Process modeling has been going though an evolution.  If you haven’t noticed the evolution, you have either been living in a vacuum or you are still using flowcharts in Visio.   Everywhere I turn people are talking about processes and process improvement.  At least this is one good thing to come out of the economic recession.

The other trend we are seeing more of in this decade is the use of more events, and less tasks. A task that says that something happened is not a task at all; it’s an event.   To be a task it has to be something that is performed by a person, system, or process.  One could argue that everything is performed somehow, so everything is a task.  So let me ask you this:  Is it a task for the weather when it rains?  Is it a task for the highway that traffic is backed up?   Is it a task for the stock market when the NASDAQ drops by 100 points?    If I can’t put a performer to the task, it can’t be a task.
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What’s new in BPMN 2.0: Part 5

Continuing coverage of the BPMN 2.0 specification, this post will focus on the new event types.   Prior to 2.0, BPMN had several problems when it came to escalating events and dealing with events in parallel.  Often I would end up using a pattern with multiple loops inside of loops to accomplish seemingly simple activities. Furthermore, it was difficult to distinguish between human centric and system centric activity for a mixed-mode diagram that includes both.

One goal of BPMN is to bring the SOA camp, the business analysts,  and the process modeling communities closer together.  A side effect of this has been that BPMN is very messaging intensive. For complex interactions, multiple pools are used, which requires lots of messaging lines to keep activity in sync between participants .  This is sometimes a problem for people who come from a flowchart/workflow backround using tools such as Visio, which essentially allows you to create a really bad BPMN diagram due to the lack of diagram validation.  Often I see messaging lines within a pool going between lanes, when what was really intended is to do a simple escalation.  Antoher common problem prior to BPMN 2.0 is showing enough detail without having to show the intricate patterns of looping and dealing with multiple events in parallel.

We are starting to see a shift from multiple pools and lanes to more of a style based on a single pool with no lanes, which means less explicit messaging notation. On the other hand, we are starting to see more capability in BPMN to document highly technical processes for the SOA community.

New Event Types

In this post I will cover the new BPMN escalation event and parallel multiple event. Read more »

What’s new in BPMN 2.0, part 4.

BPMN 2.0 adds a lot of new concepts.  Many of these are long overdue to be added to the spec.  Others are a totally new concept.  In this post we are going to take a look at one of the long-overdue fixes to the BPMN specification; the intermediate events on the subprocess border.

In previous versions of BPMN, placing an event on the subprocess border meant that when the event was triggered, the exceptional flow would become active.  Also, this means that normal flow stops.  In the diagram below, subprocess A ceases when the timer event is triggered.  Instead, the “handle timeout” subprocess is active at that point.  In other words, subprocess A has been interrupted.

Intermediate Interrupting Event

There is another use case that BPMN 1.2 did not cover.  What if the timer event isn’t supposed to interrupt subprocess A?   Just to clarify, in the BPMN 2.0 specification, Interrupt means that the parent subprocess will end.  This is similar to a cancel, but cancellation is another concept and another shape entirely.  So it’s called interruption.  There is another use case for non-interrupting events that has long been a challenge prior to 2.0.

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Event Based Gateways

This post is a continuation of the Highlights from BPMN 2.0 series.

At Last!  The long awaited changes to the numerous problems with the event based gateway.   First off, there was only one type of event based gateway in BPMN 1.0 – 1.2, and it is exclusive behavior.  Exclusive event behavior means that only one event can trigger the gateway.  Also, there was only one shape that served a dual role of start and intermediate event, yet the shape did not have any variations as the event shapes do (see Demystifying the Event Based Gateway from my previous post).

First, let’s take another look at the original Event Based Gateway from BPMN 1.0 – 1.2

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BPMN 2.0 (to be released late Q2, 2010) includes some additional artifacts that are quite useful for documentation purposes.   In BPMN 1.2 there was only the data artifact, text annotation, and group shape.  There are now 6 more artifact shapes.    This post outlines the new shapes and my thoughts on what the impact will be to BPMN process modeling.

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The BPMN 2.0 specification adds a number of improvements and fixes to the BPMN 1.2 spec. Up until now I haven’t been watching it closely because there were too many changes going on, and it won’t be until July 2010 before BPMN 2.0 is final and released to the public. Due to my recent introduction and collaboration with one of the coauthors of the spec, Vishal Saxenda, I got an insiders look at what’s changing.

The new specification is over 500 pages long, which is much more than most of us have time to digest.  Furthermore, the specification is heavily laden with XML and references to mapping BPMN to the BPEL runtime. This is quite useful for standardizing BPM systems but might be more technical than the average process modeler wants to hear about.  Over the next few posts on this blog I will be highlighting some of the most important changes, and what it means to you as a process modeler.

In this post I will describe the new BPMN 2.0 task and activity types.

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There are many ways to accomplish loops in the BPMN specification.   Flowcharts only offer one way to cause a loop back, but BPMN offers 4 explicit ways, and potentially dozens of ways to create a loop implicitly.  Often my students ask the question “so, aren’t they all the same thing?”   Technically, yes, and no.   Sorry to say it, but there is no right answer according to the specification.  This is up to you to figure out.   The specification does however offer many options that can be used to express certain situations.  But to a newcomer to BPMN,  the challenge is always which one should you use, when, and why.

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Often I see process models that represent the same basic business concept but are modeled with completely different styles.   Technically the BPMN lane and pool shapes are both a swimlane.  But which one do I use, when, and more importantly – why?

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Of the many BPMN shapes, I seem to get the most questions about the BPMN signal event.    There seems to be 3 use cases that are the most common.   But first let’s take a look at what the OMG BPMN 1.2 specification says about signal event:

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