Business Process Model and Notation

Building a business process model, a graphical representation of the process, is an activity that is typically realized as part of a business process change project that aims to make improvements on an existing organizational process. This can happen, for example, as a result of unsatisfactory performance evidence or because changes to the process are required to meet new needs for the organization.

In my professional experience, as business process analyst and project manager of quality process automation projects, it is an activity that I usually conduct in the analysis and design phase for to-be scenario. The process model is a useful tool, on the one hand, to compare myself with the business people of the customer organization and understand the requirements, and, on the other hand, with my colleagues to whom I have to provide the technical/functional specifications to configure the automated solution.

Over the years, there have been several initiatives to propose a standard notation to model business processes, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which I use in my projects, is the most used.

In this article I would like to give you a brief introduction to this notation, but, at the end of the I would suggest some books, free courses and tools that can allow you to deepen the standard, and if you think it is useful, start using it too, in your business process change projects.

A bit of history

Over the years, more initiatives have been taken to set a standard for model business processes. In 2002, a group of software companies and consultants formed the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) with the aim, among others, to create a notation to specify the organization’s business processes: the first version of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) was born. In 2005, BPMI joined the Object Management Group, Inc. (OMG) which is a consortium of suppliers, users and government agencies founded in 1989 to develop standards for the world of object-oriented software. The OMG had previously developed an extension of the UML Activity Diagram to define business processes, but this prefers BPMN as it is considered simpler and more intuitive for all stakeholder, as well as being more useful in the web environment.

At the time of writing this article, the BPMN is at v. 2.02 (December of 2013) and is the most used international standard for business process modeling.

Goal

The main goal of the BPMN is to provide a notation that is understandable by the management of the company, by the business process analyst, who in the analysis phases must develop the models of the processes, from the IT people, who must design and implement the models in software systems and, ultimately, from the operational people who have to manage and monitor the performance of processes in the day-to-day. As you can understand, ultimately, the BPMN wants to create a bridge to cover the gap between the business and IT word. It can be said that the result achieved by the BPMN notation was to put together "the best" of the world related to organizations: Flow Chart, Role Activity Diagram, etc. and “the best” of IT world: Flow Chart, UML Activity Diagram, etc.

The BPMN aims to model only business processes, which means that other models that can also be useful for organizations are out of scope for BPMN. Therefore, the following are not in BPMN scope:

• organizational structures, roles and responsibilities
• functional breakdowns
• data and information models
• business rules
• business strategy models
• business process architecture
• IT architectures

Concepts and basics

BPMN provides a set of graphic elements for creating Business Process Diagrams (BPD) that define the actions, flows, and behaviors of a process in graphical form. In business process management system (BPMS) software, a BPMN diagram can be automatically translated into executable code. The diagrams made in BPMN are easy to read, also because the graphics that make up it are classified into only four main categories:

• Flow Objects: Events, Activities, Gateways
• Connecting Objects (connectors): Sequence Flow, Message Flow, Association
• Swim Lanes (partitions): Pool, Lane
• Artifacts: Data Object, Group, Annotation

Let's present the basic elements of each of the categories, those that make up the core elements of the BPMN, which are sufficient and useful even to business people to model the highest-level business processes in the process hierarchy, but which at the same time allow to model many scenarios at any level of abstraction.

Flow Objects

These are the main elements that describe how the events, activities, and decisions of a process come across a control flow, and consist of three core elements: Events, Activities, and Gateways.

Events

Events represent the interaction between the process and its environment. They represent something that happens in the real world, have a business meaning and do not have a duration (as opposed to the activities we will see after). Events affect the flow of a process and usually have a trigger and an impact. In general, they require or expect an answer. The events are of three types: Start Event, Intermediate Event, End Event.

The Start Event indicates an event that starts a process; in other words, it indicates a real-world occurrence that creates a new instance of the process.

An Intermediate Event is used to indicate an event that happens after a process has started and before it is terminated.

The End Event is used to indicate an event that signals the possible conclusion of a process.

Activity

The Activity represents a work that is carried out during a business process. Activities have a lifespan and employ and produce resources. A task can be atomic or non-atomic (composed): Task or Sub-Process.

A Task is used when the work represented by the task is not decomposed to an additional level of detail. A task is represented generically by a rectangle with rounded corners, but the BPMN provides other graphics (markers) to represent specialized types of tasks:

• Generic Task: is a task that is not necessary specify its type
• Send Task: is a task to send a message to an actor outside the process
• Receive Task: is a task to receive a message from an actor outside the process
• Service Task: is a task that is done automatically, for example by a software system
• User Task: is a typical workflow task where a person performs the task with the assistance of a software application.
• Script Task: is a task executed by a business process engine. The task defines a script that the engine can interpret (e.g. to send an email)

A Sub-Process is a compound activity whose detail can be specified in terms of Activities, Gateways, Event and Sequence Flow. A collapsed Sub-Process is a process whose details are not visible in the diagram. A plus sign, which is centrally placed at the bottom, indicates that the task is a Sub-Process. There are two types of Sub-Processes: Embedded (it is not reusable by other processes) and Independent (a reusable subprocess called also Call Activity)

Sub-Processes are used to make the model easier and thus make it more readable and reduce the probability of error. A practical rule inducted from experience suggests that if a model exceeds 30 tasks, then it is easy for the model to be complicated to read, so try to summarize some parts of the process in Sub-Process.

Sub-Processes are also used when you want to represent the hierarchy of processes in your organization through different models, each with an increasing level of abstraction as you level up.

