BPMN: the Business Process Modeling Notation Pocket Handbook

Introduction

This pocket handbook is written for individuals involved in the modeling stage of a Business Process Management (BPM) initiative.

Since its inception, the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) has been adopted and integrated by most of the BPM market players (Intalio, IBM, BEA, Savvion, Sun, etc.) in their modeling tools. This guide intends to help the modelers in their daily job of capturing the Business Processes within their organization.

This BPMN pocket handbook is based on the OMG BPMN specification version 1.0. It describes the Business Process Modeling and its standard notation within six chapters:

Business Process Management

Business Process Modeling

Business Process Modeling Notation

Workflow Patterns

Samples

The key differences between BPMN specification version 1.0 and version 1.1

The complete BPMN specification is available at the OMG’s Internet address:

http://www.omg.org.

Chapter 1

Business Process Management

The Business Process Management aims to consider the current enterprise organization as a set of coordinated and managed activities executed in a determined order to reach common objectives defined at the enterprise’s strategy level.

A Business Process is a set of coordinated activities executed by the organizational units of the enterprise. These activities are either manual or automated tasks.

The Business Process Management initiative requires at least three stages:

The analysis and design of Business Processes in order to reach the strategic objectives.

The implementation and execution of Business Processes.

The monitoring of Business Processes and the definition of correctives actions.

As illustrated in the Figure 1.1, these stages complete a Business Process Management life cycle.

Figure 1.1 – Business Process Management life cycle

The Business Processes analysis and design stage requires an important amount of human interactions and communication. The Business Analyst has to understand and report their perceptions of the reality of the organization’s situation to the involved stakeholders. There are several format representations to report Business Process information. The graphical one is the most practical, easiest and fastest way to maintain, understand and communicate the information. The Business Process Modeling aims to produce Business Process models in a business-oriented details level.

Chapter 2

Business Process Modeling

The first stage of the BPM life cycle focuses on gathering the organization’s information and its way of running and producing benefits. The amount of collected information may introduce some complexity depending on the number of stakeholders, hierarchical levels, tasks, interactions and messages exchanged. The Business Process modeling will significantly reduce that complexity.

2.1 Business models

A model is an abstraction of reality. It functions, in a dedicated way, to reduce the natural complexity of the reality it represents. A Business Process model identifies the essential elements that drive the business, such as the endogenous and exogenous factors acting upon the organization’s way of working, and eventually, on the enterprise’s result.

A model may have many representations as worksheet or graphical diagrams. It is important to distinguish the difference between a model and a diagram. A model captures sufficient information about a studied phenomenon to simulate the reality. A diagram is a graphical representation of the phenomenon to help the understanding and the communication of the reality’s perspectives. The Process of cartography groups together all Business Process diagrams organized by levels of information.

A Business Process model may illustrate various aspects of the organization:

Finance

Resources usage

Information technology architecture

Organization

Production

Accounting

Marketing and sales

Activities localization

Etc.

According to the customer’s needs, the Business Analyst may favor one of these aspects in their drafted models. Then, each stage of the BPM lifecycle will use these models as a reference for all measures and improvement actions. The models may also be used to build some theoretical alternative improvement scenarios evaluated within a simulation mechanism provided by the modeling tool.

The Enterprise’s referential is built on the top of these models and may be used to automatically produce the organization’s procedures in conformance with a quality standard like the ISO9000.

There are many ways to represent the same information. A dedicated perspective represents one particular view of the organization according to its objectives and usages. The choice of available diagrams depends on some