Technical Consequences of the Nature of Business Processes

Abstract

The paper is a reflection on the nature of business processes and the way which their nature necessarily manifests itself in business process modeling methodologies and languages. Respecting the nature of business processes is an essential condition for the meaningfulness of a process model. The importance of this topic is also emphasized by the fact that not all methodologies or languages respect the nature of business processes sufficiently. The paper briefly summarizes the main facts about and principles of business process management and points out the main natural features of business processes which have to be necessarily respected in modeling methodologies and languages. Subsequently, their main resulting features are analyzed in mutual relationships by examples from MMABP methodology. The paper also contains some critical reflection of current process modeling approaches and BPMN language in occasional contexts.