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Business Process Engineering

What is Business process Engineering

• Business process engineering is a way in which organizations study

their current business processes and develop new methods to

improve productivity, efficiency, and operational costs.

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• Business process engineering refers to the study of business

processes so that they can be improved and streamlined for optimum

efficiency in terms of both performance and cost.

What are the problems in BPR?

• Lack of essential resources like skilled human resources, adequate

budgeting/funding, knowledge of BPR tools, availability, timely

approval, and correct set of BPR tools results in the failure of BPR

implementation.
Disadvantages of BPR

• This effort can be very costly to the organization. Apart from that, it is

consuming a time that can be used for routine production. The

financial impact of this cost can make a huge impact on the

organization's financial statements. – Risk – Change is always a risky

step to take.
Benefits of engineering your business
processes:
• Improved understanding of business purpose and operations -

Many organisations cannot describe their business processes. A

successful BPR strategy gives companies a firm understanding of the

present condition of their business processes. This is important for

businesses to streamline their operations and prevent future mistakes.

Lecture 2
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• Simplified business processes -

BPR makes it easier to redirect the focus towards what’s essential. BPR would help

a company simplify and streamline operations, eliminating redundant processes

that previously impeded business operations. With this, efforts are better aligned

with company goals, and employees have a clear course to follow.

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• Improved customer service -

BPR can help identify and eliminate processes causing delays or

dissatisfaction among customers, resulting in better service and

increased customer satisfaction.

• Enhanced flexibility -

BPR helps to make processes more adaptable and responsive to changing market

conditions and customer needs, which can be important for organisations that

operate in a rapidly changing environment.

• Cost savings-

By redesigning and optimising processes, BPR can help to reduce costs and

improve the bottom line.

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• Better use of technology -

• BPR can help to identify new ways to use technology to automate and

improve processes, which can lead to increased efficiency and cost

savings.
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• Better Results and Products -

Greater efficiency and focused goals enable you and your employees to

put more energy towards building relationships with your customers

through streamlined, digitized processes.

Difference between Function and Process

• A process is more detailed and specific, while a function is more

general and broad. A process describes how something is done, while

a function describes what is done or why it is done. A process can be

standardized and optimized, while a function can be aligned and

integrated.
 Lecture 3
Basic Notations for Business Process Modelling
Business Process Model and Notation
(BPMN)

• Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standard for

business process modeling that provides graphical notation for

specifying business processes in a Business Process Diagram (BPD),

based on traditional flowcharting techniques.

Objective BPMN

• The objective of BPMN is to support business process modeling for

both technical users and business users, by providing notation that is

intuitive to business users, yet able to represent complex process

semantics.
BPMN – Continue

• BPMN is designed to be readily understandable by all business

stakeholders. These include the business analysts who create and

refine the processes, the technical developers responsible for

implementing them, and the business managers who monitor and

manage them.
BPMN – Continue

• Consequently, BPMN serves as a common language, bridging the

communication gap that frequently occurs between business process

design and implementation.

THE BPMN NOTATIONS/SHAPES

• A major goal for the development of BPMN was to create a simple and

understandable notation for creating Business Process models, while

providing the semantics and underlying mechanisms to handle the

complexity inherent in Business Processes.

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4 basic categories of BPMN elements
• There are 4 basic categories of BPMN elements. Each represents a different aspect of a
business process.

• 1. Swimlanes

• These are graphical containers that represent the participants of a process. They are
divided into pools and lanes.

• 2. Flow Elements

• Flow elements connect to form business workflows. They define the behavior of a
process and comprise events, activities, and gateways.
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• 3. Connecting Objects

These connect the flow objects which unite to form a flow. They include
sequence flows, message flows, and associations.

• 4. Data

This is the information needed or produced to execute a business process.

It includes data inputs, data outputs, data objects, and data stores.
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Swim lanes concept

• Suppose you’re building a new website for a company. The designer

creates a wireframe that everyone approves. The developer starts
programming the backend. The content team starts the editorial
calendar. All seems well. But two months into the project, you realize
that both the designer and the content team are writing user interface
text. You need a swimlane diagram to show who does what and when in
your project.
What is swim lanes

• A swimlane diagram is a graphical representation of who does what

and when in a process. A swimlane diagram uses the metaphor of
lanes in a pool that extend horizontally or vertically to indicate
ownership of workflow tasks. Swimlane diagrams can uncover
duplicated efforts, redundancies, inefficiencies, and bottlenecks.
Purpose

• A swimlane diagram illustrates who is responsible for each step in a

process. It also describes how these steps relate to different actions
and actors. As in a flowchart or workflow diagram, shapes represent
steps
What are the differences between
swimlane diagrams and flowcharts?
• A swimlane diagram is a type of flowchart. Both flowcharts and
swimlane diagrams describe activities in a process, the inputs and
outputs, and decision paths (or communication loops.) However,
while a flowchart shows only activities, a swimlane diagram adds
what person, role, entity, or process performs the actions.
Types of events
End event
Intermediate event
Continue – types
Continue – types
Lec 5
Continue - Conditional Events

• The conditional event defines an event which is triggered if a given

condition is evaluated to true. It can be used as start event of an

event sub process, as intermediate event and boundary event. The

start and boundary event can be interrupting and non interrupting.

