Business Process Modeling Notation

By Stephen White

August 23, 2004

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Often hampered by the fragmentation of divergent notations and applications, the business process management industry has long been in need of a strongly supported process modeling notation to reduce the confusion among system users. With this in mind, the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) introduced the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) on May 4, 2004. The specification is designed to promote improved communication and interoperability within the business process management community.

This is primarily done with a graphical notation called a Business Process Diagram (BPD), which is used to express business processes. While creating a level of standardization at the human level, the BPD also provides business process management by both technical and business means, offering a notation that is intuitive to business users yet also representative of complex process semantics. Through this system, BPMN creates a simple means of communicating process information to other business users, process implementers, customers and suppliers.

What is BPMN?

Standardization of BPMN allows for interoperation of business process models at the human level, rather than the software engine level. By providing a BPD created for use by the people who design and manage business processes, BPMN gives businesses the capability to understand internal business procedures in a graphical context. Furthermore, BPMN provides a formal mapping to an execution language of business process management systems. Thus, BPMN provides a standard visualization mechanism for business processes defined in an execution language, giving organizations the ability to communicate these procedures in a standard manner.

BPMN is designed to ensure that XML languages like BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) can be visualized with a business-oriented notation. BPMN will also allow executable BPEL4WS to be generated from models.

BPMN is intended to make business processes readily understandable to all business users, from business analysts creating initial drafts of processes, to technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that performs said processes, to the business people responsible for managing and monitoring those processes.

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