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The Process Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Tom's journey exploring process modeling and BPMN will increase its popularity. He learns fundamentals of system analysis, business process management, and the relationship between process modeling and IT. His mentor Anne demonstrates the value of coaching and governance. Process optimization and reuse will help companies, especially during economic downturns, according to experts. Understanding business processes is key to success.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
190 views188 pages

The Process Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Tom's journey exploring process modeling and BPMN will increase its popularity. He learns fundamentals of system analysis, business process management, and the relationship between process modeling and IT. His mentor Anne demonstrates the value of coaching and governance. Process optimization and reuse will help companies, especially during economic downturns, according to experts. Understanding business processes is key to success.

Uploaded by

Valdeci
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PROCESS

(ee pe deat

iN ebeletse Grosskopf
Gero Decker, Mathias Weske
The Process
What they are saying——
Tom’s journey exploring process modeling will make BPMN even
more popular. He also learns fundamentals of system analysis, busi-
ness process management, relation of process modeling with IT and
process model verification—often unconsciously. And Anne, his
mentor, demonstrates the high value of coaching and governance in it.
—Frank Michael Kraft, Development Architect SAP AG, Research
and Breakthrough Innovation, BPM Cluster.
Especially in economic bad times, the winning company will be the
company that recognizes, understands, optimizes and reuses its busi-
ness processes. Lean and green really mean something—they are di-
mensions of optimization for your business processes, and only those
who “get it” will win. Read this book and learn.
—Richard Soley, Ph.D., Chairman, Object Management Group

www.bpmnbook.com
The BPMN 2.0 chart can be downloaded free from
www.bpmb.de/index.php/ BPMN Poster
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MORE FOR LEss:


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BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT:


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IN SEARCH OF BPM EXCELLENCE:


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IT DOESN’T MATTER: BUSINESS PROCESSES DO

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THE BIRTH OF THE REAL NEW ECONOMY

Acclaim for our books: Featured book recommendation,


Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge,
Book of the Year, Internet World
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grosskopf, Alexander.
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN / Alexander Grosskopf,
Gero Decker, Mathias Weske.
1st ed.
p- cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10: 0-929652-26-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-929652-26-9
1. Business Process Management 2. Process Modeling. 3. Notation Standard.
4. Process Analysis. 5. Organizational change. I. Grosskopf, Alexander. II. Title

HM48.G75 2006 Librrary of Congress No. 2009923535


303.48’33—de22 CrP
Copyright © 2009 Meghan-Kiffer Press. All rights reserved.
Book’s Web site: www.bpmnbook.com

Published by Meghan-Kiffer Press


310 East Fern Street — Suite G
Tampa, FL 33604 USA

Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective owners.

Meghan-Kiffer books are available at special quantity discounts for corporate educa-
tion and training use. For more information write Special Sales, Meghan-Kiffer
Press, Suite G, 310 East Fern Street, Tampa, Florida 33604 or email
[email protected]

Meghan-Kiffer Press, USA

Printed in the United States of America. SAN 249-7980


MK Printing 1098765432
THE PROCESS

BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING


USING BPMN

Alexander Grosskopf,
Gero Decker, Mathias Weske

Meghan-Kiffer Press
Tampa, Florida, USA, www.mkpress.com
Innovation at the Intersection ofBusiness and Technology

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Table of Contents

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6. COMPLEX SITUATIONS REQUIRE SIMPLE MODELG............++. 87
7. HOW TO INTERACT WITH BUSINESS PARTNERG...........00000 101
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sates 173

RECOMMENDED READING AND RESOURCES. ........sssssscssssecssseees 179


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Acknowledgements
The challenges of Dr. Ingo Decker inspired us to write this book
about process modeling along the use cases of a medium-sized high-
tech company. Thanks to his experience as a CEO and founder of
several laser companies we learned about the domain and the needs
from a management perspective. One of his companies served as role
model for LaserTec, the scene for this book. All the names used in the
book are fictional. Similarities to existing people or companies are a
coincidence.

We also thank Daniela Weske for hand-drawing Anne’s process


models. Her contribution made the book livelier and more authentic.
Finally, we thank our friends, colleagues and the professional review-
ers for their valuable feedback. A great big thanks also to Scottie
Jacob from Meghan-Kiffer Press for her professional assistance.
Chapter 1

The New Assistant

He wiped off his sweaty hand before pressing down the door handle.

“Hello, my name is Tom Bauer,” he said while standing in the


door. He felt his heart beating as he took his first step into the room.
The office was large, and the furniture was in the style of the mid 90s.
The man behind the desk had not yet laid an eye on Tom. He seemed
to be concentrating on something else. The desktop was cluttered
with piles of documents, books, and loose sheets of paper. The crea-
tive chaos of a working man, Tom thought as he came to the front of
the desk.

“Hello, Mr. Bauer!” the man said, and in the same moment stood
up, reached out his hand, over the large desk, and focused on Tom’s
eyes. “Hello, Mr. Haffner,” Tom answered.

“Please, take a seat.” Haffner picked up a clean cup from a side


table, held it toward Tom and asked, “May I offer you coffee, Mr.
Bauer?”

“No, thank you,” Tom answered. Haffner poured coffee into his
cup while Tom settled into his chair. “Yeah, well, the job,” Haffner
started after a few minutes of small talk. “Let’s see. ‘Associate execu-
tive,’ that’s the title we chose for the position.” Haffner picked up a
loose sheet of paper from the side of his desk. Tom recognized the
cutriculum vitae he had sent along with his job application.

“Mr. Bauer, I have invited you because here it says you have ex-
pettise in organizational management and controlling. Do your”
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Yes Sir, ’ve been best in class and received my degree with hon-
ots,” Tom answered confidently.

“From your profile you seem to fit to the job.” Haffner started
again. He leaned back, took a sip of coffee and explained, “When I
bought this company fourteen years ago I had thirteen employees, and
I knew them all personally. I mean, not only their names, but their
hobbies and family situations as well. We were supplying laser com-
ponents for five large customers. Do you know how many customers
LaserTec has as of today?”

“About three hundred spread all over the world,” Tom quickly
responded.

Haffner recognized that this young man had done his homework.
He turned his chair toward the window, looked down at the factory
ptemises, and said, “With every year, our products have evolved. With
every job we took on, we needed to hite more people, and the com-
pany changed and grew in complexity.”

After a short pause, Haffner continued, “Our core business in-


volves world class laser units. We supply them directly to customers
and also to production line manufactures, for instance, in the car in-
dustry. Then, we have our after-sales services, such as maintenance,
availability promises, and laser refurbishment. On top of all that we
also have the in-house job of order production which we do to fill up
idle capacity.”

Haffner started a monologue about the priorities of primary and


secondary business. Tom tried to follow the storyline. He nodded his
head to affirm his attention, but Haffner didn’t see it. “Three years
ago one of our suppliers for lenses went bankrupt. Can you believe
that? He just went out of business — no more lenses! Our customers
couldn’t care less; they wanted their devices! Of course, over the years

10
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

we looked at several suppliers, but these guys had the best material.”
Tom nodded, and thought about the supply chain lectures at the uni-
versity, while Haffner continued.

“Anyway, we needed a solution, and quickly. But there was no


supplier on the horizon to deliver the quality and know-how needed
for our systems. So I went to the supplier and negotiated the buy-out
of the lenses development and production. It didn’t look too bad until
the next day, when I realized that the employees were not willing to
move four hundred kilometers to the north in order to join our team.
To solve that, I had to keep the supplier’s existing location, letting the
employees stay in their homes with their families. This all happened
within forty-eight hours.”

Haffner emptied his coffee cup and refilled it. He looked at Tom
who didn’t know what to say.

“Was it a good decision? Yes. Did I know it back then? No. Two
weeks later we got an engineer-to-order request for a very strong laser
unit. Something we hadn’t done before. We needed new optical parts
as well. The people in our newly founded R&D department were ex-
cited and worked really hard to get the job done. Now we have the
best optical parts for all our lasers at hand.”

Haffner leaned back. He appeared to be exhausted by the mono-


logue. A short smile flashed on his face. Tom liked the story but
couldn’t see how he would fit into the scene.

“What do you think my contribution to LaserTec could be?”


Tom asked.

“You see, it is my job to steer the ship. I do that by making deci-


sions. With better insights about our work I can make better deci-
sions. But there is much about this company that I don’t know — not

11
The Process: Business Process M odeling Using BPMN

anymore.”

Tom felt that Haffner was coming to the point. “You see, with
every new employee things have shifted a bit. Over the years I lost
track of the changes. And now I cannot just step on anyone’s door
and ask questions about their work. Besides, I have other things to do.
And here is where you come into the game. I want you to deeply un-
derstand how we work, the underlying processes. And | want you to
get me the numbers. I have already made too many decisions without
accurate consideration of the processes and without a sound quantita-
tive basis. Some people call this kind of job a process analyst, or, for
the quantitative part, a controller. I would rather say that you would
be my eyes and ears! ”

Mr. Haffner paused for a moment and looked at Tom. Then he


continued, “I have a good feeling about you, Mr. Bauer. I want you on
board!”

Tom was a little bit puzzled. This all still sounded a bit too un-
specific. “So what would I do exactly?”

“Well, I recently met an old friend who also owns a mid-sized


company, like LaserTec,” Haffner replied, “and we talked a lot about
how to view our businesses. What perspective to take. He told me
that he is into a process-oriented point of view, seeing everything
from end to end. Always having in mind what steps really create the
value and who is involved in the process. What information is needed
when and where handovers take too much time. Always caring about
how to improve, where to increase quality, reduce waste or save time.
I would like you to take on that perspective. Get the process skills,
become out process expert. You have a fresh view, straight from the
university, full of ideas! ”

Tom thought about this for a few moments. “But isn’t there any-

12
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

body with that kind of expertise in your company already?”

“Good question,” Haffner replied. “Mrs. White. She has some


experience in the process field. In her previous job she did quite a bit
of process modeling. Somehow I didn’t realize the value of that
knowledge up until now. When she joined us I put her in charge of
organizing the order processing. That totally ate up her time. And
now it’s already too late...”

“Too late?”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. White is leaving the company,” Haffner an-


sweted with a sad voice. “She reduced herself to a half-time position
already. And in less than six months she will be gone completely. So
it’s high time she passes on her experience. I think you will get along
with her.” After a short pause he continued, “Oh, sorry — I don’t want
to rush you into anything. Take your time to think about the offer.
After all, it’s an important decision!”

Tom repeated the comment in his head. It is indeed an important


decision. Becoming the process expert of LaserTec and directly work-
ing for the CEO? This could be the beginning of a very exciting time.

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Chapter 2

All Models are Incomplete

Tom leaned back in the comfortable arm chair. His weekend was
exhausting. The day he returned the signed contract, he also decided
to rent a two-bedroom apartment at the center of LaserTec’s small
town.

He would have enough time to talk to everyone involved in order


to get to know how the company worked and what to do. So for now
he could enjoy the view of the factory premises, where some workers
were piling up steel plates at the factory building. Tom heard the
workers saying that the boss wanted the steel plates to be cut and sent
back by the end of the week. Next week a new project would start,
with the pre-assembly and testing of a new laser unit. Tom thought
back to what Haffner had said about peripheral business and core
business. Laser engineering is the core business, and this new order
would probably require the company’s full attention.

