BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation)

A business process consists of a set of activities that are

performed in coordination in an organizational and technical
environment. These activities jointly realize a business goal.

Business process management includes concepts, methods,

and techniques to support the design, administration,
configuration, enactment, and analysis of business processes.

A business process management system is a generic software

system that is driven by explicit process representations to
coordinate the enactment of business processes.

A business process model consists of a set of activity models

and execution constraints between them.

A business process instance represents a concrete case in the

operational business of a company, consisting of activity
instances.

# Each business process model acts as a blueprint for a set of

business process instances.

# Each activity model acts as a blueprint for a set of activity

instances.
# Process is a repetitive collection of interrelated tasks aimed
at achieving a certain goal.

# Business functions are typically defined by a group of

activities related to a particular skill or goal such (i.e., sales,
finance, manufacturing).

# Process owner is responsible for the entire end-to-end

process across functional departments

# BPM involves a permanent ongoing organizational

commitment to managing the organizations processes.

# The software system is driven by explicit process

representations.

Diagrams, Maps, Models:

# Diagrams depicts the major elements of a process flow, but
omits the minor details which are not necessary for
understanding the overall flow of work.

# Maps:
- More precision than a diagram
- More detail about process and important relationships to
other elements such as performers (actors), events, results.
- Provide a comprehensive view of all the major components
of the process.

# Models:
-Represents the performance of what is being modelled.
-Needs greater precision, data about the process and about
the factors that affect its performance.
- Often done using tools that provide simulation and
reporting capability to analyze and understand the process

# Models are simplified representations that facilitate

understanding of what is being studied and making decisions
about it.

BPMN notations:
• Events: denote something that happens – Classifications:
Catching – triggered by external event or throwing
generating an output.
– Types:
Start Event - acts as a trigger for the process,
End Event - represents the result of a process,
Intermediate Event - represents something that happens
between the start and end events.
• Activities: describe the kind of work that must be done.
– Types:
Task - represents a single unit of work that is not or cannot
be broken down to a further level of business process detail,
Sub-Process - used to hide or reveal additional levels of
business process detail,
Transaction - a form of sub-process in which all contained
activities must be treated as a whole.

• Gateway: determines forking and merging of paths

depending on the conditions expressed

• Flow objects are connected to each other using connecting

objects.
– Types:
Sequence Flow - shows in which order the activities will be
performed,
Message Flow - shows what messages flow across
organizational boundaries,
Association - associate an Artefact to a Flow Object and can
indicate directionality.
• Swim Lanes: visual mechanism of organizing and
categorizing activities, based on cross functional flowcharting
– Types:
Pool - represents major participants in a process and contains
one or more lanes,
Lane - used to organize and categorize activities within a pool
according to function or role.

• Artefacts: used to bring some more information into the

model/diagram.
– Types:
Data Objects - show the data is required or produced in an
activity,
Group - used to group different activities but does not affect
the flow in the diagram,
Annotation - used to provide the model/diagram with
understandable details.
Business Process Lifecycle

1- Design and Analysis: the business process lifecycle is

entered in the Design and Analysis phase, in which surveys
on the business processes and their organizational and
technical environment are conducted.

2- Configuration: the implementation of business process.

transactional properties can also be defined at the business
process level; a subset of the process activities form one
business transaction, so that either all activities in this set are
performed successfully or none is executed, realizing the
atomicity property.

3- Enactment: Once the system configuration phase is

completed, business process instances can be enacted. The
process enactment phase encompasses the actual run time
of the business process.
Process monitoring is an important mechanism for providing
accurate information on the status of business process
instances.

4- Evaluation: The evaluation phase uses information

available to evaluate and improve business process models
and their implementations.
Identifying the quality of business process models and the
adequacy of the execution environment.