What is BPMN

What is BPMN?

14-18 minutes

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is visual modeling language for business analysis applications and specifying enterprise process workflows, which is an open standard notation for graphical flowcharts that is used to define business process workflows. It is popular and intuitive graphic that can be easily understand by all business stakeholders, including business users, business analysts, software developers, and data architects.

History of BPMN

BPMN is derived from the synthesis of multiple business modeling notations. Originally published by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) in 2004, BPMN is now being maintained by the OMG since the two organizations merged in 2005. BPMI merged with OMG, the Object Management Group. A BPMN Specification document was released by OMG in February, 2006. Version 2.0 of BPMN was developed in 2010, and the actual version of the specification was released in December 2013. The latest version( BPMN 2.0.2 ) has been formally published by ISO as the 2013 edition standard: ISO/IEC19510 .

Benefits of BPMN

BPMN allows us to capture and document business processes of an organization in a clear and consistent way that ensures relevant stakeholders, such as, process owners and business users are involved in the process. Thus, the team can response to any issues identified in the processes more effectively. BPMN provide comprehensive and yet rich notations that can easily be understood by both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Business process modeling provides important benefits to companies and organizations such as the ones listed below.

An industry standard developed by the OMG consortium, a not-for-profit industry group

Provides businesses with the capability of defining and understanding their procedures through Business Process Diagrams

To provide a standard notation that is readily understandable by all business stakeholders

To bridge the communication gap that frequently occurs between business process design and implementation

Simple to learn yet powerful enough to depict the potential complexities of a business process

The Goal of BPMN

• Technical experts responsible for process implementation
• Business analysts who create and improve the processes
• Managers who monitor and control the processes

Overview of BPMN

Knowing how the business operates is the first and the most critical step of business process improvement. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), provides a graphical representation of business workflows that anyone, from business analyst to stakeholder, can easily understand; aiding in business process analysis and business process improvements.

Any process described with BPMN is represented as a number of steps (activities) that are performed consequently or at the same time according to certain business rules. Take a look at the “Place Order online” process which can be used in an on-line store that place orders on the web.