Business process analysis and modeling

1. Business process analysis and modeling Integrerade affärssystem och affärsprocesser

2. Contents • Business Process Management • Business process models: what is a model? • Business process analysis: text analysis • Business process modelling: different modelling techniques are presented

3. Business Process Management • 5 steps: • Business process identification • Business process analysis • Business process modelling • Business process change/implementation • Business process monitoring, control and evaluation

4. Models • A representation of reality: • There can be different models of the same reality Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Reality

5. Business process analysis and modeling • Business process model is • A description, representation, specification of a business process • Business process analysis and modelling – key issues: • how to create a machine-processable model of processes? • how to represent the different aspects of a business process?

6. Business processes have several dimensions • Business processes can be described in several manners: • Organizational dimension: describes the organizational aspects of the process. Who is involved? What are the reposonisbilities? Who makes decisions? • Data dimension: describes the data and informations elements involved in the process. • Function dimension: describes the functions (operations) that are needed in order to run the process • …And in models that actually incorporate the three dimensions above into a single model.

7. Business process analysis and modeling • Business process modeling methods: • ways to represent business process models • Business process analysis methods and techniques: • analytical frameworks and techniques that helps you to create model from source information • also involves modeling techniques

8. Process modelling methods and techniques • Diagramming techniques: • One of the most common description of process models • can be in many different forms because there are many different diagramming techniques for different purposes • Formal diagram techniques: • Data Flow Diagrams • Process Flowchart • ANSI Process Flowcharts • IDEF • etc

9. Process modelling methods and techniques • Linguistic Approach • Structured English (Pseudocode) • OPR STATEMENT • Object oriented approach • ERA (Entity-Relationship Attribute) • Business process modelling: • Object Property Relationship OPR Modeling • Role Activity Diagram, RIN (Role Interaction Net) • Action Workflow • REAL: Resources, Events, Agents, Locations • ARIS method

10. Business process analysis and modelling vs Information Systems analysis and modelling • Process analys and modeling finds its roots in information systems development (ISD) • Therefore many BPA and BPM techniques originate from information systems analysis an modelling. • Ex: flowcharts, ERM, IDEF • These techniques are particularly suited to model dataflows, process functions and interrelations between data elements and functions

11. BPA and BPM techniques stem from different fields • system analysis: flow charting • organization and method: organizational charts, … • work study: text analysis, ethnomethodology,office process descriptions • operations research: Role Interaction Net (based on Petri Nets) • accounting method: ABC-accounting • Tools like ARIS provide a framework to integrate these different methods.

12. Business Process Analysis

13. Simple Text Analysis Techniques(Darnton and Darnton, 1997) • Sources of information for business process analysis • text • spoken language • diagrams • How to draw business process models from text or spoken language? • How to draw business process models from diagrams?

14. Simple Text Analysis Techniques • Text analysis techniques that help you to identify or construct a set of objects, properties, relationships and statements from verbal sources • Key problems in text analysis: • objects, properties, relationships may be represented using a variety of expressions - apply judgement

15. Simple Text Analysis Techniques • Key problems in text analysis: • the words used may not say what was intended to be said (how to figure out the precise term) • pay attention to the specific meaning of words • synonyms: to produce one agreed term • homonyms: words mean different things in different contexts (introduce more words and terms to account for all the meaning of a word or term)

16. Simple Text Analysis Techniques • Key problems in text analysis: • recognize ambiguity in words-meaning and resolve it when necessary • Any model will inevitably be the result of many arbitrary decisions • Suggestions given by the authors: • do not advocate a full analysis of all parts of speech (or text), but restrict the analysis to a limited number of parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

17. Simple Text Analysis Techniques • Nouns indicates objects • Verbs indicates relationships • Adjectives/Adverbs indicates properties

18. Synonyms and homonyms • Issue: how to detect these and to resolve whether they are synonyms and homonyms. • Proposed solution: look at the properties of the terms. • Two terms are synonyms if: • their properties are essentially the same • objects participate in the same relationship types • Terms are homonyms when they have inconsistent properties

19. Ambiguity • Can occur when different descriptions of the same process depict it in different ways • Example: ”a purchase order is sent to A or B”. • this description is complete but is ambiguous, as we do not how to decide between A and B • maybe A and B represent the same entity

20. Antropomorphism • ”the ascription of human attribute or personality to anything personal or impersonal” • e.g. ”the Purchasing department sends an order to the supplier” • the Purchasing department is an organizational unit, and as such does not perform anything; only people within that department can perform operations • in this case, it is the role of the analyst to see whether there is a need to introduce people as actors who performs the function (send the order)

21. Text analysis exercise • identify objects, relationships, add comments • (i) identifying the tasks and activities; • (ii) identifying the documents utilized in the manual business process; • (iii) identifying the participants or agents of the process • (iv) identifying the inputs (events, resources) and outputs (products, services, events) of the process. • (v) identifying the data needed in the process and • (iv) the computer systems used.

