BPMN 2.0

The ultimate guide to BPMN 2.0: all elements, benefits, and use cases

Feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of your business processes? Managing multiple tasks, tracking various steps, and ensuring smooth operations can be challenging. This is where Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 comes in. BPMN 2.0 is a powerful tool that helps you visualize, understand, and streamline your business process management. By mapping out your workflows, you can identify inefficiencies, optimize processes, and improve overall efficiency.

What is BPMN 2.0?

Think of BPMN 2.0 as a universal language for mapping business processes. This is precisely what it offers. Created and overseen by the Object Management Group (OMG), it presents a standardized notation for crafting clear, straightforward flowcharts of your business operations. The true advantage of BPMN 2.0 is its vendor-neutral nature, enabling anyone, regardless of the software used, to comprehend and interpret a BPMN 2.0 diagram.

Our SaaS process insights product incorporates BPMN 2.0 to merge process mining, design, and simulation, enhancing business process management. With this software, you can monitor, evaluate, and improve your workflows, leading to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity.

Why Use BPMN 2.0?

The benefits of using BPMN 2.0 in process business management are numerous. Here are just a few:

• Improved Communication and Collaboration: BPMN 2.0 establishes a common language among business analysts, developers, managers, and all stakeholders involved in a process. This enhances communication and teamwork, leading to more efficient management.
• Enhanced Process Clarity: Visualizing processes through BPMN 2.0 diagrams helps quickly identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and improvement opportunities. This clarity enables process optimization for peak efficiency.
• Streamlined Documentation and Analysis: BPMN 2.0 diagrams serve as a central source of truth for your business processes. This eliminates the need for lengthy text-based documentation and simplifies process analysis.
• Increased Efficiency and Reduced Errors: Well-defined processes translate into fewer errors and greater efficiency. BPMN 2.0 assists in achieving this by offering a structured framework for process design and implementation.

Understanding the Building Blocks of BPMN 2.0 Diagrams

Consider a BPMN 2.0 diagram as your business process blueprint, constructed with basic elements:

BPMN utilizes these four element types to map a business process:

• Flow Objects: Events, Gateways, and Activities
• Connecting Objects: Sequence Flow, Message Flow, and Associations
• Swimlanes: Pools and Lanes
• Artifacts: Data Objects, Groups, and Annotations

Let’s delve into the individual elements and their roles.

Events

Events are critical triggers that start, modify, or complete a business process. These are depicted by circles with symbols inside, each symbol corresponding to a specific event type:

• A start event is shown as a circle with a thin border.
• An end event is shown as a circle with a thick border.
• An intermediate event is shown as a circle with a double-edged border.

Start Event

BPMN diagrams can incorporate multiple start events. Only events linked to a relevant start event activate. For instance, consider an order placement process reliant on receipt mode—website, phone, or in-person submission. The corresponding start event will initiate the process.

End Event

An end event marks the process conclusion, occurring after all steps in the diagram are completed. Processes may yield multiple outcomes, such as success or failure; thus, multiple end events can be used to illustrate various results. For instance, a successfully processed order concludes with a successful event, whereas incorrect card details causing a transaction failure result in an unsuccessful order.

This example illustrates diverse outcomes within end event categories. Multiple end events require distinct naming to avoid confusion.

Positioned between the start and end points, an intermediate event captures or dispatches (“throws”) information. Its function, whether to capture or throw, is discernible by examining the diagram’s connecting elements.

In the diagram, message reception initiates the process. Subsequent tasks verify item stock, followed by dispatching a confirmation link via an intermediate event once availability is confirmed. Order processing advances only after the confirmation link receipt, culminating in the order’s completion (end event).

Intermediate events trigger various symbols influencing event flow. These triggers include messages, timers, errors, compensations, conditional flows, signals, multiple events, escalations, and parallel processes, each representing specific interactions or conditions.

Activities

In BPMN, activities represent the specific tasks that need to be completed within the process, such as verifying an order or shipping a product. These activities can be further detailed to indicate repetitive actions like loops.

Tasks

Tasks are categorized by participant involvement and the objects they utilize, consume, or generate in the process.

Generic Task

A foundational task type in your process model, generic tasks can be quickly deployed and later refined into specific subtypes.

Manual Task

Executed by individuals, manual tasks do not interact directly with a process engine. Examples include organizing documents, resolving invoice issues by phone, and customer engagements at service counters.

