Business Analysis

Modeling, types of diagrams

 BPM- historical contexts
• Organizations have been structured
around Adam Smith (1723-1790) idea
to break down work into simple and
discretes tasks performed by workers
with basic skills, cf Taylorism -
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-
1915)
• Organizing by Function leads to:
– Loss of flexibility
– Inability to respond to customers
quickly
 BP re-engineering - the first wave
• Business Process Re-Engineering was seen as
an appropriate remedy:
– 1990: Davenport and Short (business process is "a set of logically
related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome." )

– 1990: Hammer: “Don’t automate, obliterate” (it's

about re-engineering old processes, not only speed up. It's an “all or nothing” approach)

• Focus on the horizontal view on how things are

done and not who decides…. (organizational
charts)
• Characterised by:
– High failure rates
– Loss of knowledge
– Dependent on immature ERP technology
 BP redesign - 2nd wave
• Questions on the validity of the “clean slate”
approach (1994-2002)('tabula rasa' – clean new begining)
– 1990: Hammer: “Don’t automate, obliterate” (it's
about re-engineering old processes, not only speed up. It's an “all or nothing” approach)

• Instead of focus on continuous business

improvementand cross organizational processes
– Made possible by maturing ERP technology
and interchange
 BP Management - 3rd wave
• 2003 - now
• Organizations need to move away from hard
coded processes (Smith and Fingar 2003)
• Supports both business improvement (as is –to
be modelling) and process innovation (the
future)
 BP Management - definitions

• BPM refers to activities performed by

organizations to manage and, if necessary, to
improve their business processes
• BPM helps organizations to gain higher customer
satisfaction, product quality, delivery speed and
time-to-market speed - Kohlbacher 2009 study
• Made possible by new tools, technologies and
standards
• Include process design, enactment, monitoring
BP lifecycle – general view
BP lifecycle – detailed view
 BPM notation (BPMN)

• is a graphical representation for specifying

business processes in a business process model
• first developed by Business Process
Management Initiative (BPMI – formed in 1989 by
11 companies)
• today, is a standard sustained by Object
Management Group (over 800 companies)
• similar with 'activity diagrams' from UML
• BPMN 2.0 – august 2009
• BPMN
 BPMN - scope

• constrained to support only business processes

• easy to communicate in for both, technical and
business users
• does not contain:
– organizational structures
– functional breakdowns
– data models
 BPMN - elements

• Flow Objects
– Events, Activities, Gateways
• Connecting objects
– Sequence Flow, Message Flow, Association
• Swimlanes
– Pool, Lane
• Artefacts
– Data Object, Group, Annotation
 BPMN - events
• Reprezented by a circle:
something happens
– catching (catch an incoming
message to Start the process)
– Throwing (throw a message at
the End of the process)

• Start event – only 'catch'

• End event – only 'throw'
• Intermediate event –
between 'start' and 'end'
 BPMN – activities (task, sub-processes)
Reprezented rounded-corner
rectangle and describes the kind
of work which must be done
Task
– represents a single unit of work that is not or
cannot be broken down level a further of
business process detail without diagramming
the steps in a procedure

Sub-process
– hide or reveal additional levels of business
process detail - when collapsed a sub-
process is indicated by a plus sign against
the bottom line of the rectangle; when
expanded the rounded rectangle expands to
show all flow objects, connecting objects,
and artefacts.
 BPMN – activities (transactions)
Transaction
A form of sub-process in which all
contained activities must be treated
as a whole, i.e., they must all be
completed to meet an objective, and
if any one of them fails they must all
be compensated (undone).
Transactions are differentiated from
expanded sub-processes by being
surrounded by a tramline border.
 BPMN – gateways
Gateway
• control flow branching in BPMN. Gateways split and join sequence flow
Process. Is a diamond shape.
• If the flow does not need to be controlled, then a Gateway is not needed.
Thus, a diamond represents a place where control is needed.
 BPMN – gateway types
Types of Gateways Types of Flowcharts Marker

Data-Based XOR-Split,XOR-Join
Exclusive Gateways

Event -Based XOR-Split,XOR-Join

Exclusive Gateways

Inclusive Gateway OR-Split,OR-Join

Complex Gateway

Parallel Gateway AND-Split,AND-Join

 BPMN – sequence flows (connectors)
Sequence flow
• used to show the order that activities
will be performed in a Process

Message flow
• used to show the flow of messages
between two entities that are prepared
to send and receive them

Association
• used to associate data, information
and artifacts with flow objects
 BPMN – swimlane and pool
Are visual mechanism of organising and categorising
activities, based on cross functional flowcharting:
• Pool: Represents major participants in a process, typically separating different
organisations. A pool contains one or more lanes

• Swimlane: Used to organise and categorise activities within a pool

according to function or role, and depicted as a rectangle stretching the width or
height of the pool
 BPMN – Artefacts
bring some more information into the
model/diagram in order to become
more readable
Data objects: show the reader which data is required
or produced in an activity

Group: used to group different activities but does not

affect the flow in the diagram

Annotation: used to give the reader of the

model/diagram an understandable impression
 BPMN – orchestration vs choreography
• BPMN orchestration defines processes that are
internal to a specific organization
– Thus, they are contained within a single Pool

• BPMN Choreography
– process depicts the interactions between two or
more business entities (as modeled with Pools)
• Shown by the Message Flow between the Pools
– Or a sequence of interaction (global) types of
activities
 BPMN – pros
• BPMN is methodology independent (LOVeM,
EPCs, RAD methodology, IDEF)
– some of them require more artefacts
– Methodology determines what info is captured about process

• BPMN is a professional standard for different

approaches
– Private (internal) business processes
– Abstract (public) processes
– Collaboration (global) processes

• High rate for processes granularity

 BPMN – cons

• ambiguity and confusion in sharing BPMN models

• support for routine work
• support for knowledge work
• converting BPMN models to executable
environments
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to
change often.”

Winston Churchill