Business Process Modeling - Need and Approach -

Lets start with some definitions first :

Business : The occupation, work, or trade in which a person is engaged: e.g. the wholesale food business.

Process : A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result: e.g. the process of digestion; the process of obtaining a driver’s license.

Model : A schematic description of a system, theory, or phenomenon that accounts for its known or inferred properties and may be used for further study of its characteristics: e.g. a model of generative grammar;

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) specification provides a graphical notation for expressing business processes in a Business Process Diagram. The objective of BPMN is to support process management by both technical users and business users by providing a notation that is intuitive to business users yet able to represent complex process semantics.

BPMN is constrained to support only the concepts of business process modeling and other modeling views such as Organizational structures, Functional breakdowns, and Data models are not a part of BPMN.

There are three basic types of models that BPMN is used for

• Private (internal) business processes

These are processes that are internal to a specific organization

• Interface (public/abstract) processes

Represent the interactions between a private business process and another process or participant. Only those activities that are used to communicate outside the private business process are included in the interface process. All other "internal" activities of the private business process are not.

• Collaboration Processes

Depict the interactions between two or more business entities. These interactions are defined as a sequence of activities that represent the messages being sent between the entities involved. Collaboration processes are contained within a Pool and the different participant business roles are shown as Lanes within the Pool.

Types of BPMN Diagrams

• High-level private process activities
• Detailed private business process with interactions to one or more external entities (or "Black Box" processes)
• Detailed private business process
• As-is or To-Be business process
• Two or more detailed private business processes interacting
• Detailed private business process relationship to Interface Process
• Detailed private business process relationship to Collaboration Process
• Two or more detailed private business processes interacting through their Interface Processes
• Two or more detailed private business processes interacting through a Collaboration Process
• Two or more detailed private business processes interacting through their Interface Processes and a Collaboration Process