Many references on Six Sigma stress the importance of defining processes. All too often, practitioners on a Six Sigma project rely on flowcharts for this crucial step. Unfortunately, flowcharts only show decision points, and the steps taken to reach those decisions are overlooked, including vital departmental interactions and communication patterns. This is the focus of Defining and Analyzing a Business Process: A Six Sigma Pocket Guide, which helps to fill the gaps found on flowcharts and provides a more complete big-picture view of the processes. This pocket guide details a methodology on how to analyze your existing processes. The book uses two distinct approaches: first a Business Interaction Model and second an Integrated Flow Diagram. Once the analysis phase is complete, the pocket guide presents a method on how to innovate your process to optimize its operation. The book moves away from the theory and jumps headlong into a systemic approach to change. As a pocket guide, it can easily be used as a reference or as a teaching aid, and is ideal for anyone who uses processes at any level.

The definitive guide on the roles and responsibilities of the business analyst Business Analysis offers a complete description of the process of business analysis in solving business problems. Filled with tips, tricks, techniques, and guerilla tactics to help execute the process in the face of sometimes overwhelming political or social obstacles, this guide is also filled with real world stories from the author's more than thirty years of experience working as a business analyst. Provides techniques and tips to execute the at-times tricky job of business analyst Written by an industry expert with over thirty years of experience Straightforward and insightful, Business Analysis is a valuable contribution to your ability to be successful in this role in today's business environment.

This is a ground-breaking book, primarily in its successful attempt to operationalise and provide empirical foundations for procedures for radical change previously developed only intuitively. The book is supported by prominent academics and practitioners in the field, including Jim Short (LBS), Raul Espejo, Dan Teichroew (Michigan), and others. It should become the standard reference for managers and consultants in BPR.

This textbook covers the entire Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle, from process identification to process monitoring, covering along the way process modelling, analysis, redesign and automation. Concepts, methods and tools from business management, computer science and industrial engineering are blended into one comprehensive and inter-disciplinary approach. The presentation is illustrated using the BPMN industry standard defined by the Object Management Group and widely endorsed by practitioners and vendors worldwide. In addition to explaining the relevant conceptual background, the book provides dozens of examples, more than 230 exercises – many with solutions – and numerous suggestions for further reading. This second edition includes extended and completely revised chapters on process identification, process discovery, qualitative process analysis, process redesign, process automation and process monitoring. A new chapter on BPM as an enterprise capability has been added, which expands the scope of the book to encompass topics such as the strategic alignment and governance of BPM initiatives. The textbook is the result of many years of combined teaching experience of the authors, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as in the context of professional training. Students and professionals from both business management and computer science will benefit from the step-by-step style of the textbook and its focus on fundamental concepts and proven methods. Lecturers will appreciate the class-tested format and the additional teaching material available on the accompanying website.

You may be wondering if business analysis is the right career choice, debating if you have what it takes to be successful as a business analyst, or looking for tips to maximize your business analysis opportunities. With the average salary for a business analyst in the United States reaching above $90,000 per year, more talented, experienced professionals are pursuing business analysis careers than ever before. But the path is not clear cut. No degree will guarantee you will start in a business analyst role. What's more, few junior-level business analyst jobs exist. Yet every year professionals with experience in other occupations move directly into mid-level and even senior-level business analyst roles. My promise to you is that this book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Business Process Change, 3rd Edition provides a balanced view of the field of business process change. Bestselling author Paul Harmon offers concepts, methods, cases for all aspects and phases of successful business process improvement. Updated and added for this edition is new material on the development of business models and business process architecture development, on integrating decision management models and business rules, on service processes and on dynamic case management, and on integrating various approaches in a broad business process management approach. New to this edition: How to develop business models and business process architecture How to integrate decision management models and business rules New material on service processes and on dynamic case management Learn to integrate various approaches in a broad business process management approach Extensive revision and update addresses Business Process Management Systems, and the integration of process redesign and Six Sigma Learn how all the different process elements fit together in this best first book on business process, now completely updated Tailor the presented methodology, which is based on best practices, to your organization’s specific needs Understand the human aspects of process redesign Benefit from all new detailed case studies showing how these methods are implemented

Business process management is usually treated from two different perspectives: business administration and computer science. While business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management for experts to handle, by contrast computer science professionals often consider business goals and organizational regulations as terms that do not deserve much thought but require the appropriate level of abstraction. Matthias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management. To this end, he details the complete business process lifecycle from the modeling phase to process enactment and improvement, taking into account all different stakeholders involved. After starting with a presentation of general foundations and abstraction models, he explains concepts like process orchestrations and choreographies, as well as process properties and data dependencies. Finally, he presents both traditional and advanced business process management architectures, covering, for example, workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures, and data-driven approaches. In addition, he shows how standards like WfMC, SOAP, WSDL, and BPEL fit into the picture. This textbook is ideally suited for classes on business process management, information systems architecture, and workflow management. This 3rd edition contains a new chapter on business decision modelling, covering the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard; the chapter on process choreographies has been streamlined, and numerous clarifications have been fetched throughout the book. The accompanying website www.bpm-book.com contains further information and additional teaching material.