Essential Business Process Modeling

Chapter One. Introduction to Business Process Modeling

IN THE WORLD OF SOFTWARE, THE WORD “PROCESS” HAS SEVERAL DENOTATIONS. The verb means to handle, as in processing an error, or processing a message. The noun sometimes refers to a program running in an operating system, and sometimes to a procedure, or a set of procedures, for accomplishing a goal. In each case, the connotations of the term are movement, work, and time; a process performs actions over some interval of time in order to achieve, or to progress to, some objective. This book addresses the concept of a business process, which we all intuitively understand as the step-by-step rules specific to the resolution of some business problem. As mentioned in the Preface, business process modeling (BPM), sometimes called business process management, refers to the design and execution of business processes. This book explores BPM’s foundations, standards and typical uses.

This chapter examines an example problem, a travel reservation application, that models the nature of a business process and its core concepts. Stated informally in English, the process for this application is the following:

1. Get the customer’s itinerary.

2. For each item on the itinerary, attempt to book with the target company. Specifically, book a flight with the airline, a room with the hotel, and a car with the car rental agency. These bookings can be made in parallel.

3. If all the bookings succeed, get payment from the customer and send the customer a confirmation. ...