Fundamentals of Business Process ManagementBusiness Process Modelling with BPMN, Session II By: AmirHossein Aghdassi, Software Designer and Analyst

Part IV Review and more on Resources

Review: what was the story?

• What should we learned:

• Understand and produce basic process models in BPMN:

• Simple activities, events, gateways, data objects, pools, and lanes

• The difference between process model and process instance

• Use data objects to model the information flow between activities and events

• How pools and lanes can be used to model both human and non-human resources that

perform process activities

• Some software tools that supports BPMN

Modelling viewpoints

When?

Control

Which?

Data / Service / Product

What?

Function

Who?Resource / Organisation

Collaboration Diagram

Question Do data objects affect the token

flow?

Question Do we always need to model

data objects?

Collaboration Diagram

Question Black box or white box?

Collaboration Diagram

Any Question?

Expand on activities, events and gateways

• After a short break we will learn:

• How to use activities to model sub-processes

• How to reuse these sub- processes across different processes

• Extend activities to model more sophisticated forms of rework and repetition

End of part IVAny Question?

Further contact and feedback:

amirh.aghdassi@gmail.com

Thank you

Part V Model complex business

processes with BPMN

Review: Is anything wrong?

Process Decomposition

• Process model may be too

large to be understood at once

• Sub-process: a self-contained,

composite activity that can be

broken down into smaller units

of work

• An atomic activity: Task

Collapsed Sub-process

• Collapsed Sub-process: a sub-process which hides its internal steps

• One of the most effective ways of improving a process model’s readability

Hierarchical Decomposition

QuestionWhen should we decompose a

process model into sub-

processes?

Start with a value chain

• Top-level should be simple:

• No gateway

• Show the main phrases of the

process

Purchase Request Approval Purchase

OrderGoods Receipt

Invoice Verification

Purchase Request process

Check purchase request for 1st

approval

Check purchase request for 2nd

approval

approved

Consider re-submission

rejected

rejected

approved

Send approved request to requestor

Purchase Request

Make copy of purchase request

Approved Purchase Request

Forward to purchase department

Purchase Order process

Any Question?

Process Reuse

• Defining the sub-process as a

global process model

• A process model that is not

embedded within any process

model, and as such can be

invoked by other process

models within the same

process model collection

Question Embedded or global sub-process?

Review: Repetition

• Model rework and repetition via the XOR gateways

• Repetition block and loopback branch (The fragment identified by the XOR-join and the XOR-split)

Model repetition using sub-processes

• Replace it with a sub-process

containing the activities in the

repetition block

• Do not forget to put a decision

activity as the last activity inside the

sub-process

Question Loop activity or cycle?

Unstructured Cycle

End of part VAny Question?

Further contact and feedback:

amirh.aghdassi@gmail.com

Thank you

Part VI Parallel and Uncontrolled

Repetition

Parallel Repetition

Execute multiple instances of the same

activity at the same time

Multiple Instance Activity

• A multi-instance activity: An activity (being it a task or a sub-process) that

is executed multiple times concurrently

• Useful when the same activity needs to be executed for multiple entities or

data items

Multi-instance Pool

Uncontrolled Repetition

• One or more activities can be

repeated a number of times,

without a specific order, until a

condition is met.

• An ad-hoc sub-process

End of part VI Have a nice time!

Further contact and feedback:

amirh.aghdassi@gmail.com

Thank you