The door opened, and a middle-aged lady bolted in. “You must
be Tom, rightr” she asked, while starting the coffee machine with a
few rehearsed steps.

She reached out her hand. Tom noticed her friendly eyes and
warm manner. “My name is Anne, Anne White,” she said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. White.”

“Please, call me Anne.”

is)
The Process: Business Process M odeling Using BPMN

Anne took a seat in the armchair where Tom was sitting before
she arrived. She turned on her computer and grabbed three sheets of
paper from the fax machine without even looking. The faxes from last
night, he thought. She glanced at them and put them on a pile of
other faxes. The faxes on the pile were all post-it-strewn and super-
scripted with annotations.

Anne started the conversation, “Mr. Haffner already told me that


somebody is finally taking on the process perspective in this company.
That’s an excellent idea. I tried to convince him several times. But
finally he started thinking about it — only because his old buddy sud-
denly told him some fantastic stories.”

Anne scanned through one of the three pages she held in her
hand. She continued, “Let’s not waste time; let’s get right into it.
Ready for the processes?”

“Sure!” Tom couldn’t wait to start.

Anne began her monologue, “There is a very important thing you


have to know right from the start. If you want to be the master of
your processes, you have to know them first. And it is not sufficient
that a single person knows them. You have to get a shared under-
standing of what you are talking about. Unfortunately, processes are
somehow invisible. It’s not like a house that you build, and where you
can see where each room is located. Or where you can see how the
roof collapses if it is not properly designed. Processes are somehow
intangible. But they do exist. Therefore, the main challenge is to visu-
alize them. To nail them down on paper. Only then can you discuss
them and point to parts you are most interested in.”

Anne took a deep breath and then continued, “Process modeling


is at the very heart of the company. It is about understanding how the
company operates — giving names to things that happen. It is about

16
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

observing, and it’s about writing it all down. But enough with the gen-
eral stuff. Let’s get directly into our processes. That'll make things
clearer.”

“Good idea,” Tom thought, as he watched her grab a blank sheet


of paper.

“Let’s start off with the big picture,” she started. “In essence, we
are developing and selling laser devices. We are not the biggest player
around, but we have quite a good reputation for creating tricky cus-
tom solutions. Do you happen to have any background in engineer-
ing?”

“T’m afraid, I haven’t,” Tom said.

“Not a problem,” Anne reassured him, “I’m not an engineer ei-


ther. You know, sometimes I have the feeling that without outsiders
like us this company would end up in chaos,” she said jokingly. “But
you should definitely have a basic understanding of what lasers are
good for. Any ideas?”

Tom thought for a minute before replying. The first thing that
came to his mind was Luke Skywalker’s laser sword, but he managed
to suppress his smile. “Isn’t it all about precision?” Tom finally sug-
gested.

“That’s true. Precision is our business,” Anne said, “With lasers


you can cut any kind of material with maximum precision. Any kind
of metal, plastic, glass, even wood. And lasers are just taking off. We
ate expanding every year to keep up with the customers’ require-
ments,” Anne continued. “It even surprises me from time to time
what our customers actually use these machines for.”

Then she stopped and quickly scanned through the faxes. She

y
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

picked out one with a purple post-it on it.

“Take this customer for instance,” Anne held up the fax. “We
developed lasers for printing their company logo onto heat insulation
plates. Much more efficient than the burning technique they used
before.”

“Sounds like LaserTec has a lot of innovative ideas.”

“Indeed,” Anne replied, “But great ideas and innovative products


are only one side of the coin. With the number of people involved,
somebody has to organize the work. Unfortunately, people tend to see
only their particular function in the system.”

“You mean they are not aware of the context of their work?”
Tom tried to rephrase Anne’s statement.

“That’s my point! It’s about coordinating the work that all em-
ployees do, so that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing,
how work is handed over. Did you know that almost everybody in the
company is involved on the path from the customer request to the
installation at the customet’s site?”

Anne started drawing. Several boxes appeared in a row. Tom


leaned over to get a better view.

“T like to put things visually, you know, and that is already a key
ingredient of process modeling — visual representation,’ Anne went
on while filling text into the drawing. “Here are the most important
steps we are doing.”

18
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Tom started reading. The five steps looked somewhat familiar to


him. “First of all, our project engineers need to identify what the cus-
tomer wants,” Anne explained, “I call this ‘collect customer require-
ments,’ here,” she said while pointing at the first box. “Then our en-
gineers develop the components. Especially in difficult cases, this can
take up to two months. Once we are done with that, production
starts.”

“Production means that you build the laser in that step?” Tom
asked, to keep up.

“Well, the laser unit is typically a larger machine. It has the optical
components to create the stream of light but also a frame and the
mechanical parts to get material in and out of the machine. All these
parts are specified in this step here,” Anne pointed at the rectangle
named ‘develop components,’ and they are then created in the pro-
duction step.”

“T see,” Tom replied, although he didn’t yet imagine how this


would look in reality.

“The final step before a laser becomes operational is the testing


and installation phase. As almost every machine is a custom develop-
ment, this phase needs special attention.”

“Finally, maintenance and support. Of course, that’s needed as


well,” Tom concluded.

“And guess what is special about the last phase?” Anne chal-
lenged him.

As Tom didn’t know where Anne was heading, she proceeded,


“That’s where we make our money. Support gives us the actual mar-
gins. Just selling the machines wouldn’t be enough.”

19
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Anne looked straight at him, “What you see here in the diagram
ate only the basics. Once you move into more detail it gets far more
tricky and complex.”

“T like your drawing,” Tom said.

“Tm happy you like it. But hey, it’s more than a drawing. It’s a
model. A process model.”

“Drawing. Model. Where is the difference?” Tom asked.

“All these elements here have a well defined meaning. I don’t


make them up. They are a standardized way to.write things down,”
Anne continued, “That’s what distinguishes a model from a drawing.”

“I see. But to me the meaning is intuitive,” he pointed at Anne’s


drawing, “I mean, everybody would understand it. Why not allow
everybody to draw the way he or she likes it?”

“What would you draw differently? Give me an example,” Anne


said in reply.

“What about using icons, such as a question mark, to represent


testing?”

“Ok, let’s assume question marks were scattered all over the
model,” Anne retorted. “How should I interpret them? That there are
decisions to be made? That some parts need clarification? Or that you
are not sure about the process?”

Tom laughed out loud.

Anne smiled and continued, “Processes can get quite complex.


They are not always as simple as the five step process you just saw.”

20
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“You mean with many more boxes?” Tom threw in.

“Tt is not only that,’ Anne responded. “You might want to in-
corporate rich knowledge about the routing order of activities, the
people involved, or the information needed.”

Tom said reflectively, “So there are more things to draw than
boxes, arrows, and circles?”

“Absolutely! There are variations of these symbols, but there are


also others,” Anne responded.

“And you are going to teach me all this?” Tom asked.

He looked into her eyes. She looked back and smiled.

“I already have so many ideas about how to extend this,” Tom


added, “‘what to add to the model.”

Anne looked at him and said in a strict tone of voice, “Again,


stick to the standards! Believe me, a lot of stuff is already covered. Just
imagine you make up your own symbols. It would end up in a Baby-
lonian clutter of languages nobody would understand. Process models
ate visual artifacts to communicate content.”

Tom agreed with her explanation. Anne went on, “We need a
common understanding of what the symbols mean; we need common
semantics. The languages of these drawings are called process-
modeling languages. Have you come across any of those already?”

He once started a course at the university but liked neither the


professor nor the students attending the class. So he simply dropped
out. “How shall I say...” he started.

“Okay, so you have no experience,” she said. “Coffee?”

24
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Anne jumped up, briefly sniffed the coffee and started pouring it
into the cups. Tom thanked her as she handed over a cup to him. He
didn’t like coffee too much but didn’t feel like saying so. Anne obvi-
ously loved coffee.

“Take your seat over here,” she said. “Let’s have a look at a par-
ticular process. Let’s dispatch customer requests.”

She grabbed another sheet of paper with a green post-it on it


from the stack of faxes on her desk.

“Aha,” she said while A the first fax message. “So, this
seems to be a new customer.”

She started diving into the file structures on her computer. Even-
tually, she opened a spreadsheet and searched it for the name denoted
in the header of the message. No result.

“Okay, since this is a new customer to us, we create what we call


a sales opportunity.”

Anne opened another spreadsheet and filled in the information


from the fax message. Tom leaned over to get a better view on her
computer screen. Within a few moments Anne had created a new
customer profile and filled in the data from the fax.

“To dispatch the request we have to send an email to the pre-


sales people. This triggers them to take a look at the spreadsheet and
contact the potential customer,” Anne said while proceeding. “The
spreadsheet file is stored on a network drive, so that they can access
it,” she explained.

She sent the email, closed the spreadsheet, and turned to Tom.
“That’s it for dispatching requests. Any questions?”

22
The Process: Business Process M adeling Using BPMN

_ Tom looked at her, puzzled. Can that be the whole customer re-
quest dispatching process?

“What about existing customers?” he asked.

“Good question!” Anne took a sip of coffee and proceeded, “For


each customer who already has a laser from LaserTec, we have a dedi-
cated sales accountant. Typically the one who had the last contact
with the customer.”

She spoke about the strategy for customer satisfaction and that
LaserTec had three hundred customers all over the world — each of
them deserving particular treatment. As she continued talking, Tom’s
attention was fading away. The stories from customers in Arabia and
Asia with their cultural backgrounds inspired his thoughts. One day he
might be traveling around the world to meet all these customers, have
a beer in Vancouver or a Mango Lassi in Delhi.

Anne looked at him for a moment to get his full attention before
she continued. “Maybe, it’s time to pinpoint this process on paper.”

She took a blank sheet of paper from the printer and started to
draw with a pencil. Tom watched her, while circles, rectangles, and
diamond shaped elements appeared on the paper. It didn’t seem to
make any sense in the beginning. As she started adding phrases to the
diagram, he could link some of them back to the story she had told.

23
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

pre-sales cleals
wh new
Customer

identify sales accountant


classify request:
look up Sales Cond hones
(discount +shipping / customs)

Shortly afterward, she put the pencil aside and shoved the paper
toward him. Tom read the phrases in the diagram. Then he pointed at
a rectangle that said “email request to sales accountant.”

“How do you know which sales accountant to contact for a par-


ticular customer?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” Anne responded and put additional text at


the side of the diagram. “We can identify the sales person from the
spreadsheet you saw initially,” Anne said. “While we are there it is also
a good idea to look up the sales conditions for the particular type of
request.”

Tom nodded, “I see.”

“We have many different customers all over the world, and each
one has an individual contract that defines all sorts of details; for in-
stance, the discounts for spate parts or component upgrades. In addi-
tion, each country has special conditions for customs, which is also
important information we must incorporate.”

Tom turned his attention to the model on the sheet of paper. The

24
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

shapes were new to him, but, from the context, he thought he was
able to give it meaning.

