In the past year the "architects" seem to have discovered BPMN. That has been good for the training business, as architects tend to mobilize their organizations on a larger scale than individual project teams do. But I have also found that, despite their fascination with metamodels interconnecting all sorts of information about how the business works, architects tend to have a nebulous - and often incorrect - understanding of the most fundamental BPM concepts, like "
I'm always prattling on about "method and style" in BPMN modeling, and most folks probably don't know what I'm talking about. My goal is maximizing shared understanding of the BPMN diagram, so it is clear and complete to anyone looking at it, even if the reader is unfamiliar with the process or the modeler's terminology. That requires going beyond the requirements spelled out in the BPMN spec to a set of modeling conventions aimed at reducing the need for prior familiarity with the process in order to understand the diagram.
Last summer I posted on the challenge of achieving process model interchange via the BPMN 2.0 standard. In the half year since then, vendor progress toward that goal has been about zero. It seems that vendors, in particular the ones that drove the standard, don't really care about this most fundamental user expectation of any standard. Ah well, no surprise there... But in the past couple weeks, some encouraging developments. Activiti and BonitaSoft - both are open source startups with a BPMN 2.
With the recent launch of Blueworks Live, IBM has posted an updated version of a set of training videos called Process Mapping 101. Together with colleague Shelley Sweet of I4 Process, I created the original set for Lombardi back in 2008 , and the new version updates it to Blueworks Live. This one doesn't focus so much on proper BPMN method and style (although I had to sneak in a little at the end), but rather how to get started using process modeling: how to organize the project, the roles involved in the core process improvement team, and the steps along the way.
A few updates on my Method and Style validation tools... The one that works on the BPMN 2.0 export from itp commerce requires Service Release 5 of their tool. My apologies to those who tried to get it to work with SR4. The good news is that SR5 beta is available from the training area of bpmessentials.com. The GA SR5 should be out soon. The one that works from Visio 2010 continues to be an interesting ride.
On the BPMessentials website we are getting ready for the launch of version 5.0 of the BPMN training. The online/on-demand version, normally $730, will be offered for a special price of $495 for 30 days, until April 18. As always, it includes post-class certification and 60-day license to the itp-commerce Process Modeler for Visio tool. On April 19-21 I will be offering a virtual classroom on the new training - i.
The whole reason for BPMN's existence is to provide a notation that is outwardly familiar to flowcharters but has precise semantics and rules as demanded by analysts, architects, and developers. Nevertheless, the BPMN 2.0 spec fails to offer a business-understandable definition of its most basic concepts... starting with "process". What does BPMN mean by a process, anyway? It doesn't mean the same thing many long-time flowcharters think it means, as evidenced in a recent comment thread here.
Probably no aspect of BPM has underperformed versus expectations more than simulation. It should be a valuable tool that is commonly used in the course of process analysis... but it's just not. I've been thinking about why that is, and what it would take to make simulation useful in actual practice. It comes down to two basic things: better tools, and better-defined methodologies for deriving useful results from those tools. I haven't tried every simulation tool out there, so there may be some that do what I ask already.
The most basic user expectation for any language "standard" is interoperability between tools. BPMN 1.x, however, never provided a standard interchange format. For years, WfMC filled that gap with XPDL, an XML format originally developed for interchanging process models between proprietary workflow tools. With each new version of the BPMN spec, Robert Shapiro and, more recently, Denis Gagne, added XPDL support for BPMN elements added or changed. But without a side agreement between tool A and tool B, model interchange between them was essentially impossible.
I have been working on rounding out the BPMN Interoperability (BPMN-I) spec and tool in the area of data flow, and I am puzzled by a fundamental concept where the BPMN 2.0 spec and non-normative "BPMN by Example" documents disagree. I wrote to the experts on the BPMN 2.0 committee but have not heard back, so let me just put it out there and maybe BPMS Watch readers will help sort it out.
