Business Process Modeling

 

A business model is a framework for creating economic, social, and/or other forms of value. The term business model' is thus used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies.

 

 

BPMN defines a Business Process Diagram (BPD), which is based on a flowcharting technique tailored for creating graphical models of business process operations. It is a notation that is readily understandable by all business users, from the business analysts that create the initial drafts of the processes, to the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that will perform those processes, and finally, to the business people who will manage and monitor those processes.

 

BPMN is a core enabler of a new initiative in the Enterprise Architecture world called Business Process Management (BPM). Business Process Management is concerned with managing change to improve business processes. BPMN is one of the specification that BPMI has developed- the other two are a Business Process Modeling language (BPML) and a Business Process Query Language BPQL BPMN defines a Business Process Diagram (BPD), which is based on a flowcharting technique tailored for creating graphical models of business process operations. A Business Process Model,then, is a network of graphical objects, which are activities (i.e., work) and the flow controls that define their order of performance.

 

The four basic categories of elements in BPD are:

 

• Flow Objects : The three Flow Objects are Event,Activity and Gateway

• Connecting Objects :Connecting Objects are used to connect the Flow Objects together in a diagram to create the basic skeletal structure of a business process.

 Connecting Objects are Sequence Flow,Message Flow and Association.

• Swimlanes : There are 2 objects in Swimlines , Pool and Lane

• Artifacts:The current version of the BPMN specification pre-defines only three types of BPD Artifacts.They are Data Object,Group and Annotation

 

 

Event - An Event is represented by a circle and is something that “happens” during the course of a business process.There are three types of Events, based on when they affect the flow: Start, Intermediate and End
Activity -An Activity is represented by a rounded-corner rectangle.An Activity can be atomic or compound. The types of Activities are: Task and Sub-Process. The Sub-Process is distinguished by a small plus sign in the bottom center of the shape.
Gateway -A Gateway is represented by the familiar diamond shape and is used to control the divergence and convergence of Sequence Flow. Itwill determine traditional decisions, as well as the forking,merging, and joining of paths. Internal Markers willindicate the type of behavior control.
Sequence Flow -A Sequence Flow is represented by a solid line with a solid arrowhead and is used to show the order (the sequence) that activities will be performed in a Process.
Message Flow -A Message Flow is represented by a dashed line with an open arrowhead and is used to show the flow of messages between two separate Process Participants (business entities or business roles)that send and receive them.
Association-An Association is represented by a dotted line with a line arrowhead ( and is used to associate data, text, and other Artifacts with flow objects.Associations are used to show the inputs and outputs ofactivities.
A Pool represents a Participant in a Process. It is also acts as a graphical container for partitioning a set of activities from other Pools web sites
A Lane is a sub-partition within a Pool and will extend the entire length of the Pool, either vertically or horizontally (see the figure to the right). Lanes are used to organize and categorize activities.
Data Objects are a mechanism to show how data is required or produced by activities.They are connected to activities through Associations
A Group is represented by a rounded corner rectangle drawn with a dashed line . The grouping can be used for documentation or analysis purposes, but does not affect the Sequence Flow.
Annotations are a mechanism for a modeler to provide additional text information for the reader of a BPMN Diagram

 

 

BPML defines a formal model for expressing abstract and executable processes that address all aspects of enterprise business processes, including activities of varying complexity, transactions and their compensation, data management, concurrency, exception handling and operational semantics.

 

An activity definition specifies the manner in which a given activity will execute. The behavior is defined by specifying the values of the activity’s attributes. An activity type definition specifies the attributes that are used in the definition of an activity of that type and how the values of these attributes affect the execution of that activity.

 

The syntax for the base type bpml:activity is given as:

<{activity type} name = NCName {other attributes}>

Content: (documentation?, {other element}*) </{activity type}>

 

A simple activity is an activity that cannot be further decomposed. For example, the action activity that performs a single operation, or the assign activity that assigns a new value to a property.A complex activity contains one or more activity sets and directs the execution of activities from one of these activity sets.