Introduction
Business process management notation (BPMN) is the latest standard for modeling business processes and Web services. The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) (www.bpmi.org) was established to develop, support, and encourage the use of BPMN. The BPMI Notation Working Group (BPMN-WG) worked for over two years to develop BPMN before its 1.0 release in May 2004. The primary goal of the BPMN initiative was to develop a standard notation methodology, understandable to all business people, throughout the process of defining, designing, deploying, executing, and optimizing processes. BPMI also created BPMN to ensure that the actual extensible markup language (XML) used in execution languages such as business process execution language (BPEL), business process execution language for Web services (BPEL4WS), and business process modeling language (BPML) can be represented within the notation of the processes.
The BPMN-WG, a member of the BPMI organization, created BPMN to provide businesses with the ability to define and understand their own internal processes, and to communicate these processes and procedures in a standard manner. This notation standard increases the understanding of business transactions within the organization, and ensures that organizations will be able to communicate internally. Furthermore, it will also enable integration with third parties that the organizations deal with, to enhance business-to-business (B2B) processes.
BPMN enables better use of business process management (BPM) by standardizing the notation method used to assist in process automation. BPM refers to the systems and methods used to define, monitor, report, and continually improve processes aiming at meeting customer requirements. BPM includes the development and automation of new and integrated business processes to assist in real-time business visibility and decision-making. It includes workflow design and modeling, and automated process integration and management. Even though organizations have been modeling and managing processes for years, these activities have often fallen short, due to a lack of standards, control, and guidance during the design and execution phase of the processes. BPMN provides these standards for business process modeling and business execution languages in order to resolve the shortcomings.
BPMN can't solve all problems as it is purely a notation method that vendors and organizations can use. Software vendors still need to integrate the execution engine in their solutions for an organization to be able to automate processes instead of just modeling the processes.
What is BPMN?
BPMN is a specification for a business process diagram (BPD). BPD is used to model business process operations graphically, in a readable and understandable way for non-technical users, even for complex processes. BPDs can map processes to business execution languages in order to automate these processes. Within the BPD, the user creates the business process model, which is represented by a network of graphical objects. These objects display activities and work flow in the order of execution. The user simply models the events that occur from the start of a process, all the way through to the end result, with the notations defined by BPMN standards.
Understanding the Principles of BPMN
To be able to understand the principle of BPMN, organizations should know what makes a business process diagram BPMN-compliant. What are the basic elements used within BPMN? These graphical objects enable easy development of business diagrams and flow charts. Flowchart diagrams, such as those created in Microsoft Visio, often have similar icons. The shapes of these elements have been chosen by the BPMI-WG because they are recognizable to business users; this enables business users to understand the entire process.
Within BPMN, different elements are categorized, providing an organized overview of the basic elements available. Within these categories, there are variations of elements, identifying more complex requirements (which does not change the look and feel of the diagrams). These categories include flow objects, connecting objects, swimlanes, and artifacts.
Flow Objects
Process modelers use flow objects when defining business processes. Within a BPD, BPMN defines three main elements: events, activities, and gateways. With these three main elements only, business users can fully define processes.
Events indicate something that happens within the process, and that influences the process (the event being a trigger or result of an action). BPMN uses circles to notate events. There are three types of events: starting, intermediate, and end events. Specifying triggers within the events puts constraints on the processes, and these constraints can be messages, timers, links, rules, exceptions, or even multiple triggers.
Activities are represented by a rectangle, and indicate work performed. An activity can be a business process, sub-process, or task. They all have the same shape—it is only the order in which they appear (or a small indication within the shape, such as a plus sign [+]) that differentiates the activity as a process, sub-process, or task. In this way, different activities are easily recognizable within the diagram, and the diagram will be understandable to the business analysts.
Gateways are indicated by a diamond-shaped element representing decisions, mergers forks, or joins within the diagram. Gateways can be seen as questions asked within the process flow (with alternative answers), through which the process is pushed through the organization. There are numerous examples of gateway decisions:
* exclusive decisions (in logic, the exclusive or [XOR]), used to model data- or event-based decisions. Based on the condition of the activity, the flow continues towards one option or the other.
* exclusive merges (XOR), indicating that one of the inputs provided will become the output of the gateway
* inclusive or decisions, meaning that one or more outputs can result (at least one). There is always a default output indicated.