22. Process modelling methods and techniques • Diagramming techniques: • One of the most common description of process models • can be in many different forms because there are many different diagramming techniques for different purposes • Formal diagram techniques: • Data Flow Diagrams • Process Flowchart: showing a complete process broken into a series of lower level processes • ANSI Process Flowcharts: Process flowcharts based on the ANSI Notation • IDEF, etc

23. Process modelling methods and techniques • Linguistic Approach • Structured English (Pseudocode) • Object oriented approach • ERA (Entity-Relationship Attribute) • Business process modelling: • Object Property Relationship OPR Modeling • Role Activity Diagram, RIN (Role Interaction Net) • Action Workflow • REAL: Resources, Events, Agents, Locations • ARIS (ARchitecture of Integrated Systems) • Resources for Business Process Modelling Tools • http://www.bpiresearch.com/Resources/Product_Watchlist/product_watchlist.htm

24. Data Flow Diagram • Represents the flow of data between different processes within a system • Simple, intuitive • Business people can understand a carefully designed DFD, can point out errors and omissions • Focus on flows of data between subprocesses • only four symbols • Example

25. DFD: Limitations • concentrating only on data (or information) objects • focus only on the flow of information; no symbol for flows of material… • limited vocabulary: no symbols for decision points, sequence of operations, etc. • imprecise about the details of sequence and concurrency • do not show who does what

26. Flowcharts • Even when DFDs are used extensively, other techniques often used to fill in the details not adequately expressed by DFDs • Flowcharts are diagrams expressing the sequence and logic of procedures using standardized symbols to represent different types of input, output, processing and data storage • Example

27. IDEF(www.idef.com, + …, USAF ICAM Office, 1981; Mayer et al, 1995) • Icam DEFinition method • originated from ICAM process modelling • each box is an activity or subject which may be de-composable • IDEF0: used for process modelling, but suffers from being firmly rooted in a data-driven view • although has notation for some elements of behavioural and organizational perspectives, on the whole, it captures only a small variety of process features. • Rooted in the hard, neat and tidy world of information technologists, forces a strictly hierarchical view of human activity

28. Process Mapping(Rummber and Brache, 1990) • Still a traditional flowchart, with extensions to show organizational responsibility for process steps and performance constraints or goals • cover a broader range of process features than IDEF0 • easily understood by business readers • Limitation: undirectional flows as the only relationship between activities means that other types of interaction between people have to be fudged. • Check ”Process mapping”, Marelli A. (2005) – PDF document in Moodle

29. Structured English (Pseudocode) • Can specify exactly how a procedures operates • to represent the precise logic of a procedure by writing that logic using a few limited forms such as sequence, iteration, and selection using “if-then” or “if-then-else”, “go to”,... • Example:

30. Role Activity Diagramming RAD • Developed by Anatol Holt (1983) for modelling the ways that people work together, the coordination and interaction in the workplace; especially well suited to business process modelling; • with a concise and rich notation that is easy to read • RAD offers good coverage of the functional, behavioural and organizational perspectives, particularly at the detailed level • RAD has formal basis in Petri-Net theory • RAD lacks notations for dataflows

31. RAD provides four perspectives on Business Process Modelling • Functional: representing what activities are being performed and what data flows connect them • Behavioural: representing when activities are performed, with sequencing, feedback loops, iteration, decision making, triggering conditions, etc. • Organizational: representing where and by whom activities are performed, plus physical communication mechanisms and storage media • Informational: representing the entities (documents, artifacts, products) produced or manipulated y a process, including their structure and inter-relationships

32. The RAD Notations • Role, Activity, State, State description, etc. • Five key concepts that need to be modeled for a business process • how activities are divided amongst roles • what the organization is trying to reach with the process: the process goal • what people do to achieve the goals (activities) • how people with groups interact collaboratively to get the job done: interaction • what constraints theorganization puts on what people can do and how they should operate (the business rules)

33. What is a role? • A set of activities that are generally carried out by an individual or groups with some organizationally relevant responsibility • associated with the roles are the resources required for performing that role, such as files, desks, tools and skills • each role in a process behaves independently, with its own set of resources and coordinates with other roles as necessary, via interactions. The role is separated from the people who act it. • For example,the project manager role, Chief Accountant role

34. What is a process goal? • Vertical line • to define the point in the process where the goal can be said to have been achieved • the notion of goal is a special case of the more fundamental concept of state. A goal may be thought of as a state or combination of states that the process is trying to get to • interesting goals are labeled

35. What is an activity? • A black box , with a state line above it (pre-state that the role must reach for the activity to start) and a line below it (post-state is reached on completion of activity) • The notion of pre-state and post-state allows us to define a sequence of activities precisely.

36. Interaction between roles • I pass you some info • I delegate a task to you • We agree on an action • You pass me the result of your work • I wait for you to do something

37. Interaction between roles • Each role box has pre-state and post-state lines attached • The interaction takes place when both roles are in their respective pre-states and finishes with both roles simultaneously entering their post-states. That is, interaction is simply a point of synchronization between roles. • An interaction often involves a transfer of some object (an expense claim, good or services) from one role to another. But it may also not involve the transfer of anything (e.g. just meet to agree on something)

38. Business Rules • The concepts of role, goal, activity and interaction are represented directly in RAD • The business rules show up as the pattern of sequencing, decision making, and concurrent activity that binds them all together • Events: Indicates places processes start • Example

39. RAD example Roles Activities Interactions States Choices (decision points)

40. RAD • To know more about RAD: • A guide to Role Activity Diagrams, available at: http://www.sprint.gov.uk/pages.asp?id=77