Modelling the Systemic Context in Business Process Management applications
BPMN (Business Process Modeling and Notation ) is used to model a business process. DCSYM (Design and Control Systemic methodology) is a systems modelling notation. It is used as a means to model the systemic context of a process. Putting a process into context enriches the observer's perception of that process leading to better results in a business process improvement project.
Business Process Management (BPM), in general, is the discipline, both art and science, of overseeing how works are performed in an organization to ensure the consistency of outcomes and explore improvement opportunities.
BPM combines knowledge from the information technology field and management sciences and applies it to business processes that operate within an organization to increase productivity and save costs.
Context is a multi-dimensional concept that can be summarized as the environment or conditions in which something is placed. It constitutes of background, surroundings, circumstances, or settings which determine or clarify the meaning or perception of an entity or event.
For BPM, we define context as the interrelated conditions in which a business process takes place. These conditions may refer to the organizational background, settings, stakeholder groups, the legal or institutional framework, or any other classification of the process's environment.
BPM affects the whole organization and concerns all people at every administration level. Consequently, BPM bears a holistic character, and the organizational context becomes a critical factor that someone needs to consider for successful BPM projects.
A key concept in BPM is the "process", which is defined as a transformation of inputs to outputs and can be decomposed into events, decisions and activities. As expected, occasionally, various methods have been used to model processes. From 2013 onwards, the modelling methodology known as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the global de-facto standard for modelling processes. It is used in every phase of the BPM lifecycle.
Less standardized is the modelling of the context. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose modelling language that can be used for context modelling. Besides that, many proprietary languages or methodologies have been used to model the context when describing problems or situations.
Given the importance of the context in clarifying any problem or situation, and the value of Systems Thinking in understanding the world, we propose a methodology to model the systemic context of a process. It is based on the Design and Control Systemic Methodology (DCSYM), which can model the hierarchical structure of a system and the relations among system elements. Thus, DCSYM provides a systemic representation of the process context. BPMN is still used to model the process while the process elements are placed within the systemic context entities. In summary, DCSYM is used to accommodate the BPMN model of the process.