Departmental workflows that do not participate in an enterprise BPM program but are developed in isolation differ in one regard dramatically from enterprise BPM. They have been created in one small team. This implies that whenever somebody needs to understand certain aspects in the business process, they know its author and can approach him in informal ways via e-mail, telephone, or just walk up to his desk.

What happens if we apply the same type of modeling and collaboration to enterprise-level business process management?

Typically, we will spread that modeling work over different teams in a way that for a given moment in time, each team or group will work on one process model.

Inside each of these groups, a certain joint understanding establishes itself over time. Members will invest time and thinking in finding a way to express the complex aspects of the process using their own ways to structure it and name activities and...