Business process modelling within the cycle of continuous improvement

Business Process Modelling is a much-researched field as it concerns the need to analyse and improve business process. The topic of BPM is particularly timing given the need for clarifying process structures and their improvements in the context of SOA, the service oriented architecture. However not much emphasis has been placed on the relationships among BPM methodologies, techniques and tools. In this work we propose a framework in which these three BPM elements are positioned within the cyclical process of continuous improvement. This framework suggests the adoption of different BPM techniques depending on the objective to be reached: the IT industry has developed flexible and dynamic tools for process modelling called “Business Process Management Suites” (BPMs), they are composed of different tools and adopt different methodologies and techniques for supporting all the phases of the continuous improvement.2008-1