The Challenge of Static Business Process Descriptions
The modern enterprise IT landscape struggles with the rigidness of traditional static business process descriptions. A significant problem arises from the disparity between documented regulations and actual operational activities. When business rules are hard-coded or exist only as paper instructions, “shadow processes” emerge. These are informal workarounds where actual task execution deviates from official regulations due to the inflexibility of automation systems. This traditional approach, involving business analysts creating diagrams and developers manually translating them into code, creates difficulties with every change in business regulations, demanding a full development and testing cycle. Such inflexibility leads users to create informal communication chains and unapproved workarounds, making company activities opaque to management and hindering rapid adaptation to evolving business rules.
Executable BPMN 2.0 Standard for Process Orchestration
The solution lies in transitioning to executable models, where the process diagram directly serves as an algorithm for a specialized process engine. This relies on the BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) standard, officially published as ISO/IEC 19510:2013. BPMN 2.0 defines both graphical elements for process visualization and an XML schema for their direct orchestration, allowing a single model to be used for both business documentation and runtime process management. BPMN 2.0-based process orchestration ensures a single source of truth, enables transparent monitoring of task execution stages, and standardizes calls to external systems via Service Tasks, thereby transforming diagrams into working algorithms.
DMN for Separating Business Rules from Process Flow
A common issue is the overloading of BPMN diagrams with complex decision-making rules, making them unreadable. The DMN (Decision Model and Notation) standard addresses this by separating business rules from the direct process flow into specialized decision tables. Instead of embedding numerous conditions within a BPMN diagram, the engine queries a DMN table, passes input data, and receives a result. For instance, updating credit scoring rules can be done within a DMN table without redesigning and restarting the entire base BPMN process. This separation narrows the scope of changes when updating business regulations and minimizes the risk of introducing errors into the overall orchestration logic, significantly reducing change costs.
Process Mining for Identifying Operational Bottlenecks
To understand the actual functioning of processes, Process Mining analyzes event logs generated by various corporate information systems. This methodology reconstructs actual operational flows and compares them with target models, providing a data-driven approach to prioritizing automation efforts. Analysis reveals precise bottlenecks; for example, detecting an undocumented “shadow” step in a contract approval process that systematically delays deal execution. Eliminating such discrepancies ensures that actual work aligns with approved regulations, making the real state of operations transparent and actionable. This approach helps identify and rectify deviations, ensuring compliance and efficiency.