Business Processes

[averma1]

Hello Community,

I am on way to create business applications and found business processes plays an important role same like application categories.

I am designing from scratch with the help of EA architecture, can I please ask for your advise 
- what is the importance of it

- What should be the approach while designing

- what actually are business process and how they will be utilised in future

- How they are related with other CSDM elements 

Please advise what immediate use cases of business process I can tell to the stakeholders.

[yogesh41 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I will be keen to know what other members of the community suggest possible use case of Business Process. Meanwhile I wanted to highlight EA product capabilities and what role Business Process plays. 

As it is already known that Business Process capture all critical process and sequence of activities being performed. Enterprise Architecture allow connecting Business Process to all critical Value Streams (Add a value stream to a business process ), Business Capability as well as associating process activities to Business Application that supports it using Business process modeling. 

This relationship modelling helps risk/impact analysis, improve tracibility and result process optimisation. 

Yogesh

[yogesh41 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I will be keen to know what other members of the community suggest possible use case of Business Process. Meanwhile I wanted to highlight EA product capabilities and what role Business Process plays. 

As it is already known that Business Process capture all critical process and sequence of activities being performed. Enterprise Architecture allow connecting Business Process to all critical Value Streams (Add a value stream to a business process ), Business Capability as well as associating process activities to Business Application that supports it using Business process modeling. 

This relationship modelling helps risk/impact analysis, improve tracibility and result process optimisation. 

Yogesh

[Mathew Hillyard · Accepted solution]

Hi @averma1 

One important change regarding Business Processes and Business Applications is that they used to be a 1:1 relationship (there is a Business Process reference on the Business Application form). However after customer feedback ServiceNow has changed the guidance and instead now recommends a 1:m between Business Applications and Business Processes, and to instead use the related list. This is very important as it's clear that many applications fulfil more than one Business Process.

In terms of Business Process mapping, if your organisation is not already undertaking this activity then be prepared for a LOT of work. It depends on how granular you need to go, but ServiceNow is not an ideal repository for modelling complex Business Processes and all their activities and linkages - at least, not yet. It has got better with Enterprise Modelling and Visualization but is still a way off more dedicated tools. But if you have no current source of Business Process data then it's worth running it on-platform.  I agree with the other posts above - pick an existing framework (your org may already use one) and follow its guidance.

I hope this helps!
Mat

[averma1]

Thanks so much @Mathew Hillyard 

We are using Zurich and I am afraid I can't choose multiple Business process for one single application?

My organisation modeled Business Process of APQC standards as L1 and L2 hierarchy will that be right ?

Also, one thing really becoming a nightmare to me having lifecycle for Business Process every time I go and refresh relationships it makes business process retired do you have something to say on this the best practice to maintain it?

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @averma1

On the Business Application form, go to Configure > Related Lists and add the Business Process related list from there. I believe it is a many to many table so it won't have a name like Business Process > Business Application, it should be Business Processes or something similar.

Yes, choosing a standard and mapping out the processes makes sense.

By Lifecycles, do you mean Lifecycle Stage and Lifecycle Stage Status? If you have adopted these, then you should be using Lifecycles everywhere, so updating CI Relationships would not change the Lifecycle of a Business Process to Retired. Maybe revisit your configuration.

I hope this helps!
Mat