“Ts this now a business process language?” he asked.

“This,” Anne pointed at the sketch, “is a business process dia-


gram. The language is called BPMN.”

“BPMN»?” Tom responded without thinking.

Anne explained, “BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling


Notation. It is the state-of-the-art in process modeling.”

“Okay, so how do you read this diagram?”

“That’s simple.”

Anne leaned back in her chair while Tom bent over the paper
with the sketchy drawing.

“It always starts with a circle,” Anne continued, pointing her pen-
cil to the details of the drawing. “The arrows indicate the order in
which things are done.”

“So the first thing is to classify the customer,” Tom explained to


get more confidence.

“Exactly.”

“What do you call these shapes?” Tom asked.

“The initial circle is called start event, the arrows are called se-
quence flows, and the rectangle with the rounded edge is an activity.”

“Too easy,” said Tom and stretched his legs. “Let me guess, the

25
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

diamond shape with the cross in the middle is a decision.”

“Correct,” Anne responded. “It’s called a data-based exclusive


gateway. I usually say XOR gateway. Here, one of the outgoing
branches is taken.”

Tom read through the diagram again, “And the circles with the
thicker line?”

“End events,” Anne immediately responded, “They indicate the


end of the process.”

Tom nodded his head. It all sounded intuitive. But somehow he


had the feeling that this cannot be all there is to it. He pointed at the
text at the side of the drawing.

“Has this a particular meaning as well?” he asked.

“Yes, it means that I should rework the process,” she joked with
some irony. “It is called annotation. It’s basically free text without a
formal meaning, but you can annotate and comment on everything
with it. In BPMN it is part of the language,” Anne started loading a
program on her computer.

“Annotations ate a useful tool for adding arbitrary documenta-


tion to a process model. But here, we better refine the process model
to put in that information.”

Anne turned toward the computer and the program that she had
just started. It has a set of drawing elements similar to those on the
paper, but a lot more. Tom observed her intently, while she was ar-
ranging the modeling elements on a canvas. Once the process was
recreated, she saved the file and started talking while she edited the
model on the screen.

26
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“First of all, this process is started by new requests from custom-


ers. They typically come in by email or fax.” She changed the start
event against a similar looking shape, which contained a letter icon
inside the circle.

“TI see icons. There are many different icons,” Tom remarked.

“Yes, there is a defined set of symbols in BPMN. Like the letter


symbol which indicates that a message is received.”

“T see, and receiving the message is what starts the process?”

Gorrect.

“So, the other model was incorrect?” Tom asked.

“I'd prefer to call it ‘ess accurate’,” Anne replied, “The informa-


tion about what starts the process was simply not given in the previ-
ous process model.”

After Anne added the phrase “customer request by fax or email”


to the start event, she went on and changed the process part for the
existing customers.

“T classify the customer request and identify the sales conditions


for a customer,” Anne explained. “After that, I identify the sales rep-
resentative from the spreadsheet, as you just saw. After this is done I
send the email to the sales representative.”

“Why do you have to classify the request?” Tom looked at Anne


waiting for a reaction. “Oh,” Anne said, “existing customers typically
ask for either spare parts to put on stock or they want to upgrade cer-
tain components.” Anne added an annotation to the activity. “Up-
grades and spare parts have different discounts for each customer,”
she explained. “Also, we have special shipping restrictions related to

2a,
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

customs for each part of the world, sometimes even per country.”

“T see,” Tom said, and this time he really felt that he had under-
stood something.

He reached for the mouse, which Anne willingly gave to him.


From the set of model elements he dragged another annotation to the
canvas. He connected it to the activity Identify sales conditions” and
filled in some text. He pressed the “Save” button, leaned back, and
looked at the result with contended feelings. Anne smiled at him.

create new E-mail pre-


new customer
customer sales about
profile request
Pre-sales deals
with new customer
classify
customer
customer
existing
request by
customer
fax or e-mail
Identify E-Mail sales
Classify Identify sales
Sales accountant about
request conditions
Accountant sales opportunity
Sales
- contacts
spare part or upgrade Yaiscounts, shipping conditions customer

“So, for existing customers,” he started thinking aloud, “you first


classify the request and then you can look up the sales accountant and
the sales conditions.”

“Yes, and if I have gathered this information I can send out the
email to the sales accountant,” Anne continued, “so that they can
contact the customer.”

“And after that there is nothing more for you to do?”

“That’s it, the process ends for me there. That’s my perspective


on it. Sales is then in charge for all further contacts to this customer.”

28
The Process: Business Process M sane Using BPMN

Tom nodded, “But I thought that process modeling is about


bridging activities — seeing it as a whole?”

“You are absolutely right,” Anne replied. “That is a core part of


understanding processes. If the hand-over between the different ac-
tivities does not work properly, if the different people involved don’t
collaborate properly, the overall process will be far from optimal. But,
you know, I am not really an expert in sales. I am working in the
product management division. I am afraid you'll need to talk to some-
one from that division to learn more about the overall process.”

Anne printed the process model. Tom took the sheet of paper
from the printer and wandered around in Anne’s office. He concen-
trated on the model, going through each step again.

“It might be,” Anne interrupted, “that we get a refurbishment re-


quest for a used laser unit. Um...,” she quickly scanned the faxes.
“None here. They are rare, but they do happen.”

“How would you handle a refurbishment request?” Tom asked.

“We know quite a lot about the laser units installed at our cus-
tomers’ organizations. All information about a laser unit is kept in a
particular folder in our network file system.”

Tom looked up at Anne and instantly recognized that there was


obviously another branch in the process that they have not yet talked
about.

“What information do you store?”

“Almost evetything — you name it. The product engineering


documents specify which components they have used, when and
where these components have been produced, and all the history of
the initial project, starting with the specification and ending with the

29
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

installation report. Also, there are the maintenance reports for the
laser unit. It’s important, you know. When we refurbish, we need to
know in advance what’s coming.”

Tom grabbed a pen and started noting down something on the


sheet of paper with the printed model.

“And how do you handle these requests?”

“Come here and Ill show you,” Anne said and turned toward her
computer screen. Tom walked over to Anne and sat down on the
chair next to her. Anne browsed through the file structures again and
ended up with a folder with many, many other folders in it. Anne
went into one of the folders and explained the folder’s structure. Eve-
rything was named systematically. “With a few clicks, I can find all the
information I need,” she explained.

“What happens if you get ill?” Tom asked.

Anne gave Tom a blank stare, “Everybody else has access to


these folders.” Tom wasn’t sure whether anybody at LaserTec would
find the required information in the folder structure. “I think we
should put it here,” Anne reopened the modeling program and started
changing the process model. “Refurbishment requests can only come
from existing customers. But we should then classify the requests to
distinguish spare parts and upgrade requests from refurbishment re-
quests.”

“So this is another decision then,” Tom said while trying to fol-
low Anne’s explanation.

30
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

create new E-mail pre-


customer sales about
profile request
Pre-sales deals
with new customer - initial specification
- date of installation
- maintenance history
classify Paserunk - - project engineer :
customer -
Faturbichinent -_ (author of specification)
: -
mail,
fax, existing request e-mail project engineer about
e-mail customer refurbishment request
project engineer
Classify contacts
request customer

Identify Identify discounts E-Mail sales


Sales and shipping accountant about
spare parts and Accountant conditions sales opportunity
upgrade request Sales
contacts
customer

“Correct.” She took another XOR gateway and placed it in the


active diagram.

Tom watched her silently while she changed the process model.
Afterward, he took the mouse and pointed at the newly introduced
activity with the name “gather laser unit details.”

“So what is the information you gather at that point?”

“We need to, at least, extract the initial specification, the date of
installation, and the maintenance history.”

Tom took an annotation shape from the BPMN element selec-


tion, put it on the canvas, and connected it with the activity. He filled
in the comments by Anne and then proceeded along the execution
path.

“If you go along this branch,” he followed the branch for a re-
furbishment request, “how do you identify which project engineer to
contact? There is no activity for that.”

3s
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“That is correct. There could be another activity to do that. Actu-


ally, the project engineer to contact is the one responsible for the ini-
tial specification. Therefore, I simply open the specification file and
have a look at the author.”

Tom extended the annotation he just added with the information


about the project engineer. He saved the model, hit the print button,
and went over to the printer.

“T like this process language,” he said.

“Not my invention, but very useful,” Anne retorted.

“Ts the model I have here showing completely what you do?”

“Oh dear,” Anne laughed, “All models are incomplete. It’s the
nature of a model to reflect aspects of the reality. A subset. They can
never be complete. But if this subset helps to understand what is done
then the model is useful.”

Tom smiled at her, while she turned back to her screen. He took
out his small black book and a pen. He opened the first page. The
book was blank, no words yet. He looked at Anne who was working
on her computer without paying attention to him. When he turned
back to the first empty page in his little black book he started noting
down.

All models are incomplete; some are useful.

He flipped the first page of the note book and redrew the shapes
from the BPMN diagram. With the printed process model on his
knees, he noted down the semantics of the elements as he recalled it.

The office turned silent. For almost ten minutes nobody talked.
Only the sound of Anne typing with moderate speed on her computer

oe
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

could be heard.

“These gateways,” Tom broke the silence, “you use them to open
up alternative branches?”

Anne took her hands off the keyboard and looked at Tom.

“But what if...” He was staring at Anne, but he seemed to look


through her.

“But what if, what?” Anne echoed impatiently.

“I was just thinking of a situation, where you do alternative


things,” he started explaining, “but later on, you need to do the same
thing anyway. You know what I mean?”

“You mean,” Anne picked up the ball, “if you do different things
for different customers but in the end reply to the customer anyway.”

“Yes, exactly,” Tom blurted out.

“Not a problem at all.” She sketched something on a sheet of pa-


per. While Tom stared at the paper, Anne explained, “You can use the
same gateway for that because it has split and merge semantics.”

0 Zing)
As Tom didn’t react, Anne continued, “Look at the drawing.
You can split the process flow to alternative branches. So, you either
do A or you do B. If you also want to bring these alternative branches

33
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

back together, you can join them by using the XOR gateway.”

Tom inspected the sketch on the sheet of papet.

“If they can be used for both,” Tom asked, “can there be multi-
ple incoming and outgoing sequence flows for the same gateway?”

“Yes. You can use the same gateway for merging and splitting the
process flow at the same time. But I would suggest to do it in two
sepatate gateways.” Anne remembered the lengthy discussions she
had with her old colleagues about different modeling styles.

“Tt is always a good idea to keep the models simple. If you over-
load a construct with too many semantics, people get confused. Proc-
ess modeling is not about showing that you can use the fanciest con-
structs. It is about sharing knowledge. Only when everybody under-
stands the model in the same way, can you gain something from it.”

“So semantics are all about an agreed understanding,” Tom said


absently. “I will have to talk to a lot of people to get all the different
perspectives on it.”

“Exactly,” Anne answered. “That is actually a very good idea. As


a next step, you should meet somebody from production to learn
more about what they do. That will help you gather more parts of the
puzzle.”

Tom was busy noting down comments in his little black book.
Anne turned toward the clock over the door to her office. It was al-
ready noon.

