without building a business model that takes into account the characteristics of the company and determines the strategy for its future development. The business process is one of the building blocks in the foundation of an organization’s business model.
Digitization, the digital transformation of companies, both in the public and private sectors, is just as impossible without building a business model, like any other business transformation. This practice is not just a tribute to the “digital” fashion driven by high-tech companies; it is based on world standards. The presence of a documented business architecture of the enterprise is a requirement of international standards ISO 9001: 2000 and Russian standards GOST R ISO 9001-2001. Practically proven approaches recommend adhering to a certain order of building a business architecture. Without preliminary modeling of changes in business processes and assessing the effects of these changes, it is impossible to determine the quantitative and qualitative results of transformation, to optimize costs in the transformation process.
Building a business model is not just about organizing processes. Modern approaches consider the design of information systems architecture not as a separate task, but link it into a single whole with the tasks of building a business architecture and information architecture.
Speaking about why and how to model business processes, it is impossible to get around the question of what business processes are in general, and from what point of view they can be viewed.
There are several definitions of business processes, each of which reflects a specific point of view on a business process.
Definition 1. A business process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs (ISO 9000: 2000).
Definition 2. A business process is a structured set of activities that encompasses various entities of an enterprise and is subordinate to a specific goal (ISO / CD 15531-1).
Definition 3. A business process is a set of different types of activity, within which one or more types of resources are used “at the input”, and as a result of this activity “at the output” a product is created that is of value to the consumer (M. Hammer, D. Champy, Business Reengineering -processes).
Definition 4. Business process – several related work or procedures, in the aggregate, realizing a specific goal of current activities within the existing organizational structure (Oikhman E.G., Popov E.V., Business reengineering).
As we can see, definitions 3 and 4 emphasize the creation of a product of value to the end user, or the achievement of a specific goal. The existence of a goal to be achieved is a hallmark of a business process. Typically, the goals themselves are not reflected in the process model; however, they are an essential element of business processes.
Speaking about why to model business processes, it is impossible not to say about who is involved in modeling business processes and who is the final consumer of the results of this modeling. Depending on the goals of modeling, the composition of stakeholders – managers and performers – will be determined.
Modeling can cover different aspects of the enterprise, and the composition of stakeholders will be determined by the activities chosen for the modeling.
As a rule, a business process model is used by a fairly wide circle of people in enterprises where business processes are optimized and a business architecture is built. Below is an approximate composition of the user audience for business process models:
Business analysts in various areas of the organization;
Information systems developers;
System architects who develop the architecture of individual information systems;
Business analysts who design the organizational structure of an enterprise;
Divisional leaders interested in optimizing the business processes performed in these divisions.
Next, we will look at how the interaction between these groups is organized as part of the work on the business process model.
Learn more about the course BPMN: Business Process Modeling.
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