BPMN Business Process Modeling Notation

1. SYSC 4805/6 - Winter 2009 Group 6 Syed Atif Ali (100661113) Trevor Reid (100659294) Rahul Rohra (100670552) Linda Hillis (100666520) BPMNBusiness Process Modeling Notation

2. Introduction to BPMN Graphical Elements Diagram views with BPMN Evaluation Conclusion Agenda

3. A set of related tasks or activities which produce a specific service or product for a customer or group of customers The field of Business Process Management (BPM) attempts to optimize business processes Business ProcessES

4. BPM Life-Cycle

5. Business Process Diagram (BPD) Business Process Visual ARCHITECT 2.0 User's Guide [online] Last Accessed March 20 2009, Available at URL: http://ds80-237-184-67.dedicated.hosteurope.de/media/documents/bpva20ug/html/Ch06_Business_Process_Diagram_Samples/Ch06_Business_Process_Diagram_Samples.html

6. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) • Defines a standard way of representing business processes in Business Process Diagrams (BPD) • Goals: • Standard graphical notation • Intuitive and understandable • Bridge the gap between business analysts and developers BPMN

7. Purpose: • Symbolic • Instant recognition • Differentiate • Four categories: • Flow Objects • Connecting Objects • Swimlanes • Artifacts GRAPHICAL eLEMENTS

8. These are the core elements of a BPD. • Three types: • Event • Activity • Gateway Flow Objects

9. What is an event? • Represented by a circle. • Three different types: • Start Event: • Intermediate Event: • End Event: • Can have a trigger or a result. • Used to start, interrupt or end a flow. Flow ObjectsEvent

10. What is an activity? • Represented by a rounded edge rectangle. • Two different types: • Task: • Sub-Process: • Sub-Process can be included by other processes. Flow ObjectsACTIVITY

11. What is a gateway? Helps diverge or converge the sequence flow. Represented by a diamond. Branching. Forking. Merging. Joining of paths. Flow ObjectsGateway

12. Helps connect the flow objects. • Three types: • Sequence Flow • Depicts the order of execution of the flow objects. • Message Flow • Depicts the flow of messages between two process participants. • Associations • Associates data, text and artifacts with flow objects. • Used to show inputs and outputs of activities. Connecting objects

13. Illustrates different functional capabilities or responsibilities. Two types: swimlanes • Pool: • Depicts different business entities/participants. • Sequence flow cannot cross the boundary of the pool. • Message flow used for communication with another pool. • Lanes: • Depicts closely related but distinct participants. • Sequence flow can cross over lane boundary. • Message flow cannot be used between two lanes. Name Name Name Name

14. Help specify details. • Do not alter sequence flow. • Modelers can create their own to add more details about how the process is performed. • Three pre-defined types are: • Data Objects • Show how data is required or produced by activities. • Group • Grouping for better analysis/documention. • Annotations artifacts Annotation provides extra information. Analogous to comments.

15. Additional details can be added to core elements. Adds higher level of precision to the model. Example of internal markers to the events. Internal markers

16. Internal business processes • Focus on the point of view of a single business organization. • Defines activities that are not visible to the public • Can be developed in parallel with other business elements Views of BPMN

17. Collaborative B2B Processes • Interaction between two or more business entities only • Defines interactions that are public for each participant • Shows less internal detail of the entities Views of BPMN

18. Collaborative B2B Processes

19. SubProcessEXAmple

20. A bridge from the business process to a technical executable BPMN includes a partial mapping to Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Changes in the BPMN model do not update in the BPEL code Mapping BPMN

22. UML Activity Diagrams similar to BPMN • Different approaches: • UML: system view, object-oriented approach • BPMN: customer view, process-oriented approach • BPMN geared towards business analysts: • BPMN constructs are simplified • UML notation too bloated When to use bpmn

23. A good use of bpmn

24. A bad use of bpmn

25. BPMN does not allow differentiation of multiple elements • Many ASPs involved in the bidding • But which ASPs placed bids and which did not? • Cannot identify winning ASP, cannot assign task! • BPMN lacks reference passing • TaskPlanner cannot know which ASP completed a task • It cannot even know if the task was completed But why is it a bad use?

26. No concept of process roles • Cannot assign people responsibilities • Difficult to define executions • Think processor deployment functionality in RoseRT • Semantic bloat • Many variations of constructs defined, specifically to map to executable models • Business analysts only use some constructs Other Disadvantages of bpmn

27. No standardized storage format • Cannot exchange models between different vendor tools • Format called XPDL working to solve this problem • BPMN has not formalized execution semantics • e.g., how is exception handling done? • Many tools disagree with each other • Work on BPMN meta-model aims to improve this Future directions of bpmn

28. Alternative development paradigm • Allows process-modeling for business analysts • User-centric approach rather than a system-centric approach • Eases understanding and communication of business processes within and across organisations • Cannot be applied in all scenarios Conclusion