What is a Business Process, Really?

There are so many people out there who call themselves business process
experts that you have to wonder if discovering, analyzing and designing end-to-end business processes (workflow) is akin to riding a bike; just hop on, scuff your knees a few times and voila!…you’re a business process expert. The Internet certainly provides few barriers to self-promotion in this area (I heard it on the Internet so it must be true). And the cornucopia of business process management (aka process automation) software and platforms don’t do a lot to clear things up. Shocking, I know!

I thought it would be valuable to talk about a basic understanding of workflow so we can sift through all of the noise out there and focus on what is really important. I gleefully steal ideas from others and put them together in ways that suit me so if any of this sounds familiar, now you know why. It’s nothing new; it’s just re-packaged.

What a Business Process is Not

There are many misconceptions as to what a business proce…