Business Process Level

Hello Saurav,

it depends...

on you and your (stakeholders') requirements. Since you are posting in BPMN I assume you want to model BPMN. BPMN essentially knows two levels of models: Collaboration diagram and process diagram, which is used to model the details of sub-processes.

In order to realize a "table of contents" for your processes, you could organize that in (a hierarchy of) Value added chain diagrams (VACD).

Consider if you are modelling business processes or technical (even executable) processes. In the former case you should take Event-driven process chains (EPC) into consideration and make an educated decision if you do or why you don't want to use that. If you decide for BPMN choose a very limited subset of BPMN vocabulary to be used for business processes. Otherwise you will earn incomprehension and futile discussions at your target group.

2 or 3 levels of VACDs are common. Then the first EPC level model at a granularity of OTOPOP (one step corresponds to one time, one place, one person). The next level would be work instruction level and can be done in EPC as well, but not everybody does the effort to go into that detail, certainly not globally.

But ... it's all up to each organization to define their own modelling strategy and scope.

Thank you so much Zschuckelt.

I posted in BPMN because this looked most logical for creating process diagrams.

Thanks for the above explanation but I am not sure if I understood the entire thing.

Could you tell me 2 things to start with for my clarity:

1. What is level 1,2,3 and 4 when creating Business Process Diagrams. WHat details will come at each of these levels.

2. Which model can we use for drawing the process diagram at each of these levels like as you mentioned EPC ,VACD etc

Warm Regards

Saurabh

Saurabh

There is no standardized definition for the numbering of levels, neither how many of them there are. You could even number them bottom-up. If you do so, here is a suggestion:

Level 0: A process at this level describes the steps a single person has to take to accomplish a single task. E.g. someone works with multiple business applications in the course of accomplishing the task. Diagram: EPC or BPMN process diagram.

Level 1: A process at this level describes the coordinated steps of multiple stakeholders (roles) to accomplish a business relevant goal. Steps are delimited by the OTOPOP criterion (see my first post) and may be detailed by Level 0 processes. Diagram EPC or BPMN collaboration diagram

Level 2 is used to represent processes of the next level below as objects. It may be used to depict important process interfaces of the level 1 as predecessor/successor connections between the objects. Also you might depict products/services produced by each level 1 process as output to define the goal of each process. Diagram type: VACD. This level is also used often to define so-called "End-2-End processes", such as "Order-To-Cash", "Idea-To-Market", "Procurement-To-Pay".

Level 3 and above: Even more than Level 2 this is merely a topical grouping of your processes from the respective level below. The top-most level often is called the "process landscape". You hardly find predecessor/successor relations on these levels. Diagram type: VACD.

Most of the time Level 0 is not modelled. And if your choice is BPMN for level 0 and 1 business processes, reduce the BPMN vocabulary to an absolute minimum. If business people start to think technically, something will go wrong and is going wrong.