Hi Barbara.

Your posting touches upon many areas of interest to me. It could easily spawn a flurry of forum topics. I only wish that my response could be more encouraging. I'm obviously only speaking from my limited experience. Still, I hope this doesn't read like a rant!

In my experience, many organizations have not incorporated such specialized roles as 'Process Modeler' into their team structures but rely on the trusty old BA to assume responsiblity for this type of deliverable. That's fine. But more importantly, a process orientation is still rarely taken and, if acknowledged, takes second seat to more 'traditional' SDLC requirements specification (domain modeling, use cases, etc.). The processes, if modeled, are those that fall within organizational or business unit boundaries.

Process Modeling is typically performed using a diagramming tool like Visio using its native stencil set. The choice of stencil is usually up to the BA's aesthetic preferences and stencils are often combined. The concept of a 'process repository' degrages to a folder structure. Folder and document names serve as the taxonomy. Business Rules are embedded within the processes.

I'm finding that the adoption of the UML (activity and class diagrams mainly but also some sequence diagrams) is only just now taking place within the BA teams of some organizations. It's rare to find a BA well-versed in the UML. BPMN is even further away and met with a blank stare when suggested.