A business process is an algorithm, a set of procedures or various methodologies applied in a specific organization when producing certain products and completing specific projects. The production of the business processes and the success of an organization are interrelated. Any single process can be considered as a micro-process. Therefore, the generation of a perfect business process for software engineering according to one of the existing processologies is the most important task of an organization that wants to be successful in its endeavor.
There are many tools and techniques that can be used to create a well-defined business process modeling. However, before using any of them, it is essential to know and understand their functional role and how they interrelate with one another. When the working document of a team in software development is produced, all the teams should work together in formulating the document. The final document can be considered as the conceptual map of the entire process that involves the sequence of activities and their interactions.
As far as business processes are concerned, there are two main categories – functional and ontological. The former is concerned with rules and algorithms and how these play an important role in defining business processes. These rules define the rules that govern how various activities are performed within the application. For instance, if a project involves a need to store large amount of information, a database must be in place to store such information. The same goes for if a certain piece of information is required to be updated continuously, then it would be wise to have a collection of documents, each of which has the required updates as the content. These rules can be implemented through a formal process, formalized in an operational format or through an ontological analysis.
An example of an ontological language is Guizzardi, which is a subset of the language of Six Sigma and a sister language of German. It is used primarily in the areas of software engineering and application domains. It was developed by Joachim Smolker and Michael Schmitz because they wanted to create a better tool to identify problems. Their ideas were later taken and transformed into the discipline of structural programming.
A Meta-model is an important tool in the domain of business processes since it defines the relationship between technical systems and organisational elements. It can be considered as a blueprint or a map that shows how different processes interact and integrate with one another. The mapping usually relies on a formal specification that uses meta-data to define the relationships among the technical and organisational elements. The resulting set of business processes typically comes under a service or a product specification and thus forms an essential building block for the design of a robust system.
The formal specification of these interactions often relies on the use of meta-models. In addition, there are many secondary studies that describe the use of such models in various domains such as education and training, manufacturing and healthcare. However, according to Smolker and Schmitz, these models are usually directly applied in the field of organisational behaviour.