User Task

User tasks are performed by individuals and are specifically assigned by a process engine. This engine allocates tasks directly into each user’s task queue. Upon completion, the engine requires acknowledgment, often through data entry or clicking a button. User tasks are integral to Human Workflow Management systems.

Examples include invoice reviews, vacation approvals, and support ticket handling.

Receive Task

Receive tasks model the receipt of a message as a distinct task within the process flow. This task type serves as an alternative to the message-catching event, represented in BPMN 2.0 by the symbol of an empty envelope.

Receive Task (Instantiating)

Indicated by a small event icon on the top left, instantiating receive tasks initiate processes, substituting message start events.

Send Task

Executed by the process engine, send tasks invoke web services asynchronously via message queues, handling technical tasks.

Script Task

Script tasks are executed directly within the process engine and must be written in a language that the engine can interpret.

Service Task

Service tasks refer to operations performed by software applications, automatically executed as part of the process workflow. Typically, BPMN presupposes these functions are delivered via web services, although alternative implementations are possible. These tasks play a crucial role in process-oriented integration, aligning closely with the principles of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Business Rule Task

Introduced in BPMN 2.0, business rule tasks apply specific rules within a process.

Other Activity Types

Dive into crucial activity types like collapsed sub-processes, multi-instance tasks, and ad-hoc sub-tasks for enhanced process clarity.

Collapsed Sub-Process

A collapsed sub-process encapsulates a series of tasks within the larger process for clarity and simplification. This sub-process represents the collective steps as a single entity, detailed separately in an expanded format in another section of the diagram.

Ad-hoc Sub-Process

Ad-hoc sub-processes are characterized by their flexible execution order, lacking a predetermined sequence. This flexibility allows tasks within these sub-processes to be performed in any order or even skipped, depending on the specific requirements.

Loop Task

Loop tasks are designed to repeat in a cycle, similar to a “do while” loop in programming. The task or sub-activities are executed once before the exit conditions are evaluated. If the condition is not met, the activity is repeated. Once the condition is satisfied, the process moves on to the subsequent activities.

Multi-instance

A multi-instance activity indicates that the task repeats for a specific number of objects or items, with the repetition frequency determined by the preset count of items. Multi-instance activities function similarly to a for-each loop, where a task or subprocess is carried out for every item in a collection. Each item is processed in its own instance, and the activity is considered finished only after all instances have been completed. Vertical lines indicate that items in the multi-instance loop are processed concurrently, meaning all items are executed in parallel. On the other hand, horizontal lines suggest that items are processed one after another, indicating sequential execution.

Compensation

Compensation tasks are designed to handle compensation events within a workflow. These tasks are always connected to the process diagram through associations, not sequence flows.

Compensation Combined

Compensation tasks can be combined with loops and multiple instances. In these scenarios, both the compensation marker and the loop/multiple instance marker are placed side-by-side. Additionally, compensation tasks can be integrated with any previously introduced task type. This flexibility allows for various scenarios, such as a manual compensation task that repeats until successful or one that executes repeatedly in parallel whenever possible.

Gateways

Gateways are crucial decision-making nodes within a process, directing the flow based on specific conditions or events. Represented by diamond shapes in BPMN diagrams, these gateways can take various forms, including inclusive, exclusive, parallel, and complex types. They may also operate based on data or event triggers.

Exclusive Gateway

Inclusive Gateway

Parallel Gateway

Event Gateway

Exclusive Gateway

Depicted as a diamond, either with an “X” inside or without it, the exclusive gateway directs the process flow to only one of the possible output paths.

Inclusive Gateway

Characterized by a diamond containing a circle, the inclusive gateway allows the process flow to diverge into multiple branches simultaneously. It requires all initiated paths to be completed before they can merge at a subsequent gateway.

Parallel Gateway

Represented by a diamond with a plus (”+”) sign inside, the parallel gateway activates all outgoing paths at once when dividing the flow. For converging paths, it ensures all incoming branches are completed before proceeding with the onward flow.

Event Gateway

The event gateway is depicted as a diamond with a double-edged circle leading to a hexagon inside, representing an event-based decision point. This gateway directs the workflow based on the first occurring event or task, such as a message reception or similar trigger.

Connecting Objects

Sequence Flow

Message Flow

Association

These elements illustrate the crucial associations in a process. Recognize the three types of connectors: Sequence Flow, Message Flow, and Association.

