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An Introduction to
BPMN for Business
People Part 1
Michael Moyal
Solutions Manager - BPM Practice
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Introduction to BPMN
The purpose of this presentation
is to introduce business people to
BPMN, its usages and benefits
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What is BPMN
Business Process Modeling Notation
Graphical notation for drawing business
processes
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 (BPDs)
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Aims
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
To create a common business language
understood by all

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Why use BPMN?
Have become widely accepted
Replaces numerous process modeling
languages, notations and methods
Simple to learn yet powerful enough to
depict the potential complexities of a
business process
Vendor neutral with wide tool support
(over 45 vendors now officially support the
standard)


Why Should You Care?
Processes are at the core of any organisation, yet
they are not always clearly defined, documented
or optimised
The need to bridge the communication gap
between business and IT is stronger then ever
As the rate of change in the business
environment increases and with greater pressure
to become more efficient; organisations must
form a clear view of how their processes operate
BPMN offers a notation that you can use to
document your own processes without ambiguity
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How?
Create business process diagrams (BPDs)
Utilising a defined set of diagram elements
(objects)
Draw each step in the process
Make use of the relevant diagram
elements to document events, activities
and decision points
Show the complete end-to-end process
flow from start to finish
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Flow objects
The flow objects are the three core elements of the notation:





Event - A trigger or a result that happens
during the course of a business process and
which affect the flow of the Process

Activity the work that is performed within a
business process

Gateways - are decisions points that are used
to control how sequence flows interact as they
converge and diverge within a process.
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Connecting objects
A Sequence Flow is used to show the order that activities
will be performed in a Process.
A Message Flow is used to show the flow of messages
between two entities that are prepared to send and
receive them.
An Association is used to associate information and
artifacts with flow objects.

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Pools and Swimlanes
A Pool is a graphical
container for partitioning a
set of activities from other
pools.
A Lane is a sub-
partition within a Pool
They can be used to
represent, for example,
roles, departments,
locations or different
organisations

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Artifacts
Data Objects are not flow objects (i.e.,
connected through Sequence Flow), but they
do provide information about how
documents, data, and other objects are used
and updated within a Process.
Text Annotations are effectively notes that
can be added to a diagram to provide
additional information for the reader
Groups provide a mechanism to visually
organise activities, in addition to swimlanes
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Example
Conclusion
BPMN is an easy to use, well established
method for process discovery and
documentation
Provides the capability to capture and
document your processes within days (with
the right tool/s)
Remember !!!
Carrying out process discovery and
documentation is only the start of the journey
for improvement and change


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enquiries@blue-crow.com

www.blue-crow.com
Thanks for your attention!
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