Business Process Modelling -PART 1

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pdesai
Posts: 4
Joined: 26 Jul 2013, 07:30

Hi,
I have been trying to evaluate the software to see if we are able to create business processes as desired or not. I shall describe the problem and give you the steps as well to see what I have been experiencing.

Case Study :
- I have defined the following:
A) "Loans" domain under "Business_Conceptual -> Business_Domain -> Loans"
B) Following three capabilities for the "Loans" Domain. They are:
- Loan Origination
- Loan Maintenance
- Loan Closure
C) The following processes under the "Business_Process_Type -> Business_Process". They are:
- Open Loan Account (This has been further classified to realise business capability "Loan Origination")
- Initiate Loan - This is one of the sub process under "Open Loan Account" and does not realise any business capability
- Creation of Account - This is one of the sub process under "Open Loan Account" and does notrealize any business capability
- receive Application fee - This is one of the sub process under "Open Loan Account" and does not
realize any business capability
- Approval of Loan - This is one of the sub process under "Open Loan Account" and does not realize any business capability.

Given the above , For purpose of simplicity , I have just linked "Initiate Loan, Creation of Account, receive application fee and Approval of Loan" together to form a process flow which defines "Open Loan Account" Process.



Questions I have from the above defined parameters:

Q1) After doing this, When I see the process from the business process model of "Business Domain Process Analysis" View, it appears as attached and the same process in the "business process summary "view appears as attached.

Screenshots "Processes- Business process view(unable to attach as I have already attached 3 files) and Processes -Business domain process summary view attached"
Can you please explain as to why there is a difference

Q2) Now to complicate it , If I add two activities e,g "
- Complete Loan quotation
- Perform Credit Risk Assessment

and call these activities in defining the process flow for a new process "Create Customer", I am able to see this process flow in the "Business Process Summary View" but am getting an error in the "Business Domain process
Analysis view". Screen shots "Activities - Business process view and Activities - Business Domain process view attached"

Q3) If I were to create a domain called "Retail Banking" that contains the domain defined above "Loans", there is
no view by which I can see this relationship. Can you let me know if this assumption is correct?


As I am currently new to the tool, I am trying to explore what can be achieved. Your help in answering these questions would be very much appreciated. I can send the PPRJ file if you would like.
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pdesai
Posts: 4
Joined: 26 Jul 2013, 07:30

I thought this was moderator controlled forum. Looks like some spam advt...

Dear Moderators,
Can you pl look into the question and let me know please.

Thanks
Pralay Desai.
User avatar
jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

What you have described in terms of how you've modelled this sounds sensible.
However, the things you've described as Domains sound to me like coarser-grained business capabilities. A capability can contain sub-capabilities, so you can be as coarse-grain or as fine-grain as you need to be. Remember, the capabilities describe WHAT the business does and the processes HOW these are realised.

Q1)
I think most likely there's a duplicate relationship (an arc on the process flow model) that is causing the two arrows from Receive Application Fee. In the model, you can click on each arc and label them. You'll then see those labels in the form field below the flow graphical model and you can delete any invalid relationships from there.
The activity diagram rendering draws the branch bar when there are multiple relationships coming from a process step.

Q2)
Have you connected those Business Activities on the diagram to the Business Activity instances to which each relates? From the Summary View, it looks like you've got things like the Start node sorted. This is normally a down to a problem with the data in the repository.

Q3)
You can define sub-domains for a given domain (e.g. Loans as a sub-domain of Retail Banking). You will be able to see this relationship in the repository and you can certainly define Views that show this. However, as I mentioned before, the way you are describing your modelling, I think that you may get what you're looking for if you were to use Business Capabilities for what you currently have as Domains.
So, you might have a 'root' capability that is "Retail Banking", which has sub-capability "Loans" which then contains sub-capabilities Loan Origination, Loan Maintenance etc.

The move from capability to process is a not a granularity move, rather an abstraction move. This means that you can do a conceptual functional decomposition (describing the WHAT) using only capabilities. Then, to describe how these are implemented (perhaps different parts of the organisation perform the capabilities in different ways) you capture this using the Processes.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
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