How to describe a business process

Video: What is a business process? 2024, July

Recently, there has been a tendency of the business to move from functional to process management, in connection with which the role of the correct description and formalization of business processes is significantly increasing. Only upon completion of these actions can we talk about optimizing business processes as a means of increasing the efficiency of an enterprise.

You will need

CASE-tool that allows you to formalize the business process in graphical notation.

Instruction manual

The first is to briefly and accurately formulate the name of the described process, which should be understandable and reflect the general essence of the sequence of actions that make up the business process. For example, instead of “Filing an application for manufacturing an item into production and monitoring its execution, ” it’s enough to name the process “Monitoring the production of the product.” Secondly, it’s right to break down the entire described process into smaller (“atomic”) tasks or subprocess functions and determine the sequence of their implementation. With such a split, the described process will be a top-level process. The level of detail of the top-level process can be different, but it should be adequate for understanding by the audience that will use your description.

There are several ways to describe a business process. The most popular of them is graphical, with the help of diagrams made in various notations (notation is a set of characters to indicate something).

The most common types of notations for describing business processes are IDEF0, BPMN, EPC (ARIS), etc.

As an example, let us dwell on the diagram executed in the BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) notation using the PowerDesigner CASE tool (Fig. 1). The main elements in the diagram are:

1. "Process" (function) - a rectangle rounded at the corners;

2. "Transition" - an arrow connecting processes;

3. “Solution” - a rhombus containing a question that can only be answered with “Yes” or “No”;

4. Conditions - textual expressions under which the transition from one function to another is carried out. Conditions are always enclosed in square brackets. Sometimes it’s useful to break your diagram into “Tracks” - vertical or horizontal sections that indicate the units of the enterprise or employees responsible for performing a specific function. In this case, the icon of this function should be within its section. In addition to the listed elements, the diagram may also contain a list of data that is the input or output for the process, as well as links to the rules or regulations according to which this or that function is performed. An example of the description of the business process "Product manufacturing control" is shown in Fig. 1. It is easy to notice that this diagram is very similar to the block diagram of the algorithm for solving the problem.

A graphical description of the process can also be supplemented with a text description of its subprocess functions in the form of a table containing the following columns: process name, unit (process owner), process description, process execution result. An example of such a description is shown in Fig. 2. If further optimization of the described business process is expected, then a column can also be added to the table with a description of the difficulties or disadvantages of the currently running sub-process functions.