While a thorough understanding of the process being modeled is desirable before embarking on formalization, a more incremental approach is realistic as the modeling process itself will help to identify shortcomings, misunderstanding and ambiguities in the current documentation and the modeler’s process discovery.
BPM identifies, defines, and enumerates steps, inputs, outputs, requisite resources, and expertise so that a business process can be understood and replicated by third parties or in software for automation (Recker, 2006). The primary advantages of BPM are clarity and discovery. This influenced BPM pioneers to focus on bridging the gap between Workflow Management systems and business processes (Weske, 2007). Accordingly, Workflow Management struggled to model behavior, which while difficult, is essential for effectively and accurately modeling business processes (Smith, 2003). Workflow Management was the subject of many papers in the 90’s (van der Aalst, ter Hofstede & Weske, 2003) and was primarily focused on the automation of structured processes (Weske, 2007). For the purposes of this article, the abbreviation BPM will refer strictly to the topic of Business Process Modeling.īusiness Process Management, and by extension BPM, has evolved from the analysis of Workflow Management practices.
This is further confounded by the fact that some modeling tools are contained within Business Process Management software suites. As the terms Business Process Modeling or Business Process Management may share an acronym there is potential for confusion surrounding the two concepts. These models are expressed as meta-models and are combined with a notation language to consistently describe similar business constructs (Weske, 2007).īPM has two primary uses: systems development and business process management (Havey, 2009). Business Process Modeling is the activity and discipline of transferring tacit and explicit business knowledge and experience into formalized descriptions, specifications, and diagrams that focus on process structure and interaction, rather than technical details (Weske, 2007). A business process may be defined as a set of interrelated tasks, roles, and resources working in concert to achieve a business objective or goal (Dumas, La Rosa, Mendling, Reijers, 2013).