Extracting business process decomposition

PurposeThis paper seeks to offer a step‐by‐step methodology to extract and model business processes with a focus on business process decomposition. The main motivation is the lack of repeatable measurable methods and techniques for extracting business process decomposition.Design/methodology/approachA step‐by‐step methodology for extracting business process models is provided. This methodology is called “the V methodology” because of its approach to break down the enterprise through a functional hierarchy and then collecting it up again via its process decomposition. Porter's value chain model is noticed as a powerful tool to complete the roadmap. The paper is designed using sections: benefits and necessities of having such a methodology, terminology, the V methodology, learned lessons and further work.FindingsSuccess stories using the V methodology expressing its impact on quality business process models are mentioned. Experts find it useful to gain unified process models as well as helping them to discover gaps, bottlenecks and redundancies amongst business processes.Research limitations/implicationsIt is too hard to receive reliable information about previous experiences from the working companies in the area.Practical implicationsThe main implications found when using the V methodology are: practiced analysts feel it dangerous to their position, younger analysts use it as the only source of modeling and people find it difficult to apply Porter's model in practice.Originality/valueAlmost all of the previous papers refer to modeling notations when using the term “methodology”. This paper instead describes the process of business process modeling. Another original value of the paper would be using Porter's model to classify the processes within their right process groups.