“Oh, time for lunch!” She immediately jumped up and grabbed


her purse. Standing inthe door she turned back to Tom. “Let’s go! ”

34
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

C) Plain Start Event


Is the starting point of the process. A plain start event
leaves open what actually starts the process.

©) Start Message Event


Arrival of a message starts the process. This can be
either via fax, mail, email, or any other message-like
communication.

O Plain End Event


Denotes the end of an execution path for the process.

—) Activity
Actvity | Is a unit of work. Something to be done. Something
that takes time. Activities in BPMN are called Tasks if
they cannot be decomposed.

—> Sequence Flow


Describes the order in which things are done. It can
connect events, activities, and gateways.

XOR Gateway
Used to split or join the sequence flow. When splitting
the flow, one of the outgoing branches is taken. When
joining the process flow it merges every incoming
branch into the outgoing branch.

— Annotation Textual Annotation


Free textual description. Can be attached to everything
to give further explanations. Has no process semantics
but is free text.

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fai =
Chapter 3

It’s all about People

The next morning Tom decided to walk to the office. The way to
LaserTec led through a small park and ended in an industrial area.
LaserTec was located at the heart of this area, along with other com-
panies dealing with logistics and car accessories.

Tom needed to find Arthur Winning to learn more about produc-


tion at LaserTec. Anne had told him that he spent most of the time in
the factory building across from the office building. A yard as big as a
football field was in between both. The yard was filled with containers
as tall as men. Just before entering the factory building, he saw Win-
ning with a group of men in front of a container. They were talking
and laughing. Tom walked toward them. Winning saw Tom approach-
ing and stepped aside from the group.

“May I have some of your time, Sir,” Tom said to Winning, while
he was still five meters away.

“Hello, Mr. Bauer,” Winning replied as they shook hands. “Mr.


Haffner told me about you. I am sorry but I only have little time.
What’s the matter?”

Tom replied, “I need to know more about the development proc-


ess at LaserTec, and I assume you are the best source of information
for that.”

“You bet I am,” Winning replied. “You can join me for a short
walk if you like, and we can use the time to talk.”

37
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“That would be great, thanks.”

Winning took a sheet of paper. They started walking around in


the labyrinth of containers. Winning compared the numbers on the
containers with those listed on his sheet of paper.

“This week we have started a new project. The guys over there,”
Winning pointed at the group of men still standing and talking, “are
the project engineers. These people are specialists in electronics, opti-
cal engineering, and precision mechanics. Laser development is not a
standard procedure, you know. At least not for the kind of lasers we
produce here. We have done dozens of projects and yet every project
is different.”

After a short pause, Winning continued, “This project will keep


us busy for weeks. And at this very moment, we are about to have the
kick-off session.”

“Kick-off session?” Tom asked.

“In the beginning we agree on a general idea on how the laser


unit should be constructed. Kind of an initial specification of the laser.
This is an important step, because from there on we can start develop-
ing the individual components. This has to happen by tomorrow. Af-
ter that, all these guys can work on their own and develop the com-
ponents needed for the laser.”

“I see,” Tom said to keep Winning going, “and what happens


then?”

“Sorry, I am really short of time. I have to go to the team meeting


just now.”

“May I join?” Tom was eager to get involved.

38
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“It’s about the laser unit specification, but, sure, you’re welcome,
of course.”

They went over to the group of men. Tom was briefly introduced
to them before the group moved on to the factory floor. Tom was
amazed to see that the factory building was just a big hall with two
large machines. One machine was working and spitting out cylinders
into a basket. Three men with blue overalls inspected the resulting
cylinders. They stopped the machine, then everybody fiddled about
with something, and then they started the machine again. It was a
fascinating display that attracted Tom’s attention.

The meeting went on for an hour. When a delivery boy from a


catering service brought in sandwiches, Winning allowed a twenty-
minute break. Still, everybody was using the break for discussions
about the new laser unit.

“See, that’s the way we do it,” Winning addressed Tom, who was
busy with his sandwich. “Sometimes we have more time, so we split
up the kick-off meeting to two days. But it’s good to discuss every-
thing through once before we start.”

“Start what?” Tom asked.

“The development part,” Winning responded. “All we discuss


here are the initial ideas and the work distribution. Later on, every-
body works on his own, more or less independently.”

“More or less?”

“The optical guys work together, and the mechanical guys and so
on. But apart from that, development can happen independently.”

“What happens after you finish your development?”

39
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“We move on to the next project. There is always work to do.”


Winning finally decided to grab one of the remaining sandwiches.

“But how does the project continue?” Tom continued asking.

“The guys from technical services take over.” Winning pointed at


the other side of the factory floor. The three men dressed in blue were
still tinkering with their machine. “We specify, and they build the
components needed.”

“And then?”

“The standard stuff; they have to assemble the parts to a laser


unit. Then they test and configure it. You see,” he pointed over to the
men at the other side. “They have been configuring and fine-tuning
this machine for weeks now.”

Winning clapped his hands, and the meeting resumed. Tom


stayed in the meeting for another hour. He couldn’t follow the details
of the technical discussions, but enjoyed the engineering spirit. After
the meeting Tom went to Winning to ask him more questions.

“So, did you learn anything, Mr. Bauer?” Winning asked. “Quite
technical, huh?”

“That’s true. I still got quite a bit of information. But I have some
more questions I’d like to ask you.”

Winning took a look at his watch for the first time since the
meeting started. “Sure. But please, keep it short.” He started walking
toward the exit of the factory building.

“How do you proceed until the laser finally operates at the cus-
tomer site?” Tom wanted to know.

40
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

_ “What you saw here was project engineering. It includes the plan-
ning and component development. After that the assembly and testing
starts.”

“Who produces the components?”

“Oh, usually we do it; the guys over there.” He pointed at the


men dressed in blue. “The technical services group, just like project
engineering, is a part of product management, and that’s me. We pro-
duce, assemble, configure, and test the lasers. In the end, we also
package, ship, and install them at the customet’s site.”

“Why do you test the laser units here?”

Winning stopped, turned toward Tom, and lectured him. “Mr.


Bauer, the laser units produced here need extensive testing. They are
high-tech devices that are highly customized. We can’t afford prob-
lems at the customer site. Here at LaserTec we have all the expertise
at hand. Can you imagine what it costs to do three weeks of testing in
Japane”

“Um, makes sense now that I think about it,” Tom admitted. As
they reached the yard in front of the factory building, Winning asked
“Anything more that I can do for you, Mr. Bauer?”

“No, I don’t want to hold you back. Just one more question,”
Tom said. “Who carries out the work in Japan?”

“Our own people,” Winning said. “My people from the technical
services team go East and install the machines they have built and
tested here. In the end, I am liable for everything. That’s why I always
inspect the final handover certificate signed by the customer. You
never know.”

“T see,” Tom said.

41
The Process: Business Process Modehing Using BPMN

“T really have to leave now.” Winning turned his back toward


Tom to leave. After a few steps he stopped and turned back to Tom,
“Good luck with your work, Mr. Bauer.”

When Tom returned to his office, he knew that he had enough


information to model a process. However, it still wasn’t easy. For an-
other hour he itemized details from the project engineering meeting
on a sheet of paper. Yet he couldn’t see how all this activity could
result in a process model. Due to the long meeting, his concentration
suffered. Finally, he sketched a diagram that, in his opinion, reflected
his understanding of the process as accurately as he could.

Thats Indades
— Oph eel
— medavreel
Cane al< otn eA

cer enets

Te chur cal
Proj e ot Project Savvices burdds,
en givecrin 5) en generis
Aisembles |
creates space Aevalep 5
fer Lssev unit Cext gerts sek
Com ponets
tesks Raya unchs

Te ehsicel Te chuical

sari ces gery ces


packayes & Nobels Rasy
ips Raser eb cutesy

When Tom reviewed the process in the afternoon, his dissatis-


faction grew. He felt that there must be more expressiveness in mod-
eling the situation. He would need more help with that. He decided to
ask Anne.

42
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Hi, Tom. How are you? Coffee?” Anne was all smiles again.

She jumped up from her chair and went over to the coffee ma-
chine. Without hesitating or waiting for Tom’s answer, she poured a
cup for him.

“Anne, I modeled the first stuff on my own,” he waved the paper


with the handwritten process model, “and I thought you might be
interested.”

“Sure I am. Show it to me!” Anne grabbed the paper out of


Tom’s hand and looked at it. “Um... so you already talked to Winning,
uh-huh ....” Thoughtfully, Anne inspected the model. She flipped the
page, then flipped it back. She took it to her chair and sat down.

“Ts that all?” Anne asked. “Is that the whole process? Five activi-
ties in a sequence?”

“Well, the process, of course, is more complex, but I didn’t know


how to express that,” Tom admitted.

“Why did you write down ‘project engineering’ and ‘technical ser-
vices’ all the time?” Anne asked.

“See what I mean?” Tom replied, “I did not know how to ex-
ptess that this process is done by different people with different quali-
fications.”

“Ah, I see. You need a role concept,” Anne said.

Tom didn’t understand.

“A role concept allows you to express who performs a task. Pll


show you.” Anne turned toward her computer. Within a minute,
Anne redrew the diagram from Tom’s hand drawing.

43
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“T like to keep models digital,” Anne explained, “so you can easily
change and version them.”

“I need this program,” Tom said. “Where can I get it?”

“T’ll send you the link to the Web site where you can find it,”
Anne responded. “You don’t even need to install anything on your
computer. It’s a Web-based thing.” Anne saved the process model
and then started changing it. She dragged a big rectangle shape from
the shape repository and dropped it onto the canvas.

“So this is LaserTec,” she said. “And the people involved in that
process ate the technical services guys and the project engineers.
Right?”

“Yes, they hand the work over after the specification is done,”
Tom said.

“BPMN allows you to express the process ownership using a


pool.”

“Pool?” Tom raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, like a swimming pool. That’s actually where the metaphor


comes from.” Anne said and smiled, “BPMN makes use of ‘swim-
lanes’ as a concept to organize activities into separate visual areas.
Each swimlane illustrates different functional capabilities or responsi-
bilities. In BPMN the swimlane idea is mapped to ‘pools’ and ‘lanes.”

Tom frowned to indicate his lack of understanding. Anne pointed


at the left border of the large rectangle where she had already written
down the name “LaserTec.”

“A pool represents an organization. Processes ate run by organi-


zations. You can represent that a process is run by a particular organi-

44
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

zation by creating a pool and placing the process inside.” Anne went
on and created smaller rectangles dividing the pool into multiple
nested rectangles.

She put the names “Project Engineering” and “Technical Ser-


vices” into the head of the new rectangles. Afterwards, Anne dragged
the process model into the pool and started rearranging the activities
inside.

“Because an organization is usually more complex, you can sub-


divide the pool into lanes, each representing a sub-division of the or-
ganization. Now you can place each activity in the lane that corre-
sponds to the role that actually performs the work.”

|
£
83
oc s ee itis
=
P ; components
Ww
for laser unit

LaserTec
pasarSpi Sh Package & Install laser at
configure & te ship laser unit customer side
Services
Technical components

“That’s exactly what I needed,” Tom said. “Now we have only


two roles here. I guess I can have as many lanes in a pool as I like?”