Gateway

Gateways are used to define workflow controls and how they converge or diverge in a process; in other words, it is a place where a check is needed. BPMN, in addition to the classic diamond graph to indicate an exclusive decision, proposes an extension to define all types of control that can take place during the workflow. Each Gateway type has an internal indicator (marker) to indicate the type of Gateway used.

An Exclusive Gateway is used to create alternate paths in a process flow: only one path can be taken. It is seen as a question that must be answered at a given time in the execution of the process. Each question has an alternative set of answers, and each question has a Condition Expression associated with it:

The Inclusive Gateway is used to create alternate but also parallel paths in a process flow. Unlike the Exclusive Gateway, all Condition Expressions are evaluated, and positive evaluation of one condition does not exclude the evaluation of other Condition Expressions and therefore multiple paths can be traversed at the same time:

A Parallel Gateway creates parallel paths without evaluating a condition: all paths that are outbound from the gateway are traversed at the same time. A Parallel Gateway with multiple inbound paths indicates that these must all be paths before they can continue with the process flow:

Connectig Objects

There are mainly three Connectors types: Sequences, Messages, and Associations.

Sequence Flow

A Sequence Flow is used to indicate the order in which events occur and where tasks are performed in a process.

Message Flow

A Message Flow is used to indicate the flow of a Message between two process participants who are prepared to send and receive them. In BPMN, the Pools (seen in the follow) will represent the participants. Therefore, the Flow Messengers do not have to connect two objects in the same Pool.

Association

An Association is used to associate data, information, or Artifact with a BPMN graphic element. Using an arrow can indicate directionality: the arrow is to the Artifact to indicate an output, it is to the stream to indicate an input; bidirectional binding is used to indicate that both input and output are associated with it. No directionality may be indicated when the Artifact or text is associated with a sequence or message where the direction is already clear.

Swimlane

Swim Lanes are used to indicate the resources and actors involved in the various activities of the process and are of two types: Pool and Lane.

Pool

Pools represent participants in the process and typically correspond to actors from different organizations, the business partners involved in the business process. Participants can be "business role" (e.g.: "seller" and "buyer") but also organizational entities (e.g.: Company, Supplier):

Pool interactions occur via Message Flow. Sequence flows cannot cross the boundaries of a pool. A Pool can have internal details in the form of the process that will be run, or it may not have details (Collapsed Pool), it can be a "black box", in which case it is not relevant to know the details of the process made within that pool.

Lane

A Pool can contain one or more Lanes to assign its activities to a responsible. They often represent roles or departments within an organization (e.g. Manager, Employee, Finance&Control, Commercial). Therefore, if pools often represent resource classes that participate in a process, the Lanes allow them to partition into sub-classes.

Artifact

Artifacts allow you to indicate the business elements, physical or digitized, on which the process works and to give additional information about the process. There are three types of Artifacts in BPMN: Annotation, Data Objects and Groups, but, a set of Vertical Market Artifacts can be developed and used.

Annotation

Text Annotations are a mechanism that allows those who model the process to provide additional information for the benefit of those who will read the diagram. Text Annotations can be connected to a diagram object using an Association:

Data Object

Data Objects are artifacts that show how data and documents are used by the process; in other words, they allow you to specify what data the process requires and/or what it produces. They have no direct influence on the Sequence Flow or Message Flow of the process but only provide information about what the process does. Data objects can be used to define activity inputs and outputs. A Data Object can represent a single object or a collection of objects. A Data Object can have an associated "state" that can be changed or updated during the process:

Group

Groups are artifacts used to highlight certain sections of a diagram without affecting the process workflow. Groups can cross Lane and Pool:

Claim Management Process

The following is an example of a model for a very simple Claim process, drawn with Bizagi Modeler. I believe that even those who do not know BPMN notation find the reading simple and intuitive. Just a couple of observations.

To keep the diagram compact I preferred not to use the Lanes to indicate the actors involved in the process, but, I indicated them in square brackets, in the name of the activity.

For activity name (should it be used Verb-Noun phrase), I preferred to use the state in which the claim is in that activity.

Conclusion

We briefly saw the core elements of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which is now most successful process modeling standard in Business Process Management word, as well as the one most widely supported by software vendors of BPMS systems. As mentioned at the beginning, in this article I had to give only an introduction to the BPMN and its basic elements, which alone are enough to shape many of the organization's business processes in a graphical, simple and intuitive way, both for business people and IT technicians. In addition to the basic elements, the BPMN provides several other graphics to model the most complex realities. In addition, BPMN version 2.0 introduces a mechanism to extend standard elements with additional attributes that allow you to meet specific vertical domain needs while keeping the core part of the BPMN valid.

Note and References

• "Business Process Change" by Paul Harmon is a great book on Business Process Management. It offers an authoritative and complete treatment on BPM. Here you can find an appendix about BPMN too
• "Bpmn Method and Style" by Bruce Silver is the book where you can find everything you need to learn and master the BPMN standard
• The Object Management Group, Inc. (OMG) site where you can find the official specifications and many examples of bpmn diagrams is as follows: http://www.bpmn.org/
• "Process Modeling" is the valid free mooc offered by Bizagi:  http://elearning.bizagi.com/my/modeling.php
• "Business Processes: Modeling, Simulation, Execution" is the free mooc offered by HPI where the week3 lesson is all about BPMN: https://open.hpi.de/courses/bpm2019
• The Master Channel is a site that offers for free, in this "complicated" period, several BPMN courses: https://www.themasterchannel.com/home
• Bizagi Modeler is the application to create models, to simulate, publish and share processes. Free for personal use. It's absolutely complete in all features: https://www.bizagi.com/platform/modeler
• Camunda Modeler, simple, intuitive and the community version is free:  https://camunda.com/products/modeler/

Photo by Tabea Damm on Unsplash