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.
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