Process Architecture Levels

Process architecture is the practice of organizing your organization’s processes into a structured hierarchy so that everyone can find, understand, and relate them to business goals. ProcessMind lets you organize processes into folders, assign them to levels, and navigate by drilling down from the top level to individual activities. You can try it on your own landscape with a free trial.

Understanding the Level Hierarchy

ProcessMind lets you organize processes into levels that mirror how your organization thinks about its process landscape. The levels are configurable by an administrator under the environment’s architecture configuration. By default, ProcessMind ships with a starter set of seven levels, including Enterprise Value Stream, Process, and Subprocess. You can add, rename, or remove levels (for example, Enterprise, Task, Procedure, Work Instruction, or Activity) so the hierarchy matches your own framework.

Each model carries a level badge so you can see at a glance where it fits in the landscape. You can also reorder levels at any time.

Browsing the Architecture

• Use the Process Catalog to explore your hierarchy as a folder tree.
• Drill down from one level to see the models nested underneath it.
• Use search and filters to find processes by name or publish state, and sort by column for level or owner.

Set Up Your Architecture

When you start from an empty catalog, the architecture setup wizard (Build your process architecture) creates the first version of your hierarchy for you. Choose how you want to build it:

• Add processes manually: create processes and folders one by one in the catalog.
• Generate architecture with AI: describe your organization (and optionally upload context documents), and AI drafts a complete process architecture. Review the proposal process by process, uncheck what you don’t need, and apply it to your catalog. AI generation requires the Process Architecture seat.
• Import a catalog: import processes and folders from a CSV file.
• Import processes from BPMN files: each selected .bpmn file becomes a process with its model in your catalog.

After the tree is applied, the wizard can create organization roles for your levels in the same session. You can close the wizard and resume later, or re-run it from the catalog header at any time.

Structuring Your Landscape

1. Create folders for your top-level domains or value streams.
2. Assign each process model to a folder and set its level badge.
3. Keep the hierarchy shallow and consistent: every model should live in exactly one place.
4. Review the hierarchy regularly to spot gaps, duplicates, or orphaned models.

Once your hierarchy is in place, you can assign roles and RACI responsibilities to the people who own each level and document each process in a consistent structure.

From Hierarchy to Value Streams

For an end-to-end view that cuts across your hierarchy, model your top-level domains as value streams and link the underlying processes to them.

Related topics

• Roles & RACI
• Value Stream Mapping
• Process Documentation
• Process Portal