We have taken a broad view of business processes, considering, among other things, strategies, process architectures, the management of processes, the redesign and improvement of processes, and the automation of processes. Some groups like the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) have published formal glossaries. Other communities of practice, like Six Sigma, use terms in specialized ways. Several business process methodologies have been described the use terms in specific ways. Formal business process languages, like BPML, have semantic definitions that are enforced by the language. Unfortunately, many of these different sources use terms in slightly different ways. We have tried, in this glossary, to use terms in the most generic manner. In cases where different significant groups or key sources use the terms in a different way that we do, we have indicated that fact.

Activity
Processes can be sub-divided into smaller and smaller units or sub-processes. We define activity as the smallest sub-process that a given business process team decides to illustrate on their process diagrams. (We could reverse that and say that a process is made up of one or more activities.) Activities can consist of a single step, like approving a purchase request or placing a cap on a bottle passing on a production line. Other activities involve multiple steps, like filling out a form, or assembling a chair. There is no consistency about how the various methodologies use terms like task and step, but, increasingly, the term activity is reserved for the smallest unit of analysis. A given activity could be performed by one or more employees, by a software system, or by some combination. In the UML notation, both processes and activities are represented by rectangles with rounded corners. (See Business Process Hierarchy.) We sometimes indicate if activities are manual (normal line around rectangle), systems (bold line around rectangle) or mixed activities that involve both manual activities an systems (dashed line around activity rectangle).

Atomic Activity
An activity that can not be subdivided. An activity that consists of a single step or action.

Activity Analysis Worksheet
A grid or matrix that one can use to analyze the relationships between the steps in the activity, listed on the vertical axis and who performs the activity, who is responsible for the performance of the activity, decision rules used and opportunities for improvement.

Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
A process-oriented approach to accounting that starts by determining how much it costs to perform each activity and then adds up activity costs to determine process costs, an so forth. The idea is that you add together all the costs in a complete value chain, subtract the costs from the income for the product or service produced by the value chain, and determine the profit on the process.

Activity Cost Worksheet
A grid or matrix that one can use to analyze the various costs of a set of activities. Activities are listed on the vertical axis and data about outputs, costs, times and problems are described for each activity.

Administrative Workflow Systems
Workflow systems that keep track of what individuals are doing and assign new tasks according to some set of rules. (Contrast with Ad Hoc and Transaction or Production Workflow Systems.)

Ad Hoc Workflow Systems
Workflow systems that wait on users to indicate what should happen next. An insurance system might pull up documents for an underwriter only on request. (Contrast with Administrative and Transaction or Production Workflow Systems.)

ARIS
A business process modeling tool and a methodology for business process redesign. Created by A.W. Scheer, sold by IDS Scheer, and used extensively to link and tailor SAP applications. (www.ids-scheer.com/)

Asynchronous Process
In an asynchronous process, one activity sends a message to another, but does not wait until it gets a response. A phone call to another person is a synchronous process – it can’t go forward if the person you want to talk to doesn’t answer the phone. Leaving a message on an answering machine turns it into an asynchronous process. You leave your message and go on with your business, figuring the person will respond when they get the message.

Balanced Scorecard
A movement, method and technique for aligning measures from an organization’s strategic goals to specific process measures. It stresses measuring a variety of things to obtain a good overview of what’s actually happening. A complementary approach to what we recommend. Usually associated with Robert Kaplan and David Norton.

Batch Processing
In either human or computer processes, a step where lots of items are accumulated and then processed together. In contrast to continuous processing where items are processes as soon as possible.

Benchmarks
As used in business process redesign, data about process measures obtained for specific types of processes. Many companies seek benchmark data on processes they seek to redesign in order to determine how well other companies manage the process.

BizTalk
Standards, protocols, tools and a program of Microsoft Corporation to facilitate the exchange of information between companies and their business processes. (See BPEL4WS.) (www.microsoft.com/biztalk)

BPEL or BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services)
In the first draft of this glossary, we described two alternative XML business process languages, WSFL from IBM and XLANG from Microsoft. As the glossary is published, IBM, Microsoft and BEA have announced that they will be combining WSFL and XLANG to create a common XML business process language that will support both public (protocol) and private (execution) language. (www.ibm.com/bpel4ws)

BPMI (Business Process Management Initiative)
Consortium of business process modeling tools vendors and user companies that are working together to develop an XML-based business process language (BPMI), a notation for the language (BPMN) and a query language (BPQL). The idea is that companies would model their automated processes in BPMI and then be able to monitor and change the processes as needed. BPML would primarily be used by those who want to create collaborative Internet or Web Service systems. (www.bpmi.org)

BPSS (Business Process Specification Schema)
An ebXML specification that defines public processes for exchanging documents about buying and selling products over the Internet by means of a choreographed transactions. (www.ebxml.org)

Business Intelligence (BI)
Software systems and tools that seek to extract useful patterns or conclusions from masses of data.

