BPMN or Business Process Model Notation, is a process diagramming language.
BPMN was developed about 10 years ago and it describes, in a picture, the steps in a business process from start to end, an essential starting point whether you are simply documenting the process, analyzing it for possible improvement, or defining business requirements for an IT solution to a process problem.
In 2006, the Business Process Model Notation was adopted as a standard by OMG (www.omg.org).
BPMN is an open industry standard, under the auspices of the Object Management Group. It is not owned by a particular tool or consulting company. A wide variety of tools support it, and the meaning of the business process diagram is independent of the tool used to create it. With BPMN you don’t need to standardize on a single tool for everyone in the organization, since they all share a common process modeling language
BPMN is more popular than its contemporaries-UML, IDEF among others primarily because of ease of use and adaptability. It is more generally accepted as the standard by both the business user and IT.
To business users, a process diagram looked like a swimlane flowchart, widely used by BPM practitioners but lacking precise definition in a specification. BPMN adopted the basic look and feel of a swimlane flowchart, and added to it the precision and expressiveness required by IT. In fact, that precision and expressiveness is sufficient to drive a process automation engine in a BPM Suite (BPMS). The fact that the visual language used by the business to describe a proposed To-Be process is the same as the language used by developers to build that process in a BPMS has opened up a new era of business-empowered process solutions in which business and IT collaborate closely throughout a faster and more agile process improvement cycle.
Unlike flowcharts created in a tool like Visio or Powerpoint, the meaning of each BPMN shape and symbol is quite precise – it’s defined in a specification – and in principle independent of the personal interpretation of the person who drew it. I say “in principle” because it is possible to violate the rules of the BPMN specification, just like it is possible to write an English sentence that violates accepted rules of grammar or spelling. Nothing drastic happens in that case, but the diagram’s effectiveness at communication is decreased.
The investment in process discovery and analysis is far more than the cost of a tool or the time required to draw the diagrams.
It involves hundreds of man-hours of meetings, information gathering from stakeholders, workshops, and presentations to management. The process diagram is a distillation of all that time and effort. If it cannot be shared across the whole project team – business and IT – or to other project teams across the enterprise, now or in the future, you are throwing away much of that investment. BPMN provides a way to share it, without requiring everyone to standardize on a single tool
For more on BPMN: http://www.bpmn.org/
BPMN was developed about 10 years ago and it describes, in a picture, the steps in a business process from start to end, an essential starting point whether you are simply documenting the process, analyzing it for possible improvement, or defining business requirements for an IT solution to a process problem.
In 2006, the Business Process Model Notation was adopted as a standard by OMG (www.omg.org).
BPMN is an open industry standard, under the auspices of the Object Management Group. It is not owned by a particular tool or consulting company. A wide variety of tools support it, and the meaning of the business process diagram is independent of the tool used to create it. With BPMN you don’t need to standardize on a single tool for everyone in the organization, since they all share a common process modeling language
BPMN is more popular than its contemporaries-UML, IDEF among others primarily because of ease of use and adaptability. It is more generally accepted as the standard by both the business user and IT.
To business users, a process diagram looked like a swimlane flowchart, widely used by BPM practitioners but lacking precise definition in a specification. BPMN adopted the basic look and feel of a swimlane flowchart, and added to it the precision and expressiveness required by IT. In fact, that precision and expressiveness is sufficient to drive a process automation engine in a BPM Suite (BPMS). The fact that the visual language used by the business to describe a proposed To-Be process is the same as the language used by developers to build that process in a BPMS has opened up a new era of business-empowered process solutions in which business and IT collaborate closely throughout a faster and more agile process improvement cycle.
Unlike flowcharts created in a tool like Visio or Powerpoint, the meaning of each BPMN shape and symbol is quite precise – it’s defined in a specification – and in principle independent of the personal interpretation of the person who drew it. I say “in principle” because it is possible to violate the rules of the BPMN specification, just like it is possible to write an English sentence that violates accepted rules of grammar or spelling. Nothing drastic happens in that case, but the diagram’s effectiveness at communication is decreased.
The investment in process discovery and analysis is far more than the cost of a tool or the time required to draw the diagrams.
It involves hundreds of man-hours of meetings, information gathering from stakeholders, workshops, and presentations to management. The process diagram is a distillation of all that time and effort. If it cannot be shared across the whole project team – business and IT – or to other project teams across the enterprise, now or in the future, you are throwing away much of that investment. BPMN provides a way to share it, without requiring everyone to standardize on a single tool
For more on BPMN: http://www.bpmn.org/
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