Business Process Overview

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joyce.chan
Posts: 2
Joined: 23 Apr 2012, 08:03

Not sure if I'm modelling business architecture in the right manner.

I want to show the data transfer between business processes by specifying the starting and ending business process.

I have done so by defining it under the individual business process' "Defining Business Process Flow".

What I also realised is that this is manually drawn and not generated by specifying the upstream and downstream processes.

Assume I have a Biz Process YY which updates information produced by Biz Process XX. YY creates information that is subsequently used by Processes AA, BB and ZZ. ZZ also updates the same information that XX created and YY updated.

1. Can a diagram be generated showing the sequence that information is created by XX, updated by YY, then further updated by ZZ?

2. Can a diagram be generated for all the above processes and information relationships by specifying start process XX and end process ZZ?
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jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Business Process Overview

The defining process flows are drawn, not generated but it is important to understand that these are models, not just diagrams. With these defining business process flows, we describe to the model HOW that process is performed in terms of the steps that are taken and the order of these steps. Each of these steps can be another business process or a business activity (an elementary business process). We use these graphical models to capture HOW the process is to be performed and the dependencies that it has on other processes in the business architecture - e.g. as sub-processes.

Talking about generating diagrams is what Essential Viewer is all about. The current set of out-of-the-box Views do not provide the view that you are looking for but it is certainly possible to create such a View.

Let me play back to you what I think your two view requirements are:

1. By a selected Information element, show where it is created, where it is updated etc.

2. From a selected "start" process, show all the dependencies to sub-processes etc. stopping when the "end" process is reached in the process hierarchy, showing all the Information that is Created, Read, Updated and Deleted along the way.

During some of our client engagements, we have created what are effectively CRUD matrices for Information and Data against Business Processes - and presented this in various abstraction perspectives, e.g. conceptual (Information Concepts against Business Capabilities), logical (Business Processes against Information Views) and so on.

We already have plans in place to make these sort of CRUD matrix Views available to the Community - showing how Information and Data is used by Business Processes and Applications.
Indeed, with the new version 3 release of Essential Architecture Manager, it is much easier for us to provide new Views such as these as additional packs that are easy to install in your environment.

Version 3 will be available very soon.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
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