Business Process Design and Analysis

Design and Analysis Phase

• Business process lifecycle enters the Design and Analysis phase.
• Surveys are conducted to analyze business processes, organizational structure, and technical environment.
• Business processes are identified, reviewed, validated, and represented by business process models based on surveys.

Business Process Models and Stakeholder Communication

• Explicit business process models in graphical notation help communicate about processes.
• They allow stakeholders to communicate effectively, refine, and improve processes.
• Business process modeling, validation, simulation, and verification techniques are used.
• Business process modeling is a core technical sub-phase during process design.
• Informal business process descriptions are formalized using a business process modeling notation, based on survey findings and process improvement activities.

Process Validation and Simulation

• Initial business process designs require validation, often through workshops.
• Workshop participants discuss and check if the model reflects valid business process instances.
• Simulation techniques are useful for validation, revealing deficits through simulated, undesirable execution sequences.
• Simulation allows stakeholders to step through the process to verify the behavior.
• Business process management systems typically offer simulation environments for this phase.

Evolutionary Nature of Business Process Modeling

• Business process modeling is evolutionary; the model is analyzed and improved.
• The goal is for the model to represent the desired business process and avoid undesirable properties.
• Deadlock is considered an undesirable property, halting all activities.

Configuration

• After design and verification, the business process model needs implementation.
• Implementation can be done through enterprise policies and procedures.
• A business process can function without a dedicated business process management system.
• With a dedicated software system, a platform is chosen during configuration.
• The model is enhanced with technical information.
• This enhancement aids enactment by the business process management system.

System Configuration

• The system is configured to match the organizational environment and control enactment of business processes.
• The configuration includes interactions between employees and the system.
• Integration includes existing software systems with the business process management system.
• Integration of existing software is crucial in modern organizations.
• Depending on IT infrastructure, process configuration might involve attaching legacy software.

Transactional Aspects in Configuration

• Business process management system configuration may involve transactional aspects.
• Transactions follow the ACID principle: atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability.
• Transactions ensure that database state transitions are consistent, don't interfere, and are durable.
• Techniques for transactional behavior in database systems, which are based on preventing data access through locking, are not applicable to business process transactions.

Testing and Deployment

• After system configuration, the implementation must be tested.
• Traditional software engineering techniques are used to verify process behavior.
• Integration and performance tests are vital for detecting runtime problems during process configuration.
• After testing, the system is deployed.
• Additional activities include personnel training and data migration.

Enactment Phase

• After system configuration, business process instances can be enacted.
• Enactment is the actual runtime of the business process.
• Initiated to fulfill company goals, often following a defined event (e.g., receiving a customer order).

Business Process Management System Control

• The business process management system controls the execution of process instances, as defined in the model.
• Enactment requires process orchestration, ensuring activities are performed according to the model's constraints.

State Visualization

• The states and transitions of activity instances are examined.
• State data can be used to visualize and monitor process instances.
• Visualizations can use colors to indicate state, e.g., green represents enabled, blue represents running, and grey represents completed process instances.

Execution Data and Log Files

• Valuable execution data is gathered during enactment, typically in log files.
• Log files consist of ordered sets of log entries, showing events.
• Examples of log information are the start & end of activity.
• Log information is used for evaluation in later phases.

Evaluation Phase

• Evaluation uses available information to evaluate and improve business process models and implementations.
• Execution logs are evaluated via business activity monitoring and process mining.
• Techniques aim to assess model quality and the execution environment's adequacy.
• Business activity monitoring can identify that a specific activity takes too long due to resource shortages.
• This phase is strongly related to business process simulation.

Process Mining

• Process mining is an active research field.
• Execution logs can be used as a starting point to develop process models.
• Evaluating existing business process models is another application of process mining.

Administration and Stakeholders

• Numerous artifacts need to be organized and managed in business process management.
• This includes structured storage and efficient retrieval of business process models, business process instances, and technical execution environment.
• A well-structured repository with query mechanisms is essential, especially in large organizations that have a large number of business process models.
• Knowledge workers, their roles, skills and the enterprise's IT landscape need to be represented properly.
• The business process domain involves stakeholders who are classified into different roles that all have different knowledge, expertise, and experience.

Chief Process Officer:

• This role is responsible for standardizing and harmonizing business processes across the enterprise.
• They are responsible for the evolution of business processes with changing market requirements.
• Acknowledges the importance of business process management at top levels.

