Business Process Analysis

The purpose of any system at any organization is to support the functions of the organization - or what it does. Depending on the complexity of an organization, this can be a very complex process. For example - a College (like the one you are taking this course at) will have many business departments, such as Human Resources, Facilities Management, etc... in addition to the departments that support the primary mission of the organization (education). Each of these department will have a way of doing their business. Business process analysis (which is a subset of process analysis) is the process of documenting these processes.

Flowcharts

A simple method of documenting business processes that most readers will be familiar with are flowcharts.  Another method is workflow diagrams. The process of creating this documentation often requires interviewing people familiar with the processes that also have the expertise to create the documentation. For complex business processes Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) is very useful and provides a common standard.

Resources

An excellent article on business process analysis can be found here - http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/how-to-analyze-a-business-process/ 

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