A Language for Process Map Design

Organizations are leaning towards becoming more process-oriented in order to better serve their customers. An approach that enables achieving such process orientation is business process management (BPM). In this context business process modeling is used to graphically represent business processes. As a result organizations are faced with large collections of process models. The process models are typically organized in a process architecture which comprises a number of levels. The most top level is commonly the process map where all processes of one organization and the relations between them are depicted in a very abstract manner. Whereas there are well-defined languages for modelling the details of singular processes (e.g. BPMN, EPC), such a language for supporting the design of process maps is still missing. As a result, we are faced with a vast variety of process map designs from practice, as practitioners typically rely on their own creativity when undertaking this task. This study addresses this gap by using various methods to develop a language for process map design which will support practitioners to design their process maps in a standardized manner.