“You can even sub-divide lanes,” Anne said. “So you can dive ar-
bitrarily deep into the structure of the organization.”

“Even down to individuals,” Tom tried to conclude Anne’s re-


marks.

“Well, it’s more about roles, right? You could name an individual
person, but you’d normally rather stick to the role which the person
performs in the given context.”

45
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Why not directly name the person?” Tom was curious. “Why is
this role concept so important?”

“Of course, you could put the name of a particular person in


there,” Anne started explaining, “but typically you have several people
that fulfill the same role. One person might also have different roles in
different contexts. The role reflects qualifications and responsibilities.
It’s just a useful level of abstraction on top of individual people.”

“T see.” Tom compared the process model on the screen with his
hand-drawn model. “There is something else that I could not ex-
press.” He pointed at the annotation in his drawing. “See, the project
engineers are splitting up to develop the optical; the mechanical, and
the electrical parts. What I’d like to express is that these people work
independently.”

“In parallel, so to say,” Anne picked up his thoughts.

“Exactly. They do an initial specification together, but then they


split up in three teams, each working on their parts.”

“There ate ways to express parallelism in BPMN,” Anne tre-


marked. She looked at Tom’s annotation in the drawing and started
remodeling the process.

On the canvas she introduced three new activities, each one dedi-
cated to the teams that Tom mentioned. After that, she dragged a
diamond shape with a plus to split the sequence flow and the same
shape to join the branches that followed.

Tom took out his black notebook and browsed through the
pages. He stopped at the XOR gateway and pointed at it, “That looks
similar to the XOR gateway you showed me the other day.”

“Oh, I remember, you noted that down in your notebook,” Anne

46
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

remarked. “Yes, that is right. In general, gateways are used to split or


merge the sequence flow of a process.” She pointed at the XOR gate-
way in Tom’s notebook. “In this case, exactly one outgoing branch is
taken when splitting and one branch is needed to proceed when join-
ing. The other gateway here,” Anne pointed at the screen, “is the par-
allel gateway. It means ...”
Foren electrical
components

Create a 2
specification raed
for laser unit (eo

eee
mechanical
eee

Build, assemble, Package & Install laser at


configure & test ship laser unit customer side
components

“Let me try,” Tom interfered. “It probably means that all


branches are taken.”

“When splitting the sequence flow, correct,” Anne completed his


thoughts.

“Too easy ....” Tom leaned back in his chair.

“When joining, it waits for all incoming branches to complete,”


Anne finished the description.

“Yes, and that is exactly what happens here, the project engineers
create an initial specification together and then they split up and work
in parallel. When all the component development is done, they hand
over the work to technical services.” A bright smile came over Tom’s
face as he reviewed the process. Tom took some quick notes on a
sheet of paper and jumped up from his seat.

“T think I can take it from here,” he said and went to the door.

47
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Where are you heading?” Anne asked.

“T have some mote ideas, but I have to play with them. Can you
send me the model and the link to that process editor?”

“Sure,” Anne replied, “Pll send you the link to the model. It’s
automatically stored online. Pll grant you access rights. If you load the
URL, the editor will automatically come up in your browser.”

Back in his office, Tom opened his notebook and made note of
the new BPMN constructs that he had just learned from Anne. The
new gateway and the role concept helped a lot in expressing the proc-
esses that were on his mind. But he was still unsatisfied. The docu-
ments that were produced and used during the process still weren’t
ptoperly represented. Anne mentioned that information used in a
process could be represented as well.

He would ask her about that tomorrow. But first, there was a
weekend to fill. Work is done by people, and people need spare time
to recover.

48
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

©
Parallel Gateway
When used to split the sequence
flow, all outgoing branches are taken.
When joining the flow, all branches
must complete before the process
continues.

| Organization —_| Pools and Lanes


Sub- Sub-
Used to depict organizations or
— organization roles. A pool contains the process;
lanes are optional and can sub-divide
the pool or other lanes hierarchically.
An activity is done by the role of the
pool/lane which it is contained in.

49
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Chapter 4

Information Flowing

When Tom entered his office after the weekend, his eyes landed
on the notes he had taken the previous week. He started reading his
email. He had received ten emails since last Friday. One by Haffner,
one by Anne with the process model link, and eight pieces of spam.
He started to read the email from Haffner.

Dear Mr. Bauer,

I'll be in the office on Tuesday morning. We


should meet for a status update on your work.
I heard that you have already talked to A.J.
about the engineering process.
Let's have a chat tomorrow morning at Yam.

Haffner

Tom was glad about Haffner’s interest but still felt kind of un-
prepared. He had no proper process to show yet. He scanned Anne’s
email again to retrieve the link to the process model. Among his notes
he found one sheet of paper with large letters on it saying “include
sales.” He remembered the quick chat with the senior sales manager.
How could he have forgotten to take this into account on Friday?

Tom changed the process model, plugged in the changes, and


continued to modify various parts. He dragged unknown modeling
elements from the shape repository onto the canvas, inspected them,
arranged them, re-arranged them, and then deleted them. In some
cases the symbols didn’t tell him anything. In other cases, he assumed
that he had quite some understanding of their purpose. But toying

51
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

around was not leading anywhere. He would work on this with Anne
in the afternoon, if she was available.

“Hi, Tom,” Anne welcomed him in her office.

“Are you busy?” Tom carefully asked.

“Not too much, just paperwork,” Anne replied.

She seemed to be relaxed, with a constant smile on her face. Tom


compared that with his own mood. In her case, family and children
had provided good recreational activity over the weekend.

“I was waiting for you. I saw your email,” Anne said.

“Yes, the email. I attached the refined model of the process from
Friday. I worked on it today.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Anne opened the tool and looked at the process.

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The Process. B usiness Process Model ing Using BPMN
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Aha, you included sales in the picture,” Anne said instantly.

“How do you like it?”

“It’s a good idea. It gives the process a broader scope.” Anne fol-
lowed the process flow with her fingertips on the screen. “So, the
sales guys contact project engineering to help them with the estima-
tions. Really? Is that true?”

“Yes,” Tom replied. He was a bit proud that Anne read and cor-
rectly explained his model.

“T knew it,” Anne yelled. “These sales guys always pretend that
they rock the house on their own. But they can’t create a simple offer
without help from us.”

Ouch! Tom instantly felt that process transparency also had its
trade-offs. With a process model at hand you don’t only see what your
own role in the organization is, but you also see the activities other
people do.

“Good to know,” she repeated her thought, “that the sales guys
can’t do everything on their own.”

Tom felt the need to explain the model in more detail. “Well, this
only happens in some cases. In other cases, sales can do this on their
own.”

“That’s what you tried to say with ‘otherwise’ here?” Anne


pointed at the sequence flow between the XOR gateways. “You might
consider using the BPMN default flow for such a case,” she said.
Without waiting for Tom’s reaction she changed the arrow to one
with a backslash at the beginning, instead of the textual description.

“What does it mean?” Tom asked.

54
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“ ‘Otherwise’. It means that if the other conditions, such as ‘new


requirements,’ ate not true then this is the flow to go,” Anne said
smirking.

“This is just a shortcut notation to say ‘otherwise’?” he asked.

“Exactly. One of the branches has to be taken anyway. So, when


none of the other criteria match, this default flow is used to indicate
the sequence flow to take.”

“Um, I’m not sure whether this is what I wanted to say.” Tom
took out his small black notebook and noted down the new element.
“But is there something wrong with the process itself?”

“From a modeling perspective, no. And to my best knowledge I


cannot see business-level mistakes in here either,’ Anne said. She
saved the model and leaned back.

“What is this element?” Tom asked and pointed straight at an


icon in the element box of the modeling program. It looked like a
sheet of paper with a dog-ear. Tom had some hopes that it would help
him to proceed with the model.

“This is a data object,” Anne explained. “It is used to represent


information like documents used in your process.”

“Such as a contract,” Tom thought aloud.

“Sure, any kind of information.”

Anne didn’t seem interested in this modeling element but Tom


felt that it’s a new dimension. He cut out the first part of his process
and pasted it to a new canvas. After some rearrangement, he dragged
a data object from the element box and named it “contract.” He took
a sequence flow and connected the “Create offer and sign contract”

55
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

activity with the “contract” data object.

Anne obsetved him without interrupting. So, he continued creat-


ing a “specification” data object and connected it to the “create speci-
fication from requirements” activity in the same way. Then he
stopped and looked at Anne waiting for a reaction. “What does it
mean?” she finally asked.

Tom tried to explain his intention. “It is supposed to mean that


these documents are produced by the activities they are connected
with.”

“Well, your intuitive understanding of BPMN’s data flow abilities


is quite good. Maybe it’s worth spending some time here.” She took
over the mouse and started by deleting the sequence flow that Tom
had just drawn between the activities and the data objects. “This was
wrong,” she said. “You want to express information flowing, right?
This is different from control logic in the process.”

“T see.” Tom was concentrating.

“BPMN has a specific connector to represent that.” She dragged


an atrow with a dotted line and then redrew the activity-data connec-
tions Tom had drawn.

contract

Gather Create offer Create specification


requirements and sign for laser unit from
Preliminary contract the requirements
estimations on
new costs and
requirements feasability

specification

56
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Well,” Tom was barely impressed, “then I was almost right. It’s
just looking slightly different.”

“It is fundamentally different. BPMN is a control-flow-driven


language. The order of execution in a process is determined using the
sequence flow. Data objects can be used to express things on top.”

“So, that’s why it has a dotted line similar to the textual annota-
tion. It has the same meaning, namely nothing,’ Tom said with an
unsuppressed disappointment in his voice.

“Well, there is more in there,’ Anne explained. “See, the arrows


indicate the direction in which the information flows.” Anne pointed
at the “specification” data object. “Here, the information is produced.
There can be situations where the information is consumed. Let’s
think about it.”

“Tf they do a preliminary study, then the information would be


used to create an offer,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” Anne replied, “here we produce a preliminary


study and then we use it over there.” She created a new data object
and named it “preliminary study.” Then she created a directed associa-
tion pointing at it from the activity “preliminary estimations.” Another
directed association connects the data object with the “create offer”
activity.

“You see that there is value in here?” Anne asked.

She looked at Tom. Tom was staring at the computer screen


without saying a word. He saw value, but he was not yet ready to
jump on and run with it. Anne recognized this.

“T need a break,” she said and left the room.

57
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

While Anne was gone, Tom took her place at the computer. He
looked at the model, played with possible re-arrangements and added
new data objects to the canvas, “customer requirements” and “con-
tracted requirements.” He continued to connect the information to
activities.

When Anne came back into the room she walked straight to the
coffee machine. She observed Tom while filling up her cup. He was
absolutely focused.

“How’s it going?” she asked as if they had not seen each other
earlier that day.

“T think it makes sense. I can make use of the data object to show
which information is produced, respectively needed, in a particular
part of the process. Is there more to it?” Tom asked and looked up at
Anne.

“Not much. If a document is modified during a process step, you


can denote this by using a bidirected association.”

