This book has been put together to help you explore Business Process concepts and to understand what BPM really is all about.

This, The Complete Business Process Handbook, provides a comprehensive body of knowledge written as a practical guide for you – by the authorities that have shaped the way we think and work with processes today. You hold the first of three books in the series in your hand.

The first volume endows the reader with a deep insight into the nature of business process concepts and how to work with them. From BPM Ontology, semantics, and BPM Portfolio management, to the BPM Life Cycle, it provides a unique foundation within this body of knowledge.

The second volume bridges theory and application of BPM in an advanced modelling context by addressing the subject of extended BPM.

The third volume explores a comprehensive collection of real-world BPM lessons learned, best practices, and leading practices examples from award-winning industry leaders and innovators.

We wish you well on your Business Process journey and that is why we also have invested years putting this Handbook series together. To share the knowledge, templates, concepts, best and leading practices. To ensure high quality and standards, we have worked and coordinated with standard development organizations like ISO- International Organization for Standardization, OMG- Object Management Group, IEEE- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, NATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, CSIR- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, NIST- National Institute of Standards and Technology, MITRE- a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, CEN- European Committee for Standardization, The Security Forum, W3C- World Wide Web Consortium, and LEADing Practice.

We have also identified and worked with leading organizations and with their process experts/architects, and have described their practices. Among them are Lego, Maersk Shipping, Carlsberg, FLSmidth, the US Government, Airfrance, KLM, German Government, SaxoBank, Novozymes, the Canadian Government, Dutch Railway, Australian Government and many many more. At last but not least the Global University Alliance consisting of over 400 universities, lecturers and researchers,have analyzed and examined what works, again and again (best practice), and what are the unique practices applied by these leading organizations (leading practices). They then identified common and repeatable patterns which provide the basis for the BPM Ontology, BPM Semantics, the BPM standards, and the process templates found in this book.

We hope you enjoy reading it – as much as we did writing it.