Tips for Business Analysts: Business Process Modeling
Author: Geri Schneider Winters
I recently received email from OMG (Object Management Group) that they now have a certification for Business Process Modeling. Alert reader Igor Nedeljkovic wrote to ask about it, so I thought this would be a good topic for an article.
The OMG has release three standards in this area of business processes:
- Business Process Maturity Model
- Business Motivation Model
- Business Process Modeling Notation
The Business Process Maturity Model is intended to be a business version of CMM for software. The BPMM is guidelines to help a company determine if they have good business processes. Presumably there will be a way for a company to become certified at the various BPMM levels, just as software development can be certified at the various CMM levels.
The Business Motivation Model describes how to develop business plans, from the point of view of ends, means, and influencers. It is meant to help a company identify and develop the desired results, courses of action, business policies, and business rules for the corporation. It talks about strategies, tactics, goals, objectives, and what influences a company.
Business Process Modeling Notation describes the notation and semantics for a Business Process Diagram. It is meant to be a standard that a person can read and that also can read by tools that execute business processes. It maps to BPEL4WS, but not to UML. It is meant to consolidate existing business process notations, much as UML was meant to consolidate existing software notations.
Is any of this new? No. This kind of information has been around for a very long time. There are many methodologies that business people have used for a long time to do this kind of work. The OMG is defining frameworks within which all these business methodologies fit in, and setting up certification programs to support those frameworks.
What I am not seeing at this time, is a description of how all these things are supposed to relate to software methodologies and notations. We have been using use cases and activity diagrams for a long time to describe business processes, and there was a clear relationship between those artifacts and the models used by software developers. I’ll have to read more carefully, but right now it looks like OMG has not addressed the gap between business definition and the implementation of that business in software.
If you expect to be involved with standards and compliance of business processes, then you will want to be familiar with the Business Process Maturity Model. Otherwise, it may not be of much interest in your work.
You should review the Business Motivation Model document. This looks like something that management will expect their Business Analysts to know about, and to understand the terms as they are defined in this document. One of the things defined in there is Business Rule, for example, which is clearly something a BA should know.
You will definitely want to get familiar with the Business Process Modeling Notation. If it becomes common or standard in the industry, the expectation is that business analysts and development teams will be able to read this notation.
I am skeptical about the usefulness of the Business Process Modeling Notation because there is a very large gap between what is described in this notation and what a development team would need to know in order to implement it. This is a problem with the current BPM notations and processes, and OMG has not solved it with this new consolidated notation. But I will get familiar with the notation so I can read it when I see it.
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Now it is your turn.
Download the OMG documents from here and start to get familiar with the business process descriptions and notation.
http://www.omg.org/oceb/coveragemap-fund.htm
Scroll down to the Resources section and look for OMG Specifications.
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This has been a concern for many analysts for a fair while, and is largely due to the limited support of the different standards in one place.
At Select, we’ve provided Business Process modeling (using both BPMN and an older notation) alongside UML for many years, and so the inclusion of Business Motivation Modeling seemed the logical next step for us. We’ve just released a new version of Select Architect (version 7.1) which adds BMM to the BPMN, UML and data modeling support already included.
An important link between BMM and BPMN which you don’t mention is the Business Process itself. It’s there as a placeholder in BMM allowing you, in an environment like Select Architect where these links can be made, to connect a BPMN task, sub-process or pool, to the motivation model element which it realizes. This in conjunction with links to use cases, actors and requirements, allows the BMM to be a key driver in the identification of new system requirements, and also to model the reasons for IT system change.
More information about strategic business modeling using the business motivation model can be found on our website (http://www.selectbs.com/adt), along with various software and whitepaper downloads.
I hope you’ll forgive the blatant product placement, but I believe that Select has, to some degree, answered your concerns.
Phil Webb
Principal Consultant,
Select Business Solutions
Thank you! The post is very helpful!