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Menu News & Events   BPM Notation October 29th 2007 The October BPTrends FORUM Melbourne Chapter Meeting focused on BPM Notation. Participants enjoyed an informative and engaging presentation by Mark Jeynes of IBM Australia. Mark took us through an Introduction to BPMN. The session prompted some thoughts for me around the value of BPMN and so here is a quick summary. Summary of BPMN Elements BPMN is a focused summary of process mapping symbols and techniques. It structures the symbol set into: Activities: [rounded boxes] Allowing for looping and various forms of sub-process representation. Events: [circles] There are nine event types across each of the Start, Intermediate and End Events. Gateways: [diamonds] Decisions based on data, events and rules. Connections: [arrows] Sequence, Message and Association flows. Artifacts: various forms of annotation to aid description of process maps. Swimlanes: Pools and Lanes to show organisational roles across a process map. Key Strengths The adoption of a mapping and modeling standard amongst the business and IT communities will assist in their communication and translation of business requirements into IT specifications. BPMN is simple enough to grasp by a wide audience, comprehensive enough to accommodate more complex process scenarios, and detailed enough to create a bridge from business-oriented modeling to the IT-oriented; ultimately allowing for BPMS implementation. *A note on labeling Process Flows [connections] One of the disciplines of process mapping that I have adopted over the years is to always label process flows. As any definition of a process includes the transforming of a set of inputs into a set of specific outputs; I have always felt that process diagrams with unlabelled flows were incomplete. In addition, having labeled process flows, you invariably get a better understanding of the process being mapped. Labeling flows on an already agreed to process diagram very often results in the diagram being redrawn due to the better understanding of it. Labelling a flow gives better definition to the processes that preceed and succeed it. Doing so also goes some way toward assisting the IT implementation of the processes if required. BPMN provides for labelling flows but does not require it - I highly recommend it! Links Read more about BPMN at www.bpmn.org

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