The modeling of business processes – overview

When modeling business processes, the aim is to capture detailed information about the processes to be modeled. This information can be captured in the following ways:

• Interviews with knowledge carriers
• Analysis of documents
• Observation of the modeler

During knowledge acquisition, answers to the following questions, among others, should be found:

• Which activities, objects, documents or resources are important for modeling?
• What are the relationships?
• What concepts exist?
• How detailed does the process model need to be?

Process modeling can, for example, facilitate communication between people, analyze a subsequent reorganization, and also serve design purposes and the planning of resource deployment.

A variety of languages can be used for process modeling:

• mathematical-formal notations of logic
• Graphic languages, such as event-driven process chains (EPC), business process execution language (BPEL) or Petri nets
• Programming languages, such as Java
• Colloquial expressions

There are two different approaches to modeling. These are the top-down method and the bottom-up method.

For more information, see Modeling business processes – approach to the modeling process.

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