Message is another fundamental BPMN concept that is not well explained in the spec. Section 8.3.11 defines a message as "the content of a communication between two Participants [in a collaboration]". As explained last time, "Participants" here means the process on one end and some entity external to the process on the other end. The message is just the content of the communication, i.e. the information communicated. The communication itself is a message flow, a dashed connector in the diagram.
In my recent post about what is a message, I omitted one important aspect: the addressee. Unlike its close cousin signal, a message definitely has one! But once again, the BPMN spec does not explain what the addressee of a message means. The closest it gets is to say that the target of a message flow may only be an activity, Message event, or participant (black-box pool). But this utterly fails to explain exactly who or what is the intended recipient of the message.
We still have space available in our upcoming BPMessentials BPMN Method and Style live-online class December 3-5 from 11am-4pm ET/5pm-10pm CET each day. As a bonus, students will get free use of my new bpmnPRO eLearning app, perfect preparation for our certification exam. The training includes 60-day use of Process Modeler for Visio, an addin to Visio 2007/2010/2013 supporting Method and Style validation and many other great features. It also includes post-class certification that demonstrates mastery of the course material.
I received an email today from a reader asking: "If you have multiple call activities that occur within a process pool, is there any reason you can't create another pool for Call Activities and use that to group the call activities / processes, other than the fact that a sequence flow connection cannot be used?" Again, I think this goes back to the issue of what is a process in BPMN.
Join me and Gero Decker of Signavio on January 30 for a webcast on how to maximize the value of your BPM investment with a well-prepared team. Many people mistakenly think the "expensive" part of BPM is the software technology. It's not. The expensive part is the hundreds of man-hours spent in information-gathering, modeling, analysis, and redesign. All those SME meetings and workshops, process map revisions, and document reviews! Yes, it can be a lot.
Over the years I have gotten requests for a class that goes beyond the basics of my BPMessentials BPMN Method and Style training. OK, we're going to do it! It will be in June, probably replacing my regular live-online class. It will only be available to those who have received the BPMN Method and Style certification, or who have completed Level 10 of my bpmnPRO gamified eLearning app, within the last year.
If you’re interested in the technology side of BPM, there’s an upcoming event you won’t want to miss. It’s called bpmNEXT, and it runs from March 25-27 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, a stone’s throw from Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula. I'm hosting it together with Nathaniel Palmer of BPM.com. This is the second annual bpmNEXT. Last year’s event got rave reviews, both for the quality of the presentations and the social interaction.
It would be unfair to say there was absolutely nothing on BPM at IBM's InterConnect conference, which took place this week in Las Vegas... but it would not be far from the truth. InterConnect is the supposed successor to IBM's annual Impact middleware event where "Smarter Process" - IBM's term for BPM and decision management - has always played a large role. I say "supposed" because the new mega-event, triple the size of Impact and split between 2 hotels a mile apart, was such a logistical debacle that I seriously doubt they will try it this way again.
IBM's presentation at bpmNEXT of their implementation of case management inside of BPMN (and their subsequent launch of same at Impact) inspired Paul Harmon to start a lively thread on BPTrends on whether BPMN and CMMN should be merged. To me the answer is an obvious "yes," but I doubt it will happen anytime soon. Most of the sentiment on BPTrends is either against or (more often) completely beside the point.
One of the reasons that BPMN so quickly displaced BPEL in the BPM space is it had a graphical notation that exactly mirrored the semantic elements. What you see is what you get. So whenBPMN 2.0 changed the acronym to Business Process Model and Notation, I stubbornly refused to acknowledge the "and". For me it was all about the notation. The whole basis of Method and Style was making the process logic crystal clear from the diagram, so if some behavior was not captured in the notation, it didn't count.
