Has an audience member ever interrupted in the middle of a presentation about process analysis to ask, “Can you show us the process models in a simple PowerPoint slide?” – or, ”I don’t want to look at the green and purple boxes, just show me the flow!”

Perhaps you then felt that you had wasted some of your efforts in modelling the process with too much detail or in the wrong way. Embarrassed and demoralised, you must have wondered how else could these models be presented. Well, you are not alone!

This is a common dilemma when there is a need to present process models to a variety of audiences. There is both art and science in presenting the right level of process detail to the right group of stakeholders, especially if they are not familiar with the process modelling language.

Effective presentation is even more critical in larger and complex end-to-end process improvement work and in new automated business model implementations. You may need to use multiple model types to describe the same business processes to various audiences.

Hence, it is very important to understand who the stakeholders are and what they would like to see before your audience with them.

This article proposes an approach to the effective presentation of business process models based on three key elements: understand, organise, and communicate.