What is BPM (Business Process Modeling)? Lifecycle of BPM.

BPM Stands for Business Process Modeling, with respect to system engineering, providers method, and techniques to make a business process more efficient, adaptive and effective to accomplish business tasks. We will use the BPMN 2.0 modeling notations for designing our business process with the Activiti Engine. It provides a comprehensive approach to aligning an organization's business process as per the client's requirement. With the help of BPM, organizations can be more effective, efficient, and capable of accepting changes rather focusing on a traditional hierarchical  management approach.

The BPM lifecycle

The creation of a business process comprises the five phases of business process management, commonly known as the BPM lifecycle. The five phases are as follows:

1. Design
2. Modeling
3. Execution
4. Monitoring
5. Optimization

Each phase is designed to implement a successful process solution. With the help of the BPM lifecycle, one can understand that implementing a business process is an ongoing process due to the changes occurring within the business environment. The five phases of the BPM lifecycle are as follows:

Design

The design phase of a lifecycle is responsible for the identification and design of a business process. The areas focused on within this phase are identifying activities, analyzing possible changes within the organization, defining service-level agreements, and specifying process details, such as actors, notifications, and escalations, within the business process. The main purpose of this phase is to ensure that a correct and efficient theoretical design is prepared. This phase belongs to the process owners who are deciding the process flow for the organization.

Modeling

Modeling is the second phase of the cycle; it's where the business process is validated and fully specified. In the design phase, the theoretical design is prepared, whereas in this phase, the theoretical business process is designed using various BPMN elements. This phase is mainly the responsibility of system analysts and integrators. 

Execution

Once the theoretical design is transformed into a model, it can be implemented in the business process application. Now, it's time to automate the execution of the business process. This is the phase where the services are defined to automate the business process. The languages used to create the services are WSBPEL and BPMN 2.0. This phase belongs to the developers who are developing the business process.

Monitoring

The monitoring phase keeps track of the individual processes. Performance monitoring for each and every process can be provided statistically, and the states of the process can also be maintained. In the monitoring phase, problems within a business process can be identified and corrective steps can be taken to improve it.

Optimization

The optimization phase is the last phase of the lifecycle. In this phase, the performance information of the process is fetched from the monitoring phase and improvements within the process and changes in the business requirement are identified. Once the optimization phase is completed, the business process again goes into the design phase and the cycle is completed.