This paper reports on the first five years of work in a project to address the need for better organizational processes by (1) developing methodologies and software tools for representing and codifying organizational processes at varying levels of abstraction, and (2) collecting, organizing, and analyzing numerous examples of how different groups and companies perform similar functions. The result of this work is an online "process handbook" which can be used to help people: (1) redesign existing business processes, (2) invent new processes (especially those that take advantage of information technology), and (3) organize and share knowledge about organizational practices. The paper also discusses the theoretical and empirical approach to tasks such as business process redesign and knowledge management, and the key intellectual challenge of representing organizational processes. The paper describes a novel approach to analyzing and representing organizational processes that explicitly represents the similarities (and differences) among a collection of related processes. This approach uses ideas from computer science about inheritance and from coordination theory about managing dependencies. The paper also discusses the use of a process interchange format (PIF) to facilitate the translation of process descriptions between different systems. The paper also includes a case study of the application of the process handbook in a real organization, where it was used to improve the hiring process. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential of the process handbook for future research and development.This paper reports on the first five years of work in a project to address the need for better organizational processes by (1) developing methodologies and software tools for representing and codifying organizational processes at varying levels of abstraction, and (2) collecting, organizing, and analyzing numerous examples of how different groups and companies perform similar functions. The result of this work is an online "process handbook" which can be used to help people: (1) redesign existing business processes, (2) invent new processes (especially those that take advantage of information technology), and (3) organize and share knowledge about organizational practices. The paper also discusses the theoretical and empirical approach to tasks such as business process redesign and knowledge management, and the key intellectual challenge of representing organizational processes. The paper describes a novel approach to analyzing and representing organizational processes that explicitly represents the similarities (and differences) among a collection of related processes. This approach uses ideas from computer science about inheritance and from coordination theory about managing dependencies. The paper also discusses the use of a process interchange format (PIF) to facilitate the translation of process descriptions between different systems. The paper also includes a case study of the application of the process handbook in a real organization, where it was used to improve the hiring process. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential of the process handbook for future research and development.