Business Engineer:

• Business domain experts defining strategic company goals and business processes.
• Often have a non-technical background where simple modeling notations help communication with stakeholders.

Process Designer:

• They model business processes by communicating with domain experts and stakeholders.
• Analytical and communication skills are important.

Process Participant:

• Conducts the operational work during business process enactment.
• Knowledge regarding the activities and their interrelationships makes them an important role.
• It is the process designer's role to assemble a consistent view from information provided by process participants and capture it as a business process model.

Knowledge Worker:

• Process participants interacting with software system when they perform their activities in the related business process.
• Equipped with detailed knowledge of the domain, allowing autonomous actions and process execution.

Process Owner:

• Assigned individual responsible for the correct and efficient process execution.
• Detects inefficiencies and drives improvements in close collaboration with process participants and designers.

System Admin:

• Responsible for developing and configuring BPM system so it can enact business processes in the context of IT infrastructure.

Developers:

• IT professionals who makes software artifacts to implement business processes.
• Implementing interfaces with existing software systems is important for developers.
• Stakeholders must cooperate in designing processes and developing enactment solutions.
• The business process lifecycle organizes the work and the concepts used.

Classifying Business Processes

• Processes can be classified based on the level they are investigated and on the degree of structure.

Levels of Business Processes

• Business processes can be discussed on different abstraction levels.
• These levels range from business goals and strategies to implemented business processes.
• At the highest level are business goals that refer to long-term company objectives and business strategies which refer to plans for achieving them.
• Organizational business processes are high-level and specified in textual form.
• Inputs, output, expected result and dependencies on other processes are specified.
• Organizational business processes act as supplier or consumer processes.
• Informal and semi-formal techniques are used to describe the strategy of a company, its goals, and organizational business processes.
• Operational business processes are specified by business process models.
• Implemented business processes contain information on the execution and the environment they are executed in.
• Implemented processes have multiple ways to implement business processes, using procedures, policies or process enactment platforms.

Degree of Structuring

• Business processes are found in various application domains.
• Used to model, improve, and automate work procedures (e.g., finance, insurance).
• Filling a shopping basket in shopping scenarios is a business process.
• Novel applications in healthcare, manufacturing, and engineering.
• Processes can be structured to varying degrees.
• The content discusses processes ranging from highly structured to unstructured.

Control Flow and Resources

• Levels of structuring are explained by concentrating on control flow and disregarding resources and allocation to processes.
• Structured business processes have activities and execution order defined before process starts.
• All process enactment decisions are defined at design time.
• Processes may have "known exceptions", corresponding to undesirable situations.
• These exceptions allow the process to react, using predefined process handling.
• If they happen a lot, they are well known which allows exception handling.
• Complete process models cannot be designed with lower structure.
• Some dedicated process segments are be dynamically combined during the process instead.

Illustrating Process Segments

• Illustrate different scenarios used with patient treatment processes.
• Doctors prescribe treatments based on conditions of patients.
• Every treatment is a process segment and are combined as the patient treatment process proceeds.
• Assuming doctor prescribes an ultrasound exam of the abdomen.
• When doctor executes the patient process, the ultrasound examination segment if conducted.
• Exam segment contains all activity from informing to the radiology department and the actual exam itself along with images.
• Each process segment is a little structured process, with the flexibility rising because of the dynamic combination of the segments.
• These workers are called knowledge workers and the processes are called knowledge intense processes.
• Humans are knowledgable about when the process should continue, as healthcare scenarios occur frequently this is the doctor.

Structure Continuum

• Business process models define processes in less rigid manners to support knowledge workers.
• Operations can be skipped, executed in any order or executed multiple times until the knowledge worker decides, this loosely structured.
• Loose structuring is when exception that are not foreseen at modeling are defined.
• Unstructured processes indicate a lack of information of how the process is structured processes occur rarely and contradict the business process definition.

Degree of Automation

• The degree of structure impacts the degree of automation.
• A process is more suited for automation based on structure.
• No human involvement in fully automated processes, for example buying an airline ticket online.
• Enterprise application integration is where automating business processes are found to integrate the functionality provided by a system.
• Early user interfaces that prescribed to human users "what to do next" often failed and user interfaces need to accept the knowledge worker as a key source to improve the process.
• Automation is related to the degree of repetition.
• Highly repetitive processes like online airline booking are automated, however even human's can be involved in frequently repeated processes like insurance claim processing.
• Higher the degree of repetition, then investments in modeling are higher.