“You mean, an association with an arrow at each side.” Tom


looked at his process model. “Not in here.” Tom took out his small
black notebook and started noting something down.

Anne took her coffee and went over to Tom. She scanned the
ptocess snippet that Tom had heavily enriched with data objects and
data flow.

“The contract requirements,” Anne pointed at the screen, “They


are only produced here and used exactly in the activity afterwards.”

“Yes,” Tom looked up at the screen, “the information is actually


exclusive to these two activities. Is there a more elegant way to ex-
press that?”

58
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Indeed there is. You can associate the document directly with
the sequence flow.” Anne changed the process model.

“Nice,” Tom said and continued writing down details in his


book. “Can I do the same with the preliminary studies?”

contract

Create offer Create specification


Gather
and sign for laser unit from
requirements Preliminary contract the requirements
estimations on
new costs and
requirements
feasability
I
= J |
|
l contracted
requirements —
specification
customer
requirements

“Well, the association to the sequence flow is a shortcut notation


for a particular case. Since there is the XOR gateway between the ac-
tivities using the preliminary study data object, you can not apply it.”

Tom grabbed the mouse and saved the model. Then he went
back to the original model and started to put in the data objects and
connections. Anne pointedly looked at the clock over her office door.

“May I ask you to do this stuff on your own computer? There is


actually some work I have to finish.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Tom saved the models so that he could access them from his
computer. He stood up, took his notebook, and went to the door.
There he stopped and turned around to Anne.

59
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Thanks for your time, Anne,” he said.

“You’te welcome,” Anne replied and smiled at him.

When Tom returned to his office, he proceeded from where he


stopped before. He took his overall process idea, put in all the docu-
ments he could imagine, and associated them with the activities in his
process. Afterwards, he printed it on paper and put it on the wall of
his office. He was satisfied with his work. This would be the main
artifact to communicate the progress to Haffner, he thought.

It was 8:55 a.m. when Tom entered his office the next morning.
He was surprised to find Haffner already there. He stood in the office
and inspected the printed process model on the wall. From the side,
Tom could see Haffner’s silhouette. He noticed that Haffner’s belly
made his way well beyond his belt. “Good morning, Mr. Bauer,”
Haffner welcomed Tom. “Unfortunately, I am short of time this
morning, that’s why I came here. Can you quickly update me on your
status?”

“Yes, Sir. I was talking to people from sales and project engineer-
ing. Then I tried to bring the overall process into a big picture,” Tom
explained.
“You mean this picture here?” Haffner pointed at the printout on
the wall. “What is this?”

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The Process. B USUNESS Process Model ing Using BPMN
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“It is a process model written in BPMN, the Business Process


Modeling Notation. It is a modeling language to depict and communi-
cate processes.” Tom pointed at the pool element to start explaining
the notation, “This is a pool. It can contain processes ...”

“T don’t want to become a modeling expert, Mr. Bauer. Just tell


me what we ate doing,” Haffner said impatiently.

He explained the process, starting with the work the sales guys
do. While explaining, he made his way through the model by pointing
at the process parts that he was talking about. Haffner listened and
nodded his head from time to time to keep Tom going. With his fin-
gers he could point at the part that he was currently talking about, and
he could avoid confusion about the context. The longer he talked the
more confident he became.

Haffner suddenly interrupted him, “I don’t think you have fully


understood what we do, Mr. Bauer.”

Tom stared at Haffner, anticipating further shocks to come.


Haffner smiled at him and started explaining.

“We do not always build all the components for a laser.” He


paused and emptied his coffee before continuing. “This company is
mote than thirty years old. We can’t afford reinventing the wheel for
each project. I’m pretty sure that we have component specifications at
hand that we reuse. Without asking them, the project engineers will
probably not tell you, but I am confident that a significant amount of
component specifications are already there. And what is the meaning
of all these arrows?” Haffner pointed at the specification data object.

“The specification is created once and is then the basis for fur-
ther work. However, as development goes on, the specification is
modified, and refined as further details become clearer. Finally, it is

62
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

the input for the build and assembly step.”

“But what is the meaning of all these different types of arrows?”


Haffner asked.

“They show where documents are created, modified or read in


the process,” Tom explained.

“Imagine you are run over by a truck tomorrow,” Haffner said,


“all that remains is this.” He pointed at the model. “It documents
your knowledge. Do you think it’s adequately represented?”

“T will fix this component development stuff and write a docu-


ment to explain...”

Haffner interrupted, “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Bauer. I think


modeling processes is a great thing to document knowledge. I have
seen this stuff before from Ms. White. But you have to be more accu-
rate. Otherwise a reader will have difficulties gaining all the implicit
knowledge. It might also happen that I might have to learn from your
process models. But I feel lost with so many elements and so many
arrows going into all directions. You need to focus on the message.”

Tom looked at the diagram and then looked back to Haffner. He


walked over to the window of his small office and looked down at the
street.

“What information are you missing?,” Tom asked.

“You told me about our sales activities, all this reviewing of old
ptojects and stuff. I think this should be documented in the same
way,” Haffner said.

Tom nodded his head. He turned around and leaned against the
window. Haffner walked a loop around the small office, went back to

63
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

the model on the wall, and pointed at the end of the process.

“And what are these service guys doing? When I was involved in
the development myself we were also testing and installing the units at
the customer site. I never understood why we needed these guys at all.
And you know what? Ever since we have had them, this part of the
production process,” he encircled the last three activities with his fin-
get, “takes longer and longer.”

Haffner was totally into it. “I need to know more about this.
What are they doing and why is it taking so long?” Haffner walked
over to Tom who was still leaning at the window. “I want you to have
a deeper look. Capturing the processes is nice, but without a really
deep knowledge about the reasons behind the process you won’t be
able to fully understand.”

Tom looked down and nodded his head.

Haffner encouraged Tom, “I think you’re well on your way. But


you'll have to take it further. I need you to also look behind the proc-
esses and give me a management summary.” He threw away his empty
coffee cup.

Tom stood in front of his model for another ten minutes. There
would be much more information to be presented in a single model,
he thought. How could that fit together with a management sum-
marty? He would need some more time with Anne that was for sure.
But he also decided to spend some time with the men in the blue
suits, the technical services guys.

64
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Default Flow
The default sequence flow taken at an XOR
gateway. If no other condition matches then the
default flow is taken as a fall back.

Data Object
Represents information flowing through the
Data object
process such as documents, emails, faxes, or
letters.

4 Directed Association
A Used to associate data objects with activities.
The arrow indicates the information flow, such
as reading or writing the data object.

Y Bidirected Association
yh Also used to associate data objects with activi-
ties. The arrows at both sides indicate that the
data object is read and written, so modified dur-
ing the execution of the activity.

7 Undirected Association
“s Can be used to associate data objects with the
sequence flow in between two activities. Repre-
sents data a shortcut for data written and directly
read afterwards.

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Chapter 5

The Need for More


Meeting the right people turned out to be harder than expected.
The sales guys were all out on business assignments. Tom had to re-
call the sales details from the chat with the senior sales manager, Ben
Baker, the other day. The next stakeholders were the project engi-
neers. But since Winning was on vacation, Tom had to find another
person willing to talk to him. Tom decided to invite one of the project
engineers for lunch. During lunch, Tom tried to get back to the de-
velop-or-reuse problem toward which Haffner pointed him. Martin,
the thirty-year-old engineer, told him that it was always a mix of dif-
ferent things. Most components were developed by reusing earlier
work and modifying it. In some cases they could completely re-use
pre-developed component specifications, which they could copy and
paste into the current specification document.

To gather more information, Tom walked to the factory building


to see the guys from technical services. He was surprised to find them
busy disassembling the machine that popped out cylinders into a bas-
ket the other day. He stood aside and watched them working for some
minutes. Then he introduced himself to the man supervising the work.
He learned that this guy is in charge of re-assembling the machine
next week in Portugal. That is why he had to oversee the whole disas-
sembling and packaging.

“How long have you been working on this laser unit?’ Tom
asked.

“This baby took us seven weeks now,” the man replied. “It has
gotten more complicated because this one has to integrate into the
assembly line at the customer site.”

67
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Tom nodded and stood aside. He did not want to get in the way.
These men were concentrating and busy.

“So there were seven weeks of assembly and testing?” Tom asked
in order to continue the conversation.

The man turned to Tom and motioned for him to follow him.
They walked down the factory floor and started a long conversation
about the role of technical services. It went on for half an hour, while
Tom only nodded his head and listened.

Totally filled with information, he thanked his new friend and


went back to his office. For the rest of the day he could only think
about the detailed descriptions of the process and how they fit into
the big picture.

Later, Tom met Anne in her office.

“You know,” Tom started, “I was showing the process to Haff-


ner the other day and...”

Interested, Anne interrupted, “How did he like it?”

“Well, he generally saw the value of process modeling,” Tom


started, “but he was not satisfied with the actual content of the mod-
els. He wants mote accurate information and neat models at the same
time. I’m not sure I can do this with BPMN.”

“You want some more lessons on BPMN?” Anne asked.

“Probably I need more,” Tom replied. “I have talked to a number


of people already. I will also interview some others, but I need more
understanding of the notation to adequately capture what I learn.”

“Ts that what Haffner told you?” Anne asked compassionately.

68
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Tt’s what I feel when I start modeling,” Tom replied.

Anne pointed at the chair Tom usually sat in when he was in her
office. Tom took the chair over to sit next to Anne.

“Do you already know what you are looking for?” Anne asked.

“Yes,” Tom said, and he took out some folded sheets of paper
from his pocket. He unfolded them and pointed at some crossed out
sketches on the first sheet.

“You told me about the gateways,” Tom started. “There is one


where you take and join all branches...”

“The AND gateway,” Anne interposed.

“There is one that selects and joins exactly one branch.”

“That would be the XOR gateway,” Anne thought aloud.

Tom took a deep breath before continuing, “And now I have a


situation that does not fit either one or the other extreme. I need
something to express that an arbitrary number of branches can be
taken.”

“An inclusive OR,” Anne mumbled.

Tom was astonished. He did not expect it to be so easy to con-


vince Anne about the need for another gateway type. During the last
few days he had tried to assemble the intended semantics with combi-
nations of AND and XOR gateways but did not succeed. He was ex-
pecting Anne to correctly remodel the process with him. Instead,
Anne grabbed a pen and started sketching three process snippets on
the paper just below his own crossed out sketches.

69
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

oni o
all branches

cond
exactly one branch
= @

Ses
one. or more branches

“You're right, Tom,” said Anne, while completing her sketch. “In
some situations you need to express that different paths are taken
based on independent conditions.” She pointed at the structure in the
middle, depicting XOR gateways. “Here you can only take one
branch. Not more, not less. The default branch denotes the way to go
in case none of the conditions is true.”

“Yes,” Tom answered. “We talked about this the other day. But
how can I ensure that only one condition is true?”

“Tt’s up to the modeler to ensure that. That’s her responsibility.”

“Um... okay,” Tom grumbled.

“But with the Inclusive OR gateway,” Anne proceeded, “you can


give each outgoing sequence flow an individual condition.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“So, if all conditions are true, it behaves like an AND gateway


and if only one condition is true it’s an XOR gateway,” Tom thought
aloud.

