In order that business processes can be improved they must first be illustrated. The hardest task in business process mapping

Business Process Mapping

Business process mapping refers to activities involved in defining exactly what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a process should be completed and how the success of a business process can be determined. Once this is done, there can be no uncertainty as to the...

 is getting everyone to agree what the process looks like. The starting point is an illustration of the process. The production of a process illustration is an iterative activity. The more widely circulated the draft illustrations then the more accurate the final, first off, illustration.

A form of business process illustration is the flow-chart. Formalised methods such as UML

Unified Modeling Language

Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...

are also commonly used for this purpose.