1. Introduction to Control Flow Patterns and BizAgi

2. Overview
Understanding and modeling business processes

3. Business Process Management
Definition:
A management discipline which evaluates, develops, and optimizes business processes
Compared to a project, projects are one-time. Processes are many-times (repeatable)

4. BPMN - Introduction
The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) a generalized, yet formal language used to describe business processes
It’s actually just an XML dialect
The standard is defined by the Object Management Group
OMG has defined many standards
The current version of the specification is 2.0

5. BPEL - Introduction
The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is an executable language to specify process actions using Web Services
Companies including IBM and Oracle have BPEL implementations

6. BPMN - History Version 1 was introduced May, 2004
It was adopted as an OMG standard in February 2006
Version 2.0 was formally released in 2010
There are over 40 BPMN implementations

7. BPMN Basics
BPMN is a formal language that can be represented by a set of graphical elements
You will use graphical tools, rather than working with the BPMN XML itself
The diagrams look similar to flowcharts because they are based on flowcharts

8. BPMN Element Categories
Flow Objects consist of events, activities, and gateways
Connecting Objects describe the sequence of flow objects
Swimlanes depict the participants in the process
Artifacts

9. Flow Objects Events Activities Gateways
They are things that happen and usually have a cause (trigger) or impact (result)
Activities
Activities are things we do
Gateways
Gateways depict decisions

10. Flow Objects (Events)
Events are categorized as Start, Intermediate, and End events
Events are represented as open circles
Event
Symbol
Start
Intermediate
End

11. Flow Objects (Activities)
Activities are represented as rounded rectangles
Activities are of two types
Activity
Symbol
Task
Sub process

12. Flow Objects (Gateways)
Gateways depict decisions (forking and joining of paths)
Gateways are represented as the familiar diamond shape
As you will see next time, there are different types of gateways

13. Connecting Objects
These connect flow objects together and are of three types
Sequence Flow
Represented with a solid line
Shows the order in which activities occur
Message Flow
Represented with a dashed line and open arrowhead
Shows messages between different participants
Association
Represented with a dotted line
Associate external data / text …

14. Swimlanes Swimlanes appear in a pool
A pool represents a participant in a process
Flow objects and connecting objects appear in swimlanes in a pool
A swimlane is used to categorize activities in a pool
Messages are used to communicate between swimlanes in a pool

15. Swimlanes (Illustration)

16. Artifacts Artifacts are used to extend the basic BPMN notation
Artifacts are of three types
Data objects depict the data required by an activity
A Group is used for documentation purposes to group related activities
Annotations just contain additional text
Note that BizAgi supports additional artifact types