A business process is a group of logically related (and typically
sequenced) activities that use the resources of the organization to provide defined results in support of the
organization's objectives -- delivering value in the form of product or service, often to an external party such
as a customer or partner. The process, possibly decomposed into sub-processes, has associated organization, resource,
and data models to capture all aspects of the process, including not only performing roles, but required/used
resources, ownership of resources, accountability, definitions of items passed into and out of tasks, and so
on.
Business processes commonly are described graphically using either BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) diagrams or UML Activity diagrams.
A process model needs to identify "what" needs to take place, not "how" tasks are carried out, because
that is an aspect of business process that can change over time, especially in response to changes in business
environment or technology.
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