--- title: Exploring business processes description: Business processes model how your organization performs work to achieve a business outcome. Use business processes in Enterprise Architecture Workspace to build a process hierarchy and to associate processes with supporting business applications. locale: en-US canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-processes.html release: australia topic_type: concept last_updated: "2026-03-12" reading_time_minutes: 3 breadcrumb: [Exploring the business architecture, Exploring Portfolio list view, Exploring Enterprise Architecture Workspace, Enterprise Architecture Workspace, Enterprise Architecture] --- # Exploring business processes Business processes model how your organization performs work to achieve a business outcome. Use business processes in Enterprise Architecture Workspace to build a process hierarchy and to associate processes with supporting business applications. You can create business processes or modify an existing one to align it with your business requirements. Based on your requirements, model a business process hierarchy by creating parent‑child relationships between business process records using CI relationships. A business process or capability hierarchy is an ordered grouping of business processes in a hierarchical fashion. Business process hierarchies can include multiple levels \(L0, L1, L2, and deeper\). Use CI relationships to create parent‑child relationships between business process records and build the hierarchy over time. ## L0 and L1 business processes L0 signifies the high-level process encompassing all activities associated with that process. For example, in the IT service management business process, the L0 business process encompasses all activities related to managing IT services within the organization. L1 signifies the specific tasks within the L0 business process. For example, within the IT service management business process, incident management is an L1 business process which specifically deals with logging, categorizing, and resolving incidents. L2 \(and deeper\) levels represent more specific sub‑processes within an L1 process. For example, within Incident Management, you can model L2 processes such as Incident Logging and Incident Resolution. ## Business processes in Enterprise Architecture Workspace Use business processes to connect operational workflows to other enterprise architecture artifacts: - Associate business processes with business applications to show which applications support the workflow. - Associate architectural artifacts with business processes to link design decisions to execution. - Add business processes to process maps or diagrams to visualize relationships. - Link business processes to value streams to show how internal workflows support end‑to‑end value delivery. - Associate business processes with the business units that own them. Use business processes to model internal workflows and relate them to supporting applications. Use business capabilities to describe what the organization does. Use value streams to describe end‑to‑end value delivery across functions. A business process is not the same as a business process activity. A business process models the overall workflow and its L0-L2 hierarchy. A business process activity is a separate, standalone entity that represents a discrete unit of work performed by a business actor. For more information, see [Exploring business process activities](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-process-activities.md). **Note:** Before Australia Patch 5, a business process could be associated with only one business unit, using a **Business Unit** field on the form. This field has been removed from the default form view and replaced with the **Related business units** related list, which lets you associate a business process with multiple business units. The Business Unit field still exists on the table — administrators can add it back to the form from Form Layout if needed. Associations that existed before the upgrade are not automatically migrated; you must explicitly add the business unit to the Related business units related list. **Parent Topic:**[Exploring the business architecture](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-architecture.md) **Related topics** [View all business processes](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-view-all-business-processes.md) [Add or edit a business process](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-create-business-process.md) [Manage architectural artifacts of a business process](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-assoicate-artifact-bp.md) [Associate a business process with a value stream stage](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-assoc-bp-with-vs-stage.md) [Add a business unit to a business process](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-add-business-unit-to-business-process.md) [Remove a business unit from a business process](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-portfolio-management/eaw-remove-business-unit-from-business-process.md)