What is a Business Process? #
A business process describes how multiple people or groups or systems collaborate over a period to perform an activity.
A business process or any process has 4 elements:
- Event (that triggers or starts a business process)
- Input
- Process or Workflow (execution of business logic through a series of steps to process input)
- Output
What is Business Process Modeling? #
Softwares are being built to automate manual business processes.
A business analyst should be completely aware about the different processes of the business domain in order to follow the business requirements.
Business Process Modeling technique helps a business analyst to create visual representation of a business process to design it, get it reviewed by business stakeholders, and finally get it implemented by technical developers. In the long run, this process model helps both technology and business teams to manage and monitor the business process.
There are mainly 2 types of modeling formats:
-
Matrices
- They are used to represent structured information or data in a tabular format.
- Examples: Data Dictionary, Requirement Attributes, Decision Table etc.
- Matrices can be used to do the following activities:
- Tracing requirements
- Gap Analysis (comparing expected v/s actual results)
- Prioritizing requirements
- Defining data attributes
- Collect necessary information about a business process to model a process
-
Diagrams
- They are used to represent business processes visually in the form of diagrams.
- Examples: Business process model diagram, data flow diagram, flow chart, activity diagram, use case diagram etc.
- Diagrams can be used to do the following activities:
- Define boundaries for business domains or sub domains and describe the components within each defined boundaries
- Describe business processes and action flows
- Categorize and create hierarchy of items
- Show components of a business process and their relationships
- Show business logic
- Describe a situation or define a problem
- Model Diagrams can be classified into the following categories:
- Functional Decomposition Model
- Scope Model
- Data Model
- Decision Model
- Process Model
- Notations used to create Model diagrams
- BPMN - Business Process Model and Notation
- UML - Unified Modeling Language
- IDEF - Integrated Definition
- SIPOC - Suppliers, Input, Process, Output, Customers
- Value Stream Analysis
- Tools used to draw model diagrams:
- There are various softwares available such as - Draw.io, Lucid Chart, Figjam (Figma) etc.
Advantages of Business Process Modeling #
- Analyze requirements related to a business process
- Define scope of solution
- Identify improvement opportunities in a business process
- Optimize business processes
- Create knowledge base for stakeholders
- Automate manual business processes
- Specify software requirements related to business process
- Perform gap analysis between existing and new business processes
- Define current state (AS IS model) or a potential future state (TO BE model) of a business process
