Business Process Engineering
Week 4
Business Process Modelling & Notation
1. First Steps with BPMN
2. Branching and Merging
3. Exclusive Decisions
Process Modelling
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Business Process Modelling & Notation
Process modelling helps to better understand the process and to
identify and prevent issues
Thorough understanding is the prerequisite to conduct process
analysis, redesign or automation.
BPMN:
◦ Process modelling using the BPMN language
◦ We will learn BPMN by introducing its symbols and concepts gradually
3
Business Process Modelling & Notation
A business process involves events and activities.
◦ Events represent things that happen instantaneously (e.g. an invoice has
been received)
◦ Activities represent units of work that have a duration (e.g. an activity to
pay an invoice).
The most elementary form of relation is that of sequence, which
implies that one event or activity A is followed by another event or
activity B.
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Business Process Modelling & Notation
Based on popular graphical flowcharts:
- Core set of notation elements
- Each core element has various subtypes
A BPMN process model is a graph consisting of four types of
core elements:
start end sequence
event gateway flow
activity
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BPMN Core Elements
Activities capture work performed in a
process
◦ Different types of activities
activity
Events represent the process’ triggers
(start event) and outcomes (end
start end
event event
event).
◦ Different types of events
BPMN Core Elements
A start event triggers a new process instance start
by generating a token that traverses the event
sequence flow (“tokens source”)
An end event signals that a process instance has
end
completed with a given outcome by consuming event
a token (“tokens sink”)
BPMN Core Elements
Gateways capture forking and joining paths in
the control flow.
gateway ◦ Different types of gateways
Sequence flows represent the order in which
sequence activities and events will be performed.
flow They can be assigned a condition to distinguish
between alternative branches.
◦ Different types of flows
BPMN Branching & Merging
Activities and events may not necessarily be performed
sequentially.
The approval and the rejection of a claim are two activities which
exclude each other.
When two or more activities are alternative to each other, we say
they are mutually exclusive.
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BPMN Branching & Merging
The activities which are typically performed by two different
business units, are independent of each other and they do not
need to be performed in sequence: they can be performed in
parallel, i.e. at the same time.
When two or more activities are not interdependent, they are
concurrent.
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BPMN Branching & Merging
A split gateway represents a point where the process flow
diverges while a join gateway represents a point where the
process flow converges.
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BPMN Exclusive Decision - XOR
An XOR Gateway captures
To model the relation decision points (XOR-split) and
between two or more points where alternative flows are
alternative activities, exclusive merged (XOR-join)
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may have previously been
forked with an XOR-split.
An XOR gateway is indicated XOR-join è proceeds when one
with an empty diamond or incoming branch has completed
with a diamond marked with
an “X”.
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BPMN Exclusive Decision - XOR
Invoice checking process
BPMN Exclusive Decision - AND
When two or more activities
An AND Gateway provides a
do not have any order mechanism to create and
dependencies on each other synchronize “parallel” flows.
(i.e. one activity does not need
to follow the other, nor it AND-split è takes all
excludes the other) they can outgoing branches
be executed concurrently, or
in parallel.
The parallel (AND) gateway is AND-join è proceeds
used to model this particular when all incoming
branches have completed
relation.
BPMN Exclusive Decision - AND
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BPMN Exclusive Decisions
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BPMN Exclusive Decision - OR
A company has two warehouses, one in Amsterdam, the other in
Hamburg, that store different products. When an order is received,
it is distributed across these warehouses: if some of the relevant
products are maintained in Amsterdam, a sub-order is sent there;
likewise, if some relevant products are maintained in Hamburg, a
sub-order is sent there. Afterwards, the order is registered and the
process completes.
BPMN Exclusive Decisions - OR
BPMN Exclusive Decisions - OR
BPMN Exclusive Decision - OR
An OR Gateway provides a mechanism to create
and synchronize n out of m parallel flows.
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OR-join è proceeds when all active incoming
branches have completed
BPMN Exclusive Decision - OR
Business Process Modelling & Notation
Recap:
◦ Activity
◦ Start Event
◦ End Event
◦ Sequence Flow
◦ Gateway:
◦ AND
◦ XOR
◦ OR
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