Business Process Model

Business Process Model
What is a Business?
A business is the activity of creating something be it a product or a service, which has value to people.
A Business Process:
1. Has a Goal
2. Has specific Inputs
3. Has specific Outputs
4. Uses Resources
5. Has a number of activities that are performed in some order
6. Creates value of some kind for the customer. The customer may be internal or external.
A business process is a collection of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. Emphasis is placed on how a work is done in an organization rather than what work is done. A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for action

Use resources and Follow business Guidelines

INPUT ————–>                  PROCESS                                   ————-> OUTPUT

Involvement of Internal and external actors

Business Process Model:
When you need visuals for a business process, use modeling and diagramming tools. A Business Process Model is the activity of representing structurally, or by means of description or diagram, the processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analyzed or improved.
Although there is various business process modeling techniques, the most popular are:
• Business process modeling notation (BPMN): set of graphical objects that define connections between objects and the rules which they follow
• UML diagrams: modeling language used for specification, visualization, development and documentation of software systems. Now a days, Activity diagrams ans Use Case diagrams are two most popular UML diagrams used to model business process..
• Flowchart: These are probably most popular diagram type in world, because it has few standard symbols, it can be easily understood by many.
• Dataflow diagram: show the flow of data from one place to another.
• Gantt charts: relate a list of activities to time scale.
• Object oriented modeling: it is based on 3 concepts,
1] Objects that represent a real world entity
2] Values of properties representing objects i.e. Attributes
3] Set of similar objects i.e. class
• Workflow technique: flow of tasks between people or computer applications in an organization
• Simulation: comes handy when one needs to study complex real-world system. Create and study another entity similar to real-world system. Popular simulation tools are Axure and Balsmiq.
Purpose:
The main purpose of a business process model is to increase organizational efficiency by triggering change management. A business process model helps to model the current (as is) business process in accurate detail as well as it also assists in modeling the proposed business process (to be), to increase productivity.
Thus a business process model is at the core of Business Analysis Activity, as it prompts Gap Analysis of as is – to be i.e. where the business is presently and where a business wants to go.
In fact the key task of any business analyst is to interact with client to understand the current business process and get an idea what changes are they looking for in these processes to improve efficiency and increase output. A business analyst will model these processes and define requirements and come up with solutions for effective change management.