Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the importance of business processes. We discussed why understanding business process is crucial for each organization. Modeling business processes is an important step towards understanding them. We have seen that business processes can be modeled at different levels of detail. Once modeled, such process models can be used for automation. Also, business processes should be optimized over time.

However, focusing on a single business process is not enough. Therefore, it is essential to design the business architecture, which provides the big-picture insight into an organizational structure. We have also seen that the business architecture should be considered as a part of the bigger enterprise architecture.

We gave you an overview of the BPM life cycle, which consists of business process design, process implementation, process execution and control, and process optimization. We focused on process design, where we explained the methodologies and notations. We mentioned adaptive case management. Further, we discussed business process modeling principles. We also discussed the process implementation, execution, and monitoring phases. We introduced BAM and KPIs and explained why it is useful for decision makers. We also identified some typical problems in process optimization.

We looked at the relation between SOA and BPM. SOA provides the technology platform for the implementation of the IT architecture based on business services, which is a foundation for business processes. SOA is an architecture that has introduced several important new concepts into application development. Lately, SOA has also introduced new building blocks, such as business events, EDA, CEP and integration with the IoT, big data and fast data, REST support and mobile enablement, omnichannel support, integration with the cloud, focus on microservice architecture, and API Management.

In the next chapter, we will look at the methodology for modeling business processes for SOA.