BPMN

Introduction

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a standardized graphical notation for drawing business processes in a workflow. BPMN was developed by Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), and is now being maintained by the Object Management Group since the two organizations merged in 2005. The intent was to identify the best practices of existing approaches and to combine them into a new, generally accepted language.

Diagramme in der BPMN heißen Business Process Diagram (BPD).

A goal for the development of BPMN is that the notation be simple and adoptable by business analysts. Also, there is a potentially conflicting requirement that BPMN provide the power to depict complex business processes and map to BPM execution languages. To help understand how BPMN can manage both requirements, the list of BPMN graphic elements is presented in two groups. First, there is the list of core elements that will support the requirement of a simple notation. Second, there is the entire list of elements, including the core elements, which will help support requirement of a powerful notation to handle more advanced modeling situations.

Versions

• 1.0 2006
  • Die BPMN wurde 2002 durch Stephen A. White, Mitarbeiter von IBM, erarbeitet und durch die Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) veröffentlicht.
• 1.1 see here for changes to 1.0
  • signal event
  • multiple instance marker not a pause symbol anymore
  • optical difference between throwing and catching events
  • event bases gateway and complex gateway => no star, but pentagon

Missing Functionalities

The modeling of the following will not be a part of BPMN:

• Organizational structures and resources
• Functional breakdowns
• Data and information models
• Strategy
• Business Rules

Notation

There are for categories:

• Swimlanes
  • Pools
  • Lanes
• Flow Objects
  • events
  • activities
  • gateways
• Connecting Objects
  • sequence flow
  • message flow
  • association

• Artifacts
  • data objects
  • groups
  • annotations

Swimlanes

Pools

Participants (Organisationseinheiten) werden durch Pools dargestellt. Die Aktivitätenabfolge kann eine Poolgrenze nicht überschreiten, sondern nur innerhalb des Pools modelliert werden. Die Pools interagieren über den Austausch von Nachrichten.

Pools können entlang ihrer Ausdehnung wiederum in Lanes unterteilt werden, wobei ein Pool mindestens eine Lane enthalten muss. Die Frage, ob Pool oder Lane scheint nicht eindeutig zu beantworten sein. Kriterien könnten sein:

• ist Prozessinformation z.B. Status notwendig, dann Lanes
• ist Änderbarkeit oder Transparenz notwendig, dann Pool
• Prozess- und Bearbeitungsübergänge, dann Pool

Lanes

Eine Lane repräsentiert jeweils eine ausführende Einheit (Rolle, Funktion, Position oder Anwendungssystem).

Flow Objects

Events

There are start, intermediate and end events. Intermediate can be split in catching und throwing. Start events are always catching, end events are always throwing. Intermediate events at an activity borders are catching events which trigger the cancellation of the activity.

Gateways

• Gateways can have multiple outgoing paths

Questions

• send messages asynchron
• event symbol waiting
• end signal whole process or just the path
• mehrere end events in subprocesses

Resources

• Short, good Introduction C:\Uwes\Documents\Software_Development\Modeling\Business Process Modeling\Introduction_to_BPMN.pdf
• Poster mit Elementen C:\Uwes\Documents\Software_Development\Modeling\Business Process Modeling\BPMN1_1_Poster_EN.pdf
• BPMN Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Modeling_Notation Wikipedia