“That’s right. But you would only use this construct in a situation
where you can not say for sure how many branches will be taken.”

“T see. But what if none of the conditions is true?”

“Again you, as a modeler, have to address that because if no con-


dition is true, the process will get stuck,” Anne said.

“Um ... so if I want to merge those branches again. I can use the
same gateway, right? And it will wait for those branches which have
been activated by the splitting Inclusive OR gateway?”

“Yes. You can also use the Inclusive OR gateway to merge


branches. But this part is tricky because theoretically you can combine
all gateways and use an AND split together with an Inclusive OR
merge gateway. But then the semantics become much more compli-
cated. This makes it hard to understand and communicate the process
model. So, my advice is that you use pairs of splits and joints of the
same gateway whenever possible. For the Inclusive OR gateway, that
means you wait for exactly those tokens that have been created by the
corresponding Inclusive OR split gateway beforehand.”

Tom looked at the sketch. The Inclusive OR gateway seemed to


fit perfectly into his needs. He put the sheet of paper under the pile of
unfolded papers he brought with him. The next top most paper had a
big headline stating “Sales.”

“TI can also use the Inclusive OR gateway to express the sales
work. They do different things in a very unstructured way. When they
gather the requirements they have some work packages and are free to

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

choose what they do in order to accomplish the task.”

“Well, this sounds different. The Inclusive OR gateway should


only be used if the work packages to be done are preselected by con-
ditions. That does not fit your description.”

Anne scanned through the notes that Tom had taken. She strug-
gled to read his handwriting. So he explained the process part and
gave her some insight into the way the sales men work.

“The work you describe here is unconstrained and free, with wide
options about what to do,” Anne said. “To gather the requirements,
the salesperson could do different things in any order. To start or skip
an activity is his choice. Also he could decide to interview the cus-
tomer as many times as he likes. That does not fit into a structured
process flow.”

Tom was disappointed, “Does that mean there is no proper way


to model this in BPMN?”

“Oh. yes, there is. You are not the first one having this problem.
In BPMN they introduced a construct called Ad Hoc subprocess.”

“Okay, and what exactly does it do?” Tom asked expectantly.

“Exactly that!” Anne turned to her computer and started drag-


ging shapes onto the canvas. From Tom’s notes she identified the
work to be done. Tom helped her pick the correct tasks and interpret
his handwriting.

“I remembered the model the other day. It had this activity —


gather requirements,” Anne started explaining. “What we do here is,
we drill down into that activity and specify what has to be done to
accomplish it.”

7
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“T didn’t know you can just drill down into activities,’ Tom ex-
claimed. “Can I do this with other activities as well?”
gather requirements

Interview Review
customer Sustenier
gather history
requirements Check
Analyse
country similar
specifics projects

“Sure, but, before that, let’s talk about the semantics of the Ad
Hoc subprocess.” Anne pointed at the shape while explaining, “So
inside an Ad Hoc subprocess you can place tasks only! ” Anne paused
and looked into Tom’s eyes to emphasize the importance of this mes-
sage. “All tasks may be executed in any order. The performer, the one
actually doing this, decides for the next task. He’s also free to do these
tasks as often as he likes.”

“Even including no execution?” Tom interrupted.

“Yes, even no execution at all,” Anne smiled.

Tom stared at the computer screen, “Yeah, that perfectly fits his
job. The salesperson is free to do or skip whatever task.”

“Good, so that’s it,” Anne said.

“Okay, let’s come back to this drill-down thing,” Tom pushed.

Anne wanted to take a sip of coffee. The cup was empty already.
With a teasing smile she asked, “Why are you so interested in sub-
processes?”

“You know, Haffner wants me to present a management sum-


mary. On the other hand, he wants an accurate and detailed model of

1%)
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

the reality. I assume that the new model will not fit on one page. So, I
have to find a way to hide information and drill into it on demand.”

“Yes, hierarchical models are ideal for that, and subprocesses in


BPMN support exactly this concept. If you want to express that there
is more behind one activity, you can just place a plus into it. That
means it is a subprocess.”

“So there is a process behind the activity and I can drill down
into it,” Tom repeated.

Anne explained, “Subprocesses can be used to place a whole


ptocess model inside. Usually a subprocess links to a process diagram
described somewhere else. But there is also the concept of embedded
subprocesses. They can be expanded to show the process behind the
subprocess in the same diagram.”

“That makes sense — so I can show or hide information within a


process model,” Tom remarked.

“Yes. Let’s have a look at an example.” Anne opened an empty


canvas in her modeling tool. “Do you have any idea which process
part you want to discuss for this?”

“Oh yes!” Tom went through the pile of pages in front of him.
He finally found the one he wanted. “Here,” he said, “I think the
technical services process suits quite well.”

“Aha,” Anne said without looking at Tom’s paper. She took a sip
of coffee and pushed the mouse toward Tom. Without hesitating,
Tom took the mouse and started modeling. He chose subprocesses
instead of tasks for those activities he wanted to decompose.

When Tom had finished modeling, he gave the mouse back to


Anne. Without saying a word, Anne took it and double-clicked the

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

first subprocess symbol in the process. One dialog later she could drag
and drop modeling elements into the subprocess shape. The subproc-
ess marker disappeared. Almost bored, Anne put three activities in a
sequence and connected them.

Build, assemble,
Package and ship laser Install laser at
configure & test
unit customer side
components

“Shouldn’t there be a start and an end event?” Tom asked.

“Where?”

“In the subprocess? he asked.

“Well, no. I mean yes. You’re right, but you can use a shortcut
notation like this. It means that the subprocess starts with the activity
that has no incoming sequence flow, and it ends when all activities are
done.”
build, assemble, configure & test components

build aseesbiota configure & Se)


(is) components 3
components Wollaser Gant test laser unit

J shortcut notation

build, assemble, configure & test components


F assemble
build configure &
components islncartnit test laser unit
eile

J collapsed sub-process

build, assemble,
configure & test
components

Anne copied and pasted the subprocess and remodeled it with a


start and an end event. “For our cases these are totally equivalent rep-

75
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

resentations of the same information,” Anne explained.

Tom frowned, “Why would I do this? Two representations with


the same meaning?”

‘Well, you can have a more compact representation of the same


information. Embedded subprocesses ate shown in the same diagram.
So there is limited space.”

“T see.”

“And usually you want to avoid overhead to have the most com-
pact representation possible.” ;

“Um.., I understand the motivation,” Tom said, “but still I think


it’s odd that one can do it both ways.”

“Tf you think that is odd, have a look at this.”

Anne created a new process model and started modeling. She


took a subprocess without a marker and placed two other activities
inside without a connection.

“Can you imagine what that means?” She asked.

“It looks a bit like the Ad Hoc subprocess. But we are missing
the marker here,” Tom replied.

“That’s right. This is also a shortcut notation.” Anne put another


process snippet next to it.

“This representation says,” Anne explained, “that both activities


inside the subprocess are enabled as soon as the subprocess is en-
abled. When these activities are done, the subprocess finishes. It’s a
shortcut notation to say: These activities can run in parallel.”

76
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

&

“Um, strange,” Tom stated. “Why not simply take the other ver-
sion using gateways to express parallelism?”

“Just look at the size,’ Anne defended the approach. “We can
express the same knowledge with much less space.”

“But only for this particular case. If there were more activities
with complex relations, what then?”

“I agree,” Anne interrupted, “but for this case it helps to save


space and constructs. That’s why I said it’s a shortcut.”

Anne saved the models they created so far. When she came to the
technical services process, Tom interfered. “Can we also refine this
process a little more? I don’t think it is properly represented yet.”

“Sure.”
Tom pointed at the task “build components” and said, “here,
there is something interesting going on that I was not able to express.
It is also related to parallelism.”

“Okay, let’s have a look,” Anne said.

“You know, they build these components and therefore they split
up. The creation of a single component is decoupled from the crea-
tion of any other.” Tom paused for a moment before he continued,

WW
The Process: Business Process Modehing Using BPMN

“But I don’t know how to express this. In general, I don’t know how
many components will be produced.”

“Um....’m not sure. A normal activity representing the whole


step would be the correct way to show it,” Anne suggested.

“But there must be mote to it,” Tom replied. “I want to express


that there are numerous components built. They usually do it in paral-
lel, so theoretically, if there were five components and five people
working on them, they could do it all in parallel.”

“Ah, I think I got the point.” Anne picked up the ball, “The ac-
tivity to build a component is done many, many times.”

“Yes, for each component.”

“And each execution is independent, so they might overlap.”

“Yes, for me it’s just a special case for parallelism but it’s always
the same task,” Tom said.

“That has the characteristics of a multiple instances activity,”


Anne finally concluded.

“Okay,” Tom was confused, “that doesn’t ring a bell.”

Anne placed a marker with three bars below the activity.

“That should do,” she said.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Build Assemble
components Configure &
components
test laser unit
to laser unit

produce components in parallel

Tom stared at the screen, disbelieving. “And what does it mean


now?”

“Tt means that the activity is executed many times, once for each
component,” Anne explained. “The individual executions are inde-
pendent from each other, so they can run in parallel.”

“How do you call that activity type again?”

“A multiple instances activity.”

“Okay, the name makes sense, but the marker is strange.” Tom
grabbed the mouse and put an annotation to the activity.

“Tt’s just for me to remember,” he said.

Thinking about it, he asked, “When is this activity completed?


Can I skip instances just like I can for the Ad Hoc subprocess?”

Anne rejected emphatically, “No, no, no! Ad Hoc subprocesses


offer inner activities and the user decides to do one or the other. The
multiple instances activity can express that each item in a list should
be processed.”

“Ah, like each component in our case.”

“Yes. Or writing an email to each person on a list.”

19
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“T see,” Tom nodded. He stared out of the window and into the
blue sky. Anne observed him. She could see his brain working.

“So whenever I do the same task many times, I can use this.”

“Not quite correct,” Anne replied. “First of all, it is not limited to


tasks. You can also have a subprocess that is done multiple times,
okay?”

Tom nodded his head. He had taken out his black notebook and
started noting things down.

“Also, there ate other ways to express that an activity is done


multiple times. The distinguishing feature of the multiple instances
activity is that these things run in parallel and typically the number of
instances depends on a collection of items to be processed.”

“T got this part, but what do you mean by ‘other ways’?”

“Loops, for example.” Anne paused to await Tom’s reaction. He


didn’t raise an eyebrow waiting for more information to come.

Anne turned toward the computer screen. “Here,” she pointed at


the model. “The testing is probably not done once, is it?”

“Oh no, I talked to the guys from technical services and they al-
ways test, configure, test, configure ... This goes on for weeks! ”

“See, that’s what I mean,” Anne said. She took an arrow indicat-
ing a citcle and placed it as a marker at the bottom of the activity
“configure & test laser unit.”

“And what does that mean? Is the task repeated?” Tom asked.

eco

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Build Assemble Configure &


components components test laser unit >)
to laser unit
il x9)
[produce components in parallel until tests ok

“How often is it repeated?”

