Business Process

This chapter provides a definition of a business process and explorers its elements and properties.

Business Process Definition

Business process can be defined differently depending on how deep we want to investigate it.

The most high-level definition would be like “ A business process is a set of activities performed according to established rules to achieve a goal ”.

Here are some specific examples:

· Dental receptionist business process can be defined as a set of activities for serving patient’s request, like scheduling an appointment with dental specialist.

· Software company business process can be defined as a set of activities for producing software products.

· Technician’s business process can be defined as a set of activities for fixing some broken equipment.

All above examples have two aspects in common – set of activities and defined result:

· Activity: serving patient’s request, like scheduling an appointment with dental specialist. Result: appointment with dental specialist is scheduled.

· Activity: producing software products. Result: software products are produced.

· Activity: fixing some broken equipment. Result: broken equipment is fixed.

Business Process Elements

Any business process starts from an initial state and finishes in a one of the final states:

· Initial state: the patient entered the dental office. Final state of positive result: appointment with dental specialist is scheduled. Final state of negative result: appointment with dental specialist is not scheduled.

· Initial state: software products releases are planned. Final state of positive result: software products are produced. Final state of negative result: software products are not produced.

· Initial state: some equipment is broken. Final state of positive result: broken equipment is fixed. Final state of negative result: broken equipment is not fixed.

The initial state reflects the reason for starting the business process. The final state reflects the completion of a business process.

A business process cannot start on its own. Something needs to trigger it:

· Initial state: the patient entered the dental office. Trigger: a receptionist began serving the next patient in line.

· Initial state: software products releases are planned. Trigger: a decision was made to begin production of the software product.

· Initial state: some equipment is broken. Trigger: a technician received a request to fix broken equipment.

Some activities need to be performed only under certain conditions. For example, a dental office receptionist needs to register a patient if the patient's details are not found in the information system. In this case, the registrar follows the business rule of starting patient registration when there is no patient data in the information system.

To summarize all of the above, any business process can be defined by the following elements:

· Initial state – the state of the business process before it was launched.

· Trigger – an event which starts a business process.

· Activities – a set of actions that make up a business process and transfer it from the initial state to the one of the final states .

· Final states or results – states of the business process after completion of all activities.

· Rules – elements which determine the final state of an activities.

Business Process Properties

Business process has three properties – uniqueness, isolation, and encapsulation.

Uniqueness

Each business process is unique in its elements - initial state, trigger, target states or results, as well as a set of actions that must be performed according to established rules to switch it from the initial state to one of the target states.

For example, the meaning of all fifth elements that define the business process of a dental office administrator has nothing to do with the meaning of the business process elements of a software company or a business process of a technician.

That brings us to the second property of a business process – isolation.

Isolation

The scope of one business process does not overlap with the scope of any other business process. They are completely isolated.

Encapsulation

Typically, the internal implementation of a business process is hidden from the outside world. No one cares and no one even needs to know how anything is done, but everyone has a stake in the outcome.

For example, a patient at a dental office just wants to make an appointment with a specialist, and he doesn't care how the receptionist does it.

Table of Content Introduction into Business Process Next: Business Subprocess