The Art of Business Process Modeling: The Business Analyst's Guide to Process Modeling with UML & BPMN

by Martin Schedlbauer

Information systems have become a critical part of the infrastructure of most, if not all, businesses, government organizations, and even individual households. To be useful, an information system must integrate and align with the way the business conducts its operations. By necessity this means that information systems construction requires an understanding of the organization's procedures, operations, and processes. Articulating, modeling, and managing business processes and workflows are pre-conditions to successful automation. Business processes are part of the fabric of the business and represent a strategic and critical intellectual asset that needs to be understood and proactively managed. Processes are often cross-functional and involve multiple systems, software applications, and human assets - including employees, customers, partners, and vendors. Processes must be formally defined and documented so that they can be practiced uniformly and consistently across the organization. Explicit articulation of processes is essential so that the processes truly become intellectual property of the organization rather than being tied to a specific individual.Business process modeling (or BPM for short) is the activity of eliciting, documenting, modeling, and analyzing work procedures within an organization. To be successful, the business analyst must possess the necessary modeling skills and business knowledge to carry out these responsibilities.The first step in business process management is capturing and articulating the processes. This is done through process modeling. Once processes have been documented, then the organization can think about optimizing and eventually automating the processes. Optimization is done through a combination of manual analysis as well as automated simulation.This book describes the PROMAP methodology for articulating and modeling business processes. PROMAP is practical and based on over 20 years of experience in modeling.

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 22, 2010

Reviews

[Bob S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slender volume (~100 pp.) provides a succinct introduction to UML (and BPMN) from the perspective of a business process modeling initiative. I see this book as having three main strengths:

1) It is non-threatening. By focusing on BPM and not attempting to be encyclopedic or unnecessarily deep, the content is kept to a manageable size for new-comers to the discipline. It can be digested and understood in a relatively short time frame. I see this as important because many potential audiences including business stakeholders are unwilling to commit to reading a huge tome.

2) Just enough UML. Although there are plenty of books that teach UML, much of what is taught is of little use to a BA -- especially an entry-level BA. The UML taught here is precisely targeted for its usefulness in performing key BA tasks. Instead of showing capabilities targeted at software developers, the approach is truly developing a Business Process Model.

3) Results oriented. This book describes how to produce an effective Business Process Model -- not just techniques, but how techniques can be used to produce something of value to the business. In my experience, there are many business problems that can be solved by following the guidelines in this boo, because a proper BPM process can clear away the cobwebs that prevent stakeholders from approaching the business with a shared understanding. In some cases documenting (or simply inventorying) business processes can stabilize business activities. Of course in many cases the process will reveal (or support a process for discussing) changes that can improve the business.

My Recommendation:
This is a wonderful book to give to an entry-level BA. If I ran a PMO, or a BA Center of Excellence, I would issue this book as part of an on-boarding process. It is short enough that it can be absorbed quickly. I would include a process for measuring the new recruit's absorption of the material. Follow-up with a brand-new BA would include supervised generation of BPMs within the organization. Note: this (and the book under review) does not address requirements development or requirements management, which I think is best held off on until the new-BA has reached journeyman status.

For intermediate-level BAs:
Some Journeyman BAs might have no experience with BPM, or perhaps picked up all they learned 'on the go', to those readers, this book's lucid presentation will put it together for them quickly. On the other hand, those comfortable with BPM would be better served by a different text which digs into esoterica and edge cases.

For Sr. BAs:
I don't really see how a SR BA could could have avoided BPM, however some SR BAs might be comfortable only with older notation systems (ERD, Data-flow Diagrams, & Flow charts). This book does a good job in showing how specific UML diagram types can be used for various BPM sub-processes. For those readers, this book could be much better than a general purpose book about UML (which are usually aimed at documenting software designs).

[Agile Kindergarten · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Martin. Both in person and in this slim volume, he gets to the point quickly and with great clarity. Isn't that the very purpose of Modeling? In The Art of Business Process Modeling, Martin outlines his PROMAP Framework for tackling analysis and provides succinct examples of a number of his favorite techniques. When I first read it, I happened to be struggling with how to clearly represent a convoluted 3 phase process. The answer was in this book, the Work Breakdown Model. Perfection!