In today’s dynamic and competitive business environments, organizations are challenged to meet customers’
expectations, reduce time-to-market, optimize resource allocation and improve efficiency. By
modeling and analyzing their business processes, enterprises can reduce the time and cost of carrying
out important activities, improve effectiveness and conform to regulations. A business process is the
configuration by which an organization carries out activities across units or departments to produce value
for its customers. Activities are generally ordered across time and place, with a beginning, an end, and
clearly defined inputs and outputs. Since business processes are the fundamental building blocks of an
organization’s success, information technologies that focus on process management and improvement
have been good candidates to help organizations to fulfill their corporate visions and to improve their
competitive positions. In the past two decades, a special interest has been given to Business Process
Modeling (BPM) to leverage the computational power of modern information systems to enable organizations
to document, model, understand and improve their business processes. The focus on BPM has
resulted in the development of workflow management systems, dedicated analysis tools for verification,
simulation, and process mining, and various process standards ranging from BPMN to BPEL.
While BPM is not new, it is still a novel paradigm for many of us and for many people it entails a new
mindset to ensure a successful outcome and benefit for organizations. Managers and professionals are
looking for literature that guides them in the development of end-to-end applications based on processaware
information systems. A key aspect is re-thinking the approach to process modeling. After many
years of experience with BPM and associated systems, we have decided to compile a handbook which
will help students, researchers and practitioners to exploit BPM and turn promises into tangible results.
With the support and contribution of more than 50 academics and practitioners around the world, the
Handbook on Business Process Modeling was shaped having in mind the objective to lay the foundations
for understanding the concepts and technologies behind BPM.
This book provides valuable answers to frequent problems that people in both academia and industry
commonly face when studying and executing BPM undertakings. In each chapter a key concern of
business process modeling is discussed. A variety of relevant topics and solutions are discussed in 25
chapters structured in six sections:
• Advanced modelling methodologies
• Modern business process languages
• Process models in dynamic environments
• Enriching process models and enactment architectures
• Business process management in organizations
• Improving business processes