Business Process Management methodology advocates an iterative approach to discover, implement, deploy, and manage a business process for continuous improvement. The first stage of the BPM solution lifecycle is the discovery and document phase. In this phase, business and process implementation requirements are captured and communicated across the organization.

There are four stages of the lifecycle of business process discovery. Each stage requires investment to gather information, assess the process, document the model, and analyze before moving onto the next stage. At each transition within process discovery from process identification to the planning of a new release, there must be ample evidence and a business value proposition to justify the effort to begin the next stage in the lifecycle. Lets look more closely at these stages.