Process Design Tutorial # 1 | What is a Business Process?

by Ivan on June 22, 2009

If you search around this site, you’ll notice that we’ve been talking about business process modeling for the last few weeks. Some of you have written in asking for more background on what is business process modeling. So, let’s start at the top.

Business Process Design Template

What is a Business Process?

A business process diagram is a way of illustrating activities that are designed to produce a specific output. For example, if you worked for a bank, you might have a Credit Card application process.

Business processes allow you to capture the specific order in which work activities are performed.

Step 1 – send Credit Card application to customer

Step 2 – customer returns Credit Card application

Step 3 – bank checks details in Credit Card application…

A process must have a beginning, end, and clearly defined inputs (documents or information) and outputs (reports/forms/results).

Business process modeling involves designing processes that add value by showing the transformation of inputs into useful outputs.

What are inputs?

Inputs might be materials, labor, energy, and capital equipment.

What are outputs?

Outputs are the result, the end product, in the business cycle. Outputs may be a physical product (possibly used as an input to another process) or a service.

Next, I’m going to look at how to use Business Process Modeling Techniques in Software Development.

FYI: Business Process Design Templates

You can download the completed version of these business process templates over here: http://www.klariti.com/business-process-design-template/. As I mentioned above, we’ve partnered with Klariti Ltd (www.klariti.com) and released some very detailed Microsoft Word and Visio templates. These are on sale for only $9.99 until month end – it’s the promotional price – and after that they go back up to $29.99. They include process narratives (Word) process maps (Visio) and Excel spreadsheets for controlling your projects.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

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