Introduction to Control Flow Patterns and BizAgi

Overview Understanding and modeling business processes

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

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

Swimlanes (Illustration)

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