The change in a globalized world is happening faster than ever, driven by technology and innovation, and organizations are under continuous pressure to adapt and evolve. The ability to respond to changing business conditions is vital to any organization, and one of the main enablers is Business Process Management. The discipline of Business Process Management addresses the analysis, design, execution and optimization of business process.

Formalizing the management of business processes yields many benefits:

–        Documents the existing business processes, enabling communication, training and governance

–        Facilitates the analysis of business processes across the organization, in order to find gaps and redundancies

–        Supports the alignment of processes with business goals and objectives

–        Enables the prioritization, optimization, standardization and reengineering of business processes

–        Provides a framework for designing new business processes which implement the organization’s strategy

–        Facilitates automation, tracking and monitoring of processes for continuous improvement

–        Reduces compliance costs and mitigates risk

The Association of Business Process Management Professionals’ Common Body of Knowledge (ABPMP CBOK) distinguishes the following core areas in Business Process Management:

–        Process Modeling

–        Process Analysis

–        Process Design

–        Process Implementation

–        Process Performance Management

–        Process Performance Transformation

We will look at Process Modeling this week. The standard notation used in Process Modeling is the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). BPMN is an open standard, developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The latest release, version 2.0.2 has been published as an ISO standard (ISO 19510:2013). BPMN is supported by some good free tools, as well as most major software used for Business Process Modeling. An important feature of the BPMN notation is that it provides mapping to an execution language, WSBPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language). While earlier versions have been focused on developing the notation, the emphasis lately has been on formalizing the language. A number of ontologies have been defined based on BPMN (S-BPMN, BPMNO). With formalization come benefits: discovery of logic gaps, automated reasoning, ability to analyze complex systems, translation into machine language which enables automation of workflows and processes.

Stay tuned for the next post, which will continue to explore the Process Modeling area. And there is an exciting article coming about my revolutionary diet.

Bibliography:

Guide to the Business Process Management Common Body of Knowledge: Version 3.0. ABPMP BPM CBOK®. 1st ed.: Association of Business Process Management Professionals, 2013.