Business Process vs. Business Activity

[Psiklops]

I'm going through an exercise of modeling our business processes within the business_logical section of the met-model. While I understand the task level (atomic), I'm not sure of the difference between a business process and a business activity.

The hierarchy imposed by the meta-model suggests that a business activity is one level above the task level since you can't include tasks in a business process flow - only a business activity flow. Additionally, you can't include business activities in a business activity flow.

So, according to the meta-model, a task is the lowest level, an activity is one level above a task, and a process is at each of the levels (possibly multiple) above an activity.

Is this right? Is there a better explanation / model?

Thanks!

[jonathan.carter]

Thanks for your post.

A Business Activity could also be called an Elementary Business Process. A process that is performed by one person in one place at one time. As such, these are the atomic elements of Business Processes.

The tasks are a lower level of granularity again, reflecting the detailed, atomic steps that one takes to perform an Activity. An Activity can also include sub-activities.

For example, you could have a Business Activity, 'Get Cash from ATM'. This could then be defined by Tasks such as, 'Insert Card', 'Enter PIN', 'Enter Amount', etc.

In practice, the Business Tasks may be too fine-grained or detailed for many Business Process modelling requirements. However, we have included them in the meta model for completeness and to provide the capability to capture this level of detail, should the need arise.

Hope this helps

Jonathan

[Psiklops]

Jonathan,

Yes, that certainly helps - thanks so much.

There is one point that I'm not sure of. You said that "An Activity can also include sub-activities." I'm not sure how this is represented in the meta-model. From what I've seen, a Business Activity Flow can only contain Business Tasks and Business Events. Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks again.

[jonathan.carter]

Sorry, my mistake.
A Business Activity defining flow cannot contain sub-activities, only tasks - which makes sense given the definition that an Activity is performed by one person, one place, one time.

Apologies for the confusion, I should have checked the meta model documentation.

Jonathan