Architecting and designing > Business Process Analysis (BPA) > Older BPA techniques > Process Charts
  
Process Charts
Business Process Modeling captures the enterprise’s tasks, the order of those tasks, as well as the methods, rules, and results. Business Process Modeling emphasizes the business process, something the enterprise does to respond to a particular event, that is, an action the enterprise needs to perform to be successful.
You can use the following diagrams when modeling business processes:
Process Chart
Process Map
Process decomposition
Relationship map
Business concept diagram
You begin by establishing the major and minor process threads of the organization. There are generally only four or five major process threads in an organization, no matter its size. There can be hundreds of minor process threads. For example, a major process thread might be "Reservations" in a hotel chain, or "Ordering" in a commercial company selling products.
Each process thread is modeled by one or more Process Chart diagrams, which show the sequencing of processes and optionally the parts of the organization that they are performed in. These parts or partitions are shown by swimlanes that represent organizational units. You can use Process Map diagrams also to show a mapping of business processes against swimlanes.
You can model the hierarchy of functions with the Functional Hierarchy diagram and processes with the Process Decomposition diagrams. With the Process Decomposition diagram, you can group process threads into process groups, and hierarchically show the Elementary Business Processes belonging to process threads.
You can use relationship maps to show how Process Threads, Organizational Functions, or Primary Process Groups interrelate.
You can use the business concept diagram to show a very high level picture of locations in the business and how these areas interrelate.
See also
Types of diagrams used for Business Process Modeling
Organizational Functions in functional hierarchy diagrams
Drawing or editing functional hierarchy diagrams
Generating functional hierarchy diagrams
Linking Process Charts with Process Threads
Older BPA techniques