Skip to main content

Business Process Modeling

Business process management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve and optimize business processes.
Business process modeling is a tool that organizations use to evaluate their current processes. 
  • The goals of modeling:
    • to understand
    • to illustrate 
    • to analyze
  • Components of modeling:
    • activities
    • events
    • decisions
    • roles
    • information
    • Other artifacts
  • Common Modeling Methods:
    • Swim Lane Flowcharts (read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swim_lane)
    • UML Activity Diagrams (read https://www.uml-diagrams.org/activity-diagrams.html)
    • BPMN Business Process Diagrams (read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Model_and_Notation)
  • Important links:
    • Process Excellence Network- http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/articles/
    • iSixSigma- http://www.isixsigma.com/new-lean-six-sigma/
    • BPMN home site- http://www.bpmn.org/
    • BPMN Quick Guide- http://www.bpmnquickguide.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ethnographic Research: Unlocking Deeper Insights in Early Adoption Programs

Why Ethnography Matters in Early Adoption Ethnographic research immerses product teams in the real-world environments where users interact with prototypes or new features. Rather than relying solely on surveys or lab tests, ethnography emphasizes observing and engaging with participants “in the wild.” In early adoption programs—where a small cohort of power users tries out pre-release software or hardware—this approach yields rich, context-driven feedback that accelerates refinement and fosters genuine user advocacy. Advantages of Ethnographic Research Ethnography offers three primary benefits in early adoption contexts: Uncovering Tacit Knowledge Users often perform workarounds or subtle habits that they cannot articulate in interviews. By shadowing them, researchers see instinctive gestures—menu sequences skipped, custom keyboard shortcuts invented, or sticky notes left on physical dashboards—that reveal hidden pain points and unexpected value drivers. Contextual Understan...

Aim to be Understood and Respected

As a product manager we deal with different stakeholders of the organization; like marketers, tech support guys, designers, developers, HRs, SMEs and even C-level executives. Most of our interactions aim at- Getting approval for proposals or work orders. Getting acceptance for solutions/work arounds. Requesting budget or resource availability. Resolving conflicts. In my opinion - being assertive is the key to succeed in such conversations. Assertive Communication is the art of expressing our thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a way that makes our views and needs clearly understood by others, without putting down others thoughts, feelings, or opinions. It is an effective tool for constructively resolving conflicts and achieving results. Following are some tips to communicate assertively with Stakeholders: Be clear on what you want and why you want something Quantify impact of not getting it Know all your alternative options  Be honest and direct in your communication Hold on to you...

Competitive analysis

As a product manager we aim to build a product, that meets the customer need, better than any other product in the market. We aim to not just satisfy the customer, but to delight him or her with our offerings; and while doing so we gain a competitive distance/advantage.  To maintain this competitive distance we need to monitor and analyze our competitors. This activity needs to be done religiously basis a predefined schedule and predefined format to record the findings. I have been using the below competitive analysis matrix and updating the same on a quarterly basis.  As it can be seen every row monitors a feature and compares it along the top contenders in the market. Analytical findings of this study is recorded in the last column. Product Roadmap can be updated accordingly. Conclusion:  Product Manager needs to be aware that the same activity of 'competitive analysis' is being done by the Product Managers of the contender products too. Thus, it is important to build '...