Introduction to Business Process Management ​
To understand businesses and organise business activities in a meaningful way need to understand the underlying processes, we do this by looking at Business processes and modeling them. Business Intellegence (BI) is used to do things better based on an understanding of the business. BI acquires information on the operation of a company to support decision making.
Business process ​
A business process (BP) is a set of activities performed in a certain order to realize a buiness goal (it describes how a company operates).
BP properties
- roles (responsibilities)
- inputs which are the resources required for a process activity
- outputs are results of process activities
- pre/post-conditions which are true statements before and after a process activity is implemented.
A BP may involve one or multiple departments or different organisations but may also interact with other organisations BPs. A BP might be part of the industry value chain which creates value for customers but we restrict a BP to (part of) a single business organization
Business process management ​
Business processes are organizational assets that determine the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations. Business processes are intangible, difficult to recognize and observe. We can translate business process to explicit representations, so called business process models of which two kinds exits:
- Business process diagrams (we mostly look at this one)
- Linear text models
Once business processes are defined they become process models. Process models can be communicated, interpreted and analyzed and are the basis for maintaining or improving the operation for achieving the business goal.
BPM supports the business process lifecycle
- Design cycle: iterative cycle consisting of modelling and analysis for improving the business process definition
- Engineering cycle: iterative cycle for improving the business process implementation in the organization
Business process management systems ​
Business processes can be enacted manually but automating has large benefits. A Business process management system (BPMS) is a software system that coordinates enactment of business processes driven by explicit process schema (there is a BP model in this system which is followed).
- Business process model vs executable process models (workflow)
- Separation of process logic and application logic
BPMS is also called a Process Aware information system -explicit representation fo the process
BPMS automates business processes by coordinating the execution of business process instances. It depends on the organisation if which depearments actually work with the business processes.
Identification and representation ​
Business processes are an abstract representation of the real world, it has to contain important details which matter (the scope). Activities, input, output and relationships are important things to identify.
Several languages are available for modeling: Event-driven process chains (EPCs), Workflow Nets, Well Structured Marking Nets and BPMN. The distinguishing factors between these are differences in expressiveness and operational semantics. We use BPMN.
BPMN ​
Basic elements
Input and output of activities
Basic gateways