Escalation

• The escalation process allows project managers to foresee risks that

have the potential to significantly impact project objectives. By
bringing possible issues to the attention of higher-level stakeholders,
they can build appropriate mitigation strategies and prevent any
emergencies from happening.
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• The escalation process allows business/project managers to foresee

risks that have the potential to significantly impact project/business
objectives. By bringing possible issues to the attention of higher-level
stakeholders, they can build appropriate mitigation strategies and
prevent any emergencies from happening.
Task
Activity

• Activities are critical components of BPMN - All business processes

are primarily formed by different kinds of BPMN activities. With Visual
Paradigm, you can draw your own BPMN diagram by using different
kinds of activities.
Activity Elements

• Activity elements include those activities that are common to most

BPs, such as Start, End, Receive, Reply.
1. Start

• Indicates the start of the process. This element appears in the

Business Process Designer by default when you create a new BP
model; it does not have a corresponding icon on the Business Process
Designer toolbar. A start node can only link to a receive activity, and
cannot be deleted.
 Send Activity
Send Task

A Send Task is represents a task that sends a Message to another pool.

The Task is completed once the Message has been sent.
2. End

• Indicates the completed state of a BP. This element appears in the

Business Process Designer by default when you create a new BP
model; it does not have a corresponding icon on the Business Process
Designer toolbar. An end node cannot be deleted.
3. Receive Activity

• Indicates the invocation of a BP, or indicates to wait for the arrival of

an inbound message. The receive activity represents the actual
method by which a BP is initiated.
4. Reply Activity

• Allows a BP to respond to the external system or user that originally

invoked the BP. The receive activity at the beginning of the BP is
paired with the reply activity at the end of the process. In cases where
a message must be sent back to the caller of the BP, the reply activity
uses information that correlates the message in the calling system.
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• A reply activity is the last step in a BP in which the BP acts as a web

service or sub-process. It correlates the outbound message back to
the calling process; for example, it can reply to an external system as a
web service.
5. Business rule activity

• Business Rule Task is newly added in BPMN 2.0. It provides a

mechanism for a process to provide input to a Business Rules Engine
and then obtain the output provided by the Business Rules Engine.
6. User activity

• Represents a step in a BP that requires human intervention. This activity

must be configured by adding task assignments to the Worklist Manager.

• When a BP instance comes to a user activity, it creates a task and polls a

table for the status of the task. In order for the user activity to complete,
the user or the external application must update the status of the task.
7. Empty activity

• Allows data to pass through without any changes.

8. Manual activity

• A Manual Task is a Task that is performed without the aid of any

business process execution engine or any application.
9. Script activity

• A Script Task is executed by a business process engine. The task

defines a script that the engine can interpret. When the task begin,
the engine will execute the script. The Task will be completed when
the script is completed.
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The example below shows the process
loan request approval. A Script Task
Check Credit is used in reviewing the
credit status of applicant, which is done
by executing a pre-written script.
10. Call

• A BPMN Call Activity references an Activity defined in a process that is

external to the current process definition. It allows you to create a
reusable process definition that can be reused in multiple other
process definitions.
11.

Service Task

• A Service Task is a Task that uses a Web service, an automated

application, or other kinds of service in completing the task.
Sub process
BP Sub-Processes

• In BPMN, a sub-process is a compound activity that represents a

collection of other tasks and sub-processes. Generally, we create
BPMN diagrams to communicate processes with others. To facilitate
effective communications, we really do not want to make a business
process diagram too complex.
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• By using sub-processes, you can split a complex process into multiple

levels, which allows you to focus on a particular area in a single
process diagram.
 Types of Sub processes
Loop
• A Sub-Process with loop marker indicates that the sub-process
repeats itself in sequence.

Multi-instance
A Sub-Process with Multi-Instance marker indicates that the sub-
process can run with other identical sub-processes simultaneously
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Compensation

• A Sub-Process with Compensation marker, or simply called a

compensation sub-process, represents a collection of tasks that
describe some part of the compensation method.
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Ad hoc

• A Sub-Process with Ad-Hoc marker represents a collection of tasks

that exist solely for handling a specific case.
• https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/bpmn/bpmn-activity-types-e
xplained
/#bpmn-manual-task