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
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
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