The Process Knowledge Initiative (PKI) is a non-profit collaborative industry and academic initiative established for the sole purpose of creating an open source body of knowledge on process management - the PKBoK.

History, Goals and Current Status

The PKI was inspired by the paper "Professionalizing BPM" (PDF download) by Wasana Bandara of Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Paul Harmon of Business Process Trends (BPTrends) and Michael Rosemann of QUT, presented at the 8th International Conference on Business Process Management in 2010. At that conference, BPTrends, QUT, the International Association of Business Analysts (IIBA), the Object Management Group (OMG) and Sandy Kemsley of Kemsley Design met and formed the PKI. A position paper for the initiative, "A Proposal for an Open, Comprehensive Process Body of Knowledge" (PDF download) was also published at that time.

Our goal was to create a common, open source, process body of knowledge (PKBoK) that would support the standardization of business process terms and concepts. We created a wiki, with a basic structure and overview and invited the business process community at large to join us in populating and extending the basic structure of the PKBoK.

In the winter of 2011-12, the core team met to derive a high level structure for the PKBoK and consolidate the current contributions. Now available on the PKBoK wiki, this captures the core business process concerns at a high level and derives high level categories that can be extended further to incorporate more detail.

Contribute Your Expertise

We are looking for business process community members who are interested in participating in the PKBoK creation effort. Specifically, we need advocates, content contributors, community reviewers, and media sponsors. We encourage the business process community to comment on the overall structure and to join us in extending the PKBoK model by adding new high-level categories, adding intermediary categories, or choosing an area and drilling down into specific activities and techniques.  The basic structure allows contributors to enter multiple, parallel activities and techniques in areas where there is more than one way to accomplish a specific goal. We hope that the current version provides a framework for gathering a wide variety of process activities and techniques from a wide variety of sources.

Visit the PKBoK Wiki to sign up as a contributor.

Sponsor the Process Knowledge Initiative

We are seeking the financial support of a small number of companies that share our vision and enthusiasm for an open, robust and community-endorsed process knowledge base. In exchange for your support, you will receive a generous package of marketing benefits, such as exposure on popular business process professional web sites, newsletter advertisements and Process Knowledge Initiative press releases.

To discuss the Sponsorship Program, please contact Celia Wolf.