Business Process
At its most generic, any set of activities performed by a business that is initiated by an event, transforms information, materials or business commitments, and produces an output. Value chains and large-scale business processes produce outputs that are valued by customers. Other processes generate outputs that are valued by other processes.

Business Process Automation
Refers to the use of computer systems and software to automate a process. Processes can be completely automated, so no human intervention is required, or semi-automated, when some human intervention is required to make decisions or handle exceptions. Techniques used for BP Automation, include workflow, BP-XML languages, ERP, and software development and EAI.

Business Process Change Cycle
A general description of the lifecycle of business processes. The environments in which companies operate change and companies respond by changing their strategies and goals. Those changes drive changes in processes. In the most extreme case, a process must be retired and replaced by a new process. In most cases existing processes are redesigned or gradually improved to conform with new corporate strategies and goals. Environmental changes keep occurring and this cycle keeps going leading to a continuous business process redesign and improvement effort.

Business Process Design or Redesign
Business Process Redesign focuses on making major changes in an existing process, or creating a new process. Depending on the size of the process, this can be a major undertaking, is done infrequently, and, once done, should be followed by continuous business process improvement. Compared with BPR, as defined in the early Nineties, Business Process Redesign usually focuses on smaller scale processes and aims for more modest improvements. Redesign focuses on major improvements in existing processes. Design focuses on creating entirely new processes.

Business Process Hierarchy
Everyone has a slightly different way of ordering the various levels of processes. The one we use is illustrated below.

ProcessA value chain usually describes a major line ofbusiness. An organization has from one to a fewvalue chains. A value chain is usually decomposed into from 3 to 7business processes. Depending on the nature of the business process, itcan include a few todozens of processes. Processes usually contain from 3 to 7 sub-processes. Depending on the nature of the sub-process, it manycontain sub-sub processes and even sub-sub-subprocesses to any arbitrary depth. (Sometimes calledtasks to simplify things.) Activities are the lowest level process we show on ourdiagrams. They are, in essence, the smallest sub-process we want to describe.

Business Process Improvement (BPI)
Business process improvement focuses on incrementally improving existing processes. There are many approaches, including the currently popular Six Sigma approach. BPI is usually narrowly focused and repeated over and over again during the life of each process.

Business Process Language
See XML Business Process Language.

Business Process Management
In this book, we use business process management (lower case) to refer to aligning processes with the organization’s strategic goals, designing and implementing process architectures, establishing process measurement systems that align with organizational goals, and educating and organizing managers so that they will manage processes effectively. We occasionally use Business Process Management or BPM to refer to various automation efforts, including workflow systems, XML Business Process languages and packaged ERP systems. In this case the management emphasizes the ability of workflow engines to control process flows, automatically measure processes, and to change process flows from a computer terminal. Business Process Management is a tricky term in the sense that two different groups within the business process community tend to use it in different ways.

Business Process Modeling Tool
A software tool that lets managers or analysts create business process diagrams. Simple tools only support diagramming. Professional Business Process Modeling Tools store each model element in a database so that they can be reused on other diagrams or updated. Many Professional tools support simulation or code generation.

Business Process Outsourcing
Many companies outsource business processes to other companies to manage and execute. Few companies outsource core business processes that they depend on for their unique position in the market. They fear that the outsourcer won’t be able to improve the process quickly enough to respond to market changes. Some companies are now offering to outsource such processes, arguing that they have an approach that will let the owner make changes in the process as needed.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
A term coined by Hammer and Davenport in the early Nineties. As originally defined in their books it emphasized starting from a blank sheet and completely reconceptualizing major business processes and using information technology in order to obtain breakthrough improvements in performance. The term became unpopular in the late Nineties and many business people associate BPR with failures. Those who still use the term have redefined it to mean what we mean by Business Process Redesign.

Business Process Tools
Used generically this can refer to worksheets, rules-of-thumb and software tools used to help in business process change. With reference to software, it includes a wide range of software tools that help with every aspect of process change discussed in this book.

Business Rules
A statement describing a business policy or decision procedure. Some programming languages run business rules together into very complex algorithms. In business process analysis, each rule is usually stated independently, in the general format: If A and B, Then C. Workflow tools and detailed process diagrams both depend on business rules to specify how decisions are made. We generally associate business rules with activities. A decision diamond is adequate to show what happens if a loan is accepted or rejected, but dozens or even hundreds of business rules may need to be defined to clarify what a loan should be accepted or rejected. Training programs, job aids, software systems and knowledge management systems aim to document business rules either to automate the decision process or to and make the rules available to other decision makers.