Convergence of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Management (BPM) through Hierarchical Process Modelling

A large number of BPM implementations are undertaken outside Enterprise Architecture (EA) purview, which often fails short to achieve the benefits EA as a discipline delivers to the organization. A majority of stakeholders in a BPM implementation holds the perception that EA and BPM are separate discipline. In contrary, BPM is part of EA. BPM delivers the tools and methods to address the Business Architecture, which is an integral component of EA.

This article illustrates the synergy and relations between BPM and EA, explains the methods and tools to translate and decompose business processes into executable artifacts.

One of the key pursuits of most organizations is to maximize their shareholder value over time and to achieve this objective organizations are engaged in assessing ways in which their processes can be improved. To optimize the shareholder value through process automation, optimization and harmonization organizations adopt Business Process Management (BPM) as a holistic approach.

The adoption process generally starts with the awareness that BPM can improve shareholder value and their desire to adopt BPM to improve their shareholder value results into initial a set of individual BPM project implementations that proves the benefits of BPM. In the next step, organizations apprehend their BPM projects in a more strategic centralized BPM program which is also known as BPM portfolio management. Under BPM Portfolio Management, organizations look for a way to structure and prioritize their BPM projects to relate their BPM activities in a BPM road map, provide a consolidated view of the complete business process landscape of the organization emphasizing the enterprise value perspective than an IT solution.

The effectiveness of BPM implementation is measured by the tangible business value it delivers over the period of time, and to achieve that, an efficient convergence of business and IT is indispensable. BPM and Enterprise Architecture, both the disciplines offer great synergy in terms of principles, methodology, technique, and tools. BPM provides the business context, understanding, and metrics, and Enterprise Architecture provides the discipline to translate business vision and strategy into architectural constituents. This synergy between BPM and EA enables not only convergence at the principles, technique and methodology but also structured management and harvesting of EA artefacts.

Gartner illustrated and showed that BPM project implementation organizations are not isolated, but part of the EA organization.

The EA component that BPCC team deals with is Business Architecture. The Business Architecture captures the Goal, Strategy, Objectives, People and Processes and lays the foundation of the IT solution. Hierarchical modelling is used to decompose the business processes to comprehend the business goals, strategies, objectives and their relationship easily.

Concept of Hierarchical Process Modelling

An Enterprise is a collection of “bubbles” of goals, strategies, objectives, KPIs, value propositions, role, people, procedures and tasks.  Holistically an Enterprise is a complex network of “bubbles” and their relations represented as links. Process decomposition is the method of organizing the “bubbles” in different baskets of focus area based on their inter-relation and then further decomposed to granularity till a “bubble” becomes the atomic task which no further decomposable.

Hierarchy offers the efficient management of complexity to allow one to understand the value streams. Enterprise Map, Value Chain Map, Strategy Map, Process Model is used to defines the Business Process Architecture with hierarchical process definitions with process decomposition at contextual, conceptual, logical and physical or actionable processes. Each level is same, but narrates in more detail.

Thumb rules (illustrated by Dr. Mike Yearworth, University of Bristol in Process of Model (holon) building) to define an effective (grouping of related process, balance of level and detailing) process hierarchy -  

• Challenging process/system boundary by asking why?
• Eliciting process through repeated question of how?
• Layering as required in order to provide grouping of processes that conveys meaningful and relevant information to target stakeholders
• Proceed until there is no longer a process exists to be questioned how

Tools

While the concept of hierarchical process modelling remains same across various products (like ARIS, SCOR, eTOM, Oracle BPM etc), the tooling and some nomenclature differs. Oracle BPM 12C product suite has been considered in this paper to illustrate the hierarchical process modelling.

-        Enterprise Map

Enterprise Map is a contextual Model that defines the scope and boundaries of business processes in a single view. It is targeted to provide insights to Executives, Strategists, Business Process Architects and Business Analysts.

The Enterprise Map contains Lanes and Process Areas. Process Areas provide the boundaries and scope for the lower levels of modelling. Lane offers grouping of related Process Areas based on their characteristics. The processes of typical manufacturing company at a minimum can be clarified as Core, Management and Support, each being represented as lane in Enterprise Map. Product Sale, Product Servicing and Product Manufacturing may be considered as three Core Process Areas. Process Areas for Management and Support processes are represented in their corresponding Lane, as depicted in the Enterprise Map below -

-        Value Chain Model

Value Chain Model is used to define both Conceptual Model and Logical model. Value Chain Conceptual Model decomposes the Process Areas into series of steps that transform the business inputs into business outputs to create a business value.  The audience for Conceptual Value Chain models are Business Owners, Business Analysts, and Business Architects. The value chain begins with a start step, which represents the inputs, and then each following chain step represents a transformation process, until the end step which represents the outputs.  One Process area can have multiple value chains. Each Step may have one or multiple KPI assigned to measure the performance. “Product Sale” process area can be composed of following Conceptual Model Value Chains

Value Chain Logical Model decomposes the steps in Conceptual Value Chain Model into further detailed Value Chain Model. The steps are decomposed into sub Value Chain till the process can be model as executable physical model i.e., BPMN model.  Each step in the value chain takes a business input, adds some business value and produces a business output. The value a step targets to produce are documented along with KPI.

A step in a value chain is either decomposed into a sub value chain model or a physical BPMN model.

-        Strategy Model

Each process area is a black box container of goals, strategies, objectives, KPIs, value propositions, role, people, procedures and tasks. Value chain and physical model (BPMN) caters with value propositions, role, people, procedures and tasks. The Strategy map ties the Value Chain Model with business goals, strategies and objectives.

Goal defines the end result the organization is trying to achieve (there can be multiple goals within each process areas). To achieve the goal, one or more objectives are defined and Strategy is the plan to achieve the objectives. The strategy can be linked to a value chain.

The below mentioned Strategy Model, ties some of the Goals, Objectives, Strategy and Value Chain Models that falls within “Product Sale” process area. The “Acquire 60% market share” goal is achieved by attaining three objectives – “Fulfil Order”, “Promote Product” and “Increase Dealer”. Each of these objectives must have some KPI defined to evaluate the extent the objective has been achieved. To achieve an objective, one or multiple strategy or plan is used, and each strategy uses one or multiple Value Chain Model to device the strategy.

-        Physical Process Model

The Physical process Models represents the complete business and system requirements without reference to a specific implementation. Physical model is represented with BPMN notations. The audiences for this level of details in a process model are the Subject Matter Experts, Business Analyst, and End Users. The “Process Return Request” step in the value chain can be decomposed into following BPMN Model -

-        Windup

The hierarchical process modelling provides stake holder at various level the right set of process knowledge and sets the stage for further process discovery, optimization and improvement. This is effective tool for managing large BPM portfolio by means of project scoping, prioritizing and road mapping.

Either Top-down or bottom-up, any approach can be adopted to define the Business Architecture based on the organization’s SOA and BPM maturity. It is often observed organizations adopting an iterative approach to define the Enterprise Business Architecture.