Modeling consistency and standards

- Have you ever tried taking a different way home only to find that you run into delays that you didn't expect? The same is true when you try to maintain consistency in modeling. Using standard is a great way to achieve the safest and fastest way home. There are a number of internationally recognized modeling standards that your organization may wish to align with. The two most commonly used are UML, Unified Modeling Language, and BPMN, Business Process Modeling Notation. Both of these standards explain how you define process levels, grouping of processes, labeling standards, and annotations. Every organization is different so be sure you check with your organization before starting any modeling activities. Consistency and simplicity are the keys to ensuring effective capture, analysis, and presentation of your efforts. Business process modeling should leverage a consistent modeling approach and symbol set that enables an easy to read picture of the work that is being performed and the workflow between the functional areas performing them. It also helps us to better understand the process in achieving the outcome and identify the additional information that is needed, together laying the foundation for other models which will offer additional details and document important aspects of the areas being analyzed. And finally to represent the current state and potentially define the future state to enable the gaps to be easily compared in a consistent format. There are many tools and techniques that can be used to capture the information you need for your business process diagrams. These all vary depending on what stage you're at in your documentation, which diagram you're developing, and who is your audience. There also needs to be a level of consistency in the approach to creating effective process models. A few of these techniques include training your process modelers in the standards and formats which have been agreed and understood by many across the organization, explain process modeling to the business attendees so they too understand the purpose and benefits of each of the models used and more importantly when to use them. Check to see if there have been any earlier work performed in the area you are modeling. Why repeat work if it's already exists? And start with the known and then iteratively add detail as they come to hand. This is a great way to ensure owners of the process share their perception of reality, which is not always the way the business is designed to perform. When you come to documenting your diagrams, there are a number of readily available software applications that can support this kind of mapping. The most common or professionally preferred is Microsoft Visio. This tool is perfect for cross-functional flow and flow chart process maps. However, if you're creating context diagrams or functional flow diagrams, presentation software is just as good. So before you start out on your next process modeling journey, leverage your organization's standards and practices to help avoid those wrong turns and pitfalls and find the most efficient path to your front door.