What is BPMN?

By Tim Ackroyd on

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is a graphical representation language for specifying business processes in a visual and standardized manner. BPMN provides a set of graphical elements and symbols that allow users to create diagrams to represent various aspects of business processes, including their activities, flows, events, gateways, and artifacts.

So why ask this question today? One answer may be, "How are we going to reference our Business Processes so that others understand them?".

While BPMN was not released until around 2004, we in business, were drawing (modeling, diagraming) our business processes for decades before. However, during the computing boom of the 80's and internet boom of the 90's, business were not aligned on how to convey their business processes, methods, and procedures.

While I was using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to draw, or draft, my design visions, no one was really using computing capabilities to draw/draft their business processes. Like any new idea, many in the industry popped up to sell there approaches and wares. And thus, the battles begin.

BPMI (Business Process Management Initiative) was formed in August 2000. It was a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the standardization of business process management (BPM) practices and technologies. BPMI played a significant role in the development and promotion of BPM standards, including BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation), BPML (Business Process Modeling Language), and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).

Before the establishment of BPMI (Business Process Management Initiative) in 2000, there wasn't a single dedicated organization focused specifically on standardizing business process management practices and technologies. Sure, there were many that started groups, consortia, and standards bodies, such as:

  • Object Management Group (OMG), established in 1989, is an international consortium that develops and maintains computer industry specifications. While not solely dedicated to BPM, OMG has been involved in defining standards related to modeling languages, middleware, and other technologies relevant to business process management.
  • Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), founded in 1993, focused on standardizing workflow technology and terminology. While its primary focus was on workflow automation, its work laid the foundation for later BPM standardization efforts.
  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, and others, developed proprietary process modeling languages and methodologies to support their software products. While not standardized across the industry, these languages and methodologies influenced later BPM standards.

There were also various industry-specific groups and consortia whom also played roles in standardizing processes within their respective domains. For example, organizations in healthcare, finance, and telecommunications developed standards specific to their industries' processes. And there were Academic institutions and research organizations conducted studies and developed methodologies for business process management. While these efforts didn't lead to formal standards, they contributed to the understanding and advancement of BPM concepts and practices.

As OMG picked up UML, and UML 2.x provided extensibility for others to extend the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to objectives such as BPMN.

Now with an understand of what BPMN is, we can now provide content and context in how to use BPMN for any "Process Modeling". Both UML and BPMN provide a means to extend any vision to deliver reality. Now the hype around low-code, no-code, and AI-Driven/Generated models takes off. Now we can let our artificial intelligence extend our intelligence to create 3D models and print them for immediate release and use.

Happy Modeling!!

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