Back of the envelop calculation

Most of you would have heard about "Back of the envelope calculation", which stands for what is a rough estimate of a certain thing. It can be the time a certain task will take or how many people or other resources will be needed to accomplish something. We do many kinds of estimation in our daily life both in professional and personal life. For example, how many years I should work and at what level so that I can get my retirement.  Unfortunately, that never happens. If you really want to retire it's today or you will be made to retire for some other reason.

Business Process Analysis Template

Business Process Analysis

Client Name                :

Client Address            :

Project Start Date      :

Project End Date       :

Client Contacts          :      

Sl. No.	Name	Email	Phone No.

Modeling Business Processes

Once the business processes are identified, the next step is to detail the business processes. The detailing of business processes helps in getting better insight into how the things work in the organization. The techniques of modeling employed can be used in understanding the current business processes and can also be used for depicting the changed/reengineered processes.

There are numerous techniques to depict business processes and tools supporting them. However one key characteristic that I always look for is the simplicity. Simplicity in depicting and simplicity in understanding. In that respect I feel simple flowcharts are good enough to cover the requirement. The elements of flowchart are as follows:

• Circle - Start/End of process.
• Rectangle - Step in a process.
• Rhombus - Decision points
• Arrow - Direction of the flow of process.

For the sake of completeness we will discuss one of the modeling techniques that are used:

BPMN

BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling Notation. It is a standard modeling technique adopted by many tools vendor now. It has elaborate notations to handle quite complex business processes.

Also have a look at website of BPMN

More on Business Process Analysis

Identifying Business Processes

Business Processes are inherent to any organization. The processes define the dynamic nature of organization. Also they draw the formal communication channels in the organization. If one has to understand how organizations work, one has to follow the processes that work inside the organization. The business process analysis template can be downloaded form ((Business Process Analysis)) Index page.

Methodology of Identifying Processes

Identifying business processes is more of an art than science. There are certain techniques that might help in unraveling the mystery but be ready for surprises. Have certain attitudinal factors up in your

Business Process Analysis

Before we talk about Business Process, let's just talk about Processes. In simple terms, processes are a set of steps which convert a set of inputs to a set of outputs or change the state of certain thing. For example, take the process of preparing tea. The inputs to this process are Tea leaves, Milk, Sugar and Water and if you so desire than a piece of ginger. Put everything in a pot and let it boil.(This is the way lazy people like me make tea). The output of this process is the prepared tea. The same things apply to Business environments. The process in business help in converting raw material to finished product. For that one has to procure raw material, do quality tests and do some conversion processes on them before the final product is ready. The final product is send to customer through a sales process.

Processes are so inherent to any organization or institution that they are a major driver in defining the character of an organization. It defines the dynamic nature of an organization. There are so many