Sequence Flow

This represents the order in which tasks should be executed, depicted as a straight line ending with an arrowhead. It may indicate either a conditional or a default pathway.

Message Flow

The message flow connector illustrates communication between different pools or across organizational boundaries, such as departments. It is not intended for linking events or activities within the same pool. This connector is represented by a dashed line, starting with a circle and ending with an open arrowhead.

Association

Dotted lines represent connections between activities and artifacts, adding clarity without affecting process sequence.

Pools and Swimlanes

Pools are key components that represent major participant groups in a process, such as companies or departments. Swimlanes within these pools help to organize activities based on roles or responsibilities, ensuring clarity in the workflow. A swimlane could exemplify a system, expanding beyond merely departments or roles.

Collapsed Pool

In BPMN 2.0, a collapsed pool denotes an external participant or entity, with its internal processes and activities kept hidden. A pool typically signifies a participant (like an organization, department, or system) in the process.

• Collapsed Pool: The internal flow of tasks and activities within this pool remains undisplayed, with only the pool’s outline visible. This comes in handy when there’s no need to show internal participant details, but their involvement still requires acknowledgment.

• Use Case: A collapsed pool is beneficial for illustrating interactions between multiple participants without necessitating the details of internal processes for some in your diagram.

In essence, a collapsed pool in BPMN 2.0 is advantageous when the focus is on interactions between participants rather than the intricacies of tasks within each participant.

Artifacts

Artifacts enrich BPMN diagrams by providing essential details, divided into data objects, groups, and annotations, thus enhancing participant comprehension of the process.

Data Objects

These elements are crucial for defining the data required in a process activity. A data store acts as a crucial repository to gather or deposit information, guaranteeing data preservation once the process concludes. Additionally, data collection is divided into Data Input and Data Output, detailing data needs and documenting generated data respectively.

Group

This serves as a logical categorization of activities, enhancing diagram clarity and comprehension without altering its flow.

Text Annotation

Text annotations provide additional explanations or insights about specific parts of the diagram, helping to enhance understanding of its components.

Constructing a BPMN Diagram

The foundational principle of BPMN revolves around the concept of a process. To effectively draft a BPMN diagram, it is best to initially grasp the process in basic steps and then progressively incorporate additional details to flesh out the process.

Here’s a beginner-friendly, step-by-step guide to constructing a BPMN diagram:

1. Identify Essential Steps: Begin by pinpointing the core steps, along with the start and end points. For instance, in a given diagram, when an order is placed, crucial actions such as receiving the order, verifying credit, fulfilling the order, and issuing an invoice should be identified.

2. Explore Alternative Paths: Next, investigate any potential alternative routes that may arise, leading to different outcomes like order completion. This involves integrating various gateways to facilitate alternative processes and directions.

3. Implement Pools and Swimlanes: This phase involves recognizing the key stakeholders, departments, and roles within each entity, and organizing the activities into respective pools and swimlanes to delineate responsibilities clearly.

4. Facilitate Message Communication: Introduce any necessary message exchanges between different pools or within the same pool to ensure smooth information flow.

5. Add Artifacts and Details: Introduce necessary artifacts, including documents and actor roles. Unpack complex tasks into subprocesses.

6. Address Errors: Finally, identify and incorporate mechanisms for managing any potential errors that may occur as part of the process.

Summary

• Events: Indicate process start and end points or significant actions (e.g., an order placement or payment receipt).
• Activities: Represent specific tasks within the process (e.g., verifying orders, shipping products).
• Gateways: Decision points directing process flow based on criteria (e.g., order amount checks).
• Sequence Flows: Arrows showing the order of activities.
• Data Objects: Information used or generated, like customer data or order details.

By understanding these core elements and how they interact with each other, you can create BPMN 2.0 diagrams that effectively capture the essence of your business processes.

BPMN 2.0 is a transformational tool for managing business processes. It offers a standardized, visual modeling approach that enhances communication, clarity, and operational efficiency.

We encourage you to explore BPMN 2.0 further and see how it can benefit your organization. There are many resources available online, including the official BPMN website (https://www.bpmn.org/), to help you get started.

ProcessMind integrates process mining, design, and simulation to refine business process management. Leverage our software for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing workflows, driving significant efficiency and productivity gains.

BPMN 2.0 Business Process Model and Notation

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