* inclusive or merges, where the first of any incoming inputs is processed
* complex decisions—based on the decision, the expression triggers a specific outgoing flow
* complex merges, where the complex conditions within the expression determine when the process moves forward (based on incoming events)
* parallel forking (and), where all sequence flows are executed based on this gateway
* parallel joining (and), where all incoming events must be completed prior to the execution of the next event, based on this gateway
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/business-process-management-notations-within-business-process-management-18796/
Business process management notation (BPMN) is the latest standard for modeling business processes and Web services. The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) (www.bpmi.org) was established to develop, support, and encourage the use of BPMN. The BPMI Notation Working Group (BPMN-WG) worked for over two years to develop BPMN before its 1.0 release in May 2004. The primary goal of the BPMN initiative was to develop a standard notation methodology, understandable to all business people, throughout the process of defining, designing, deploying, executing, and optimizing processes. BPMI also created BPMN to ensure that the actual extensible markup language (XML) used in execution languages such as business process execution language (BPEL), business process execution language for Web services (BPEL4WS), and business process modeling language (BPML) can be represented within the notation of the processes.
The BPMN-WG, a member of the BPMI organization, created BPMN to provide businesses with the ability to define and understand their own internal processes, and to communicate these processes and procedures in a standard manner. This notation standard increases the understanding of business transactions within the organization, and ensures that organizations will be able to communicate internally. Furthermore, it will also enable integration with third parties that the organizations deal with, to enhance business-to-business (B2B) processes.
BPMN enables better use of business process management (BPM) by standardizing the notation method used to assist in process automation. BPM refers to the systems and methods used to define, monitor, report, and continually improve processes aiming at meeting customer requirements. BPM includes the development and automation of new and integrated business processes to assist in real-time business visibility and decision-making. It includes workflow design and modeling, and automated process integration and management. Even though organizations have been modeling and managing processes for years, these activities have often fallen short, due to a lack of standards, control, and guidance during the design and execution phase of the processes. BPMN provides these standards for business process modeling and business execution languages in order to resolve the shortcomings.
BPMN can't solve all problems as it is purely a notation method that vendors and organizations can use. Software vendors still need to integrate the execution engine in their solutions for an organization to be able to automate processes instead of just modeling the processes.
What is BPMN?
BPMN is a specification for a business process diagram (BPD). BPD is used to model business process operations graphically, in a readable and understandable way for non-technical users, even for complex processes. BPDs can map processes to business execution languages in order to automate these processes. Within the BPD, the user creates the business process model, which is represented by a network of graphical objects. These objects display activities and work flow in the order of execution. The user simply models the events that occur from the start of a process, all the way through to the end result, with the notations defined by BPMN standards.
Understanding the Principles of BPMN
To be able to understand the principle of BPMN, organizations should know what makes a business process diagram BPMN-compliant. What are the basic elements used within BPMN? These graphical objects enable easy development of business diagrams and flow charts. Flowchart diagrams, such as those created in Microsoft Visio, often have similar icons. The shapes of these elements have been chosen by the BPMI-WG because they are recognizable to business users; this enables business users to understand the entire process.
Within BPMN, different elements are categorized, providing an organized overview of the basic elements available. Within these categories, there are variations of elements, identifying more complex requirements (which does not change the look and feel of the diagrams). These categories include flow objects, connecting objects, swimlanes, and artifacts.
Flow Objects
Process modelers use flow objects when defining business processes. Within a BPD, BPMN defines three main elements: events, activities, and gateways. With these three main elements only, business users can fully define processes.
Events indicate something that happens within the process, and that influences the process (the event being a trigger or result of an action). BPMN uses circles to notate events. There are three types of events: starting, intermediate, and end events. Specifying triggers within the events puts constraints on the processes, and these constraints can be messages, timers, links, rules, exceptions, or even multiple triggers.
Activities are represented by a rectangle, and indicate work performed. An activity can be a business process, sub-process, or task. They all have the same shape—it is only the order in which they appear (or a small indication within the shape, such as a plus sign [+]) that differentiates the activity as a process, sub-process, or task. In this way, different activities are easily recognizable within the diagram, and the diagram will be understandable to the business analysts.
Gateways are indicated by a diamond-shaped element representing decisions, mergers forks, or joins within the diagram. Gateways can be seen as questions asked within the process flow (with alternative answers), through which the process is pushed through the organization. There are numerous examples of gateway decisions:
* exclusive decisions (in logic, the exclusive or [XOR]), used to model data- or event-based decisions. Based on the condition of the activity, the flow continues towards one option or the other.
* exclusive merges (XOR), indicating that one of the inputs provided will become the output of the gateway
* inclusive or decisions, meaning that one or more outputs can result (at least one). There is always a default output indicated.
* inclusive or merges, where the first of any incoming inputs is processed
* complex decisions—based on the decision, the expression triggers a specific outgoing flow
* complex merges, where the complex conditions within the expression determine when the process moves forward (based on incoming events)
* parallel forking (and), where all sequence flows are executed based on this gateway
* parallel joining (and), where all incoming events must be completed prior to the execution of the next event, based on this gateway
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/business-process-management-notations-within-business-process-management-18796/
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