“Well, you have to specify that of course. It’s done using a condi-
tion. You know, not everything you can express with BPMN is repre-
sented visually. There are quite a number of hidden attributes for each
construct.” Anne pointed to the attribute list on the right of the tool.
“The tool allows us to configure the hidden attributes. But at the end
of the day, it’s all about the visual diagram. When you print it, you
won’t see all the attribute values. Therefore, I would suggest an addi-
tional annotation to also visually show the attribute.” She associated
an annotation to the activity and put in “until tests ok.”

“Um....” Tom took a long pause to think about it.

“Sorry, I have to leave,’ Anne said to Tom and started packing


some paper into a briefcase.

“Couldn’t I just model loops using XOR gateways?” Tom asked.

“You can, of course. The loop activity is again just a shortcut.”

She rushed to the door, turned around and looked at Tom. He


still stared at the computer screen, lost in thoughts.

“You can stay here if you like. P’ll be back soon.” She paused for
a moment and then said, “Maybe it’s a good exercise to model the
looped activity as a subprocess. But beware,” she lifted a finger, “the
loop marker is already stating a loop. You should take a normal sub-

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

process and model the loop inside using gateways.” Then she left.

Tom was still sitting in front of the computer screen. He started


browsing through the models. From time to time he took some notes.
After that he started remodeling the configure and test laser unit activ-
ity. “Beware!” Tom could still hear Anne’s advice. After he finished
the model, he started looking around Anne’s office. She had huge
plants in there. Tom wondered whether she had raised them here or
brought them from home. Through the window, he could already see
Anne coming back from the factory building. He checked his model
again, decided to make some changes, and played with the arrange-
ment of elements in the embedded subprocess. Then he printed it out
and waited for Anne.

Configure & test laser unit


tests

Orpaleee
laa Oe)
Build Assemble
components components to
laser unit

“And? How did it go?” Anne asked while walking through the
door of her office.

“Quite good, I think,” Tom replied and proudly held up the


printed model.

“Uh ...,” Anne said while taking the model from Tom’s hands.

“Let’s see. This model says that you will in any case first config-
ure and then test.” She took the model over to the coffee machine.
When she recognized that the coffee pot was empty, she put the
model aside, and filled the coffee machine.

“So when the tests are okay, you finish. When the tests are not

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

okay, you loop back. How is that possible?” Anne wondered.

“What?” Tom wanted to know.

“Why did you join the branches in the beginning using an XOR
gateway?”

“Well, I thought it can be used to join alternative branches. And


in this case there is either the start coming in or the loop back. I
thought of these as alternatives.”

“That’s correct,” Anne assured Tom. “That’s totally correct. I’m


just astonished that you got it right the very first time you try that.”

“Originally, I connected it back to the start event because the


process starts all over. Would that also be valid?”

“Definitely not. A start event must never have an incoming se-


quence flow. Just as the end event must not have an outgoing one,”
Anne explains.

“So there is nothing wrong about this model?” Tom wondered.


He really expected mistakes in there. This was the first loop he ever
modeled.

Anne briefly inspected ‘the model, “No, I don’t see any. I have
only one remark since you are now approaching a more sophisticated
modeling style, and we even talked about shortcuts ...,” Anne paused.

“That is?” Tom couldn’t wait for the answer.

“If you loop back directly into the configuration activity, you
would save the XOR gateway,” Anne replied. “The semantics are, that
an activity is triggered by an incoming sequence flow. So, you could
do an implicit merge by connecting two alternative sequence flows

83
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

into one activity.”


tests

© em EVR O
ok

“Um.,...” Tom stared at the diagram. “In this case I can save
some space and could have a more condensed model. But actually I
don’t like all this shortcut stuff.”

“That’s okay, just normal. You have to practice and then you will
find one or the other solution more useful. I just wanted to make you
aware of alternatives,” Anne said. At the same time, she glanced at the
clock above the door.

“T want more!” Tom exclaimed. He was in a rush now. Ready to


model everything. “Please teach me more concepts.”

“No way,” Anne replied. “I have to leave now and pick up my


son from my mother’s place. Besides, you’re well equipped already.
Go, model! And come back if you have questions.”

Inclusive OR Gateway
Can be used to split or join the sequence
flow. When splitting, branches are taken
based on individual conditions, but at least
one branch should be taken. When joining,
all activated branches are synchronized.

Collapsed Subprocess
collapsed Is a special activity that contains a process
subprocess
model inside. One can expand it to see the
embedded process within the same diagram.
Alternatively, a subprocess can link to a
ptocess model somewhere else.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

expanded embedded Expanded Embedded Subprocess


subprocess When expanding the subprocess, one can
see the detailed behavior. Shortcuts ate al-
lowed such as omitting start and end events,
making them implicit.

expanded Ad Hoc Expanded Ad Hoc Subprocess


subprocess Contains tasks only. The performer of the
C.)
oO
tasks can decide to do, re-do or skip them.
The order can be freely chosen.
~~!

Multiple Multiple Instances Activity


Instances The activity is done many times for each
Activity item in a collection. The instances can be
spawned off in parallel if enough resources
are available.

Loop Activity
Loop
Activity
The activity is done repeatedly. The number
of executions depends on a condition to be
.?) checked either at start or at completion of
one activity instance,

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Chapter 6

Complex Situations Require Simple


Models

Within days Tom had created more than twenty models. They all
depicted pieces and parts of the development process. Some fit to-
gether neatly — others had overlaps or white spots. He also captured
the same situation with alternative models to discuss them with the
people involved. He often needed to explain the meaning of the dif-
ferent symbols before the interviewees were willing to comment on
the models. However, the only person to give detailed feedback about
his models remained Anne. They often discussed modeling mistakes
and the modeling style. From the notes taken during the interviews
Tom identified the information to be depicted. But he struggled to put
everything together in one big picture.

A couple of days later, Tom was finally there. From the set of
process models he managed to create one overall model. It showed an
end-to-end process starting with sales and ending with the laser unit
running at the customer site. He was very satisfied to finally have an
integrated view of the overall process. When he printed it out, the
model spanned six pages.

“You will not show that to Haffner, will your” Anne marveled
when Tom showed her the process modeling puzzle covering his of-
fice wall.

“Oh, no,” Tom replied. “That is definitely not the model to dis-
cuss with Haffner. But I’m not sure how to tackle this. I thought
about omitting this patt....”

87
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Hierarchical modeling,” Anne interrupted. “You may leave


things out. But you'll gain the most from a set of interlinked hierarchi-
cal models.”

Tom was lost. “Are we talking about subprocesses?”

“Exactly. You will have to slice the process into reasonable parts.
Each part is representing a subprocess. These subprocesses should fit
together into one top-level process for the big picture.”

“But it’s difficult to slice it. There are many alternatives to break
the process into pieces. How to choose?”

“Yeah, that’s difficult. This is a decision you as the modeler of


this process will have to take,” Anne said. Tom was disappointed.
Anne’s answet was not of any help. He had expected a more solid
grounding for his work.

“As a tule of thumb,” Anne advised, “one model should fit on


one page. Readable! ”

After Anne left his office, Tom tried to identify process parts to
summarize as subprocesses. But where to start and to end? How to
bundle activities together, so they form a reasonable subprocess?

These questions drove Tom day in, day out. They even came
back to him at night in a dream! He was driving a golf cart. Winning,
Haffner, and Anne were accompanying him. The driveway was actu-
ally a sequence flow. When they came to a crossroad, it turned out to
be an XOR gateway. Tom set the indicator to continue at the default
flow.

“That’s not how we do it,” Winning said. Haffner gently reached

88
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

for the steering wheel and redirected the cart. They continued driving
down the other path. They passed tasks like “create specification” and
“assemble unit.” The tasks were painted on the ground like a cross-
walk. Tom drove on. The drive way narrowed, and the golf cart sped
up. A block appeared on the horizon.

“What shall I do?” Tom asked nervously. The block was getting
bigger as the golf cart gets nearer. It looked like a high riser with a
huge plus on it.

“Stop here, it’s not important,” Anne said from the back seat.

“Go on,” Haffner commanded, “I want to know everything! ”

The block was getting bigger as the golf cart gathered speed. Tom
tried to slow down but the brakes didn’t react. Tom yelled as they
were about to crash into the wall of the big block. He awoke from his
dream dripping with sweat. It was five o’clock in the morning. The
early birds had just started screaming in front of his bedroom. What a
dream. What a night.

Back in the office, Tom cleaned up the models, which were


spread all over the walls and the floor. One snippet he found was the
initial development process that he drew with Anne at the very begin-
ning. Only five activities. Tom decided to focus on this top-level
ptocess and adjust all the rest to it. With this decision taken he could
now model the process top-down. The work really seemed to flow,
and Tom could finally reduce the zoo of process models to a core set
that described the big picture. He was not confident about his deci-
sion because it also meant throwing away models he was very proud
of. But Anne assured him that this is how it works in the real world.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“You will never model the complete reality,” she said. “You need
to focus on the main purpose of your models. The more complex the
situation, the more important it is to focus. Complex situations fe-
quire simple models.”

With that certainty, Tom finally called Haffner and made an ap-
pointment to present the development process at LaserTec to him.
Haffner limited the presentation to fifteen minutes. The whole meet-
ing was to last only half an hour. Tom had expected mote time, but
Haffner made it clear that the value was to communicate the impor-
tant stuff in condensed form. For a convenient presentation, Tom
assembled a slide set. Each slide contained one of his small process
models. When Tom came to the meeting room, Haffner sat at the
head of the table browsing through paperwork. “Shall we start?”
Haffner asked and briefly looked up to Tom. When he saw that the
projector was not running yet, he lowered his head again, “Are you
set, Mr. Bauer?”

Tom powered up the projector and started the presentation from


his flash-memory stick. Once the first slide was shown on the wall,
Haffner put his paper work aside and looked at Tom.

“Alright,” Tom started, “Today I want to present an overview of


the development process at LaserTec.”

Collect Maintain laser


customer Develop Produce components Test and install anciaravia a
requirements | components and assemble laser laser unit efi .

LaserTec
rh rh

contracted specification
requirements

The first slide showed the top-level process. Tom explained the
overall picture — first, the main activities, from collecting requirements
to support at the customer side. Haffner was fully concentrated and
followed Tom’s description of the process. His eyes started shining

90
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

when Tom explained the subprocess concept and that he was going to
drill down into every process step marked with a plus. After a short
introduction, Tom zoomed into the ‘Collect customer requirements’
subprocess. “You remember the sales activities,” he started. “You
requested to have the detailed activities in the process model and here
they are.” Tom explained the different steps that the sales colleagues
conduct to gather the customer requirements.

“What is this tilde symbol good for?” Haffner interrupted.

“Tt denotes the fact, that each activity might be skipped or done
while they gather requirements.”

“Who decides to skip an activity?” Haffner wanted to know.

“The individual sales person. It’s basically a set of activities that


ate offered to be done.”

“Okay, so when is this step over?”

“When the customer requirements document is completed.”

“Do we have a template for that document?”

“T’m not completely sure....” Tom had no straight answer: a


question he never thought of, especially since this document, which
he had shown Haffner a few weeks ago, was already in the process.

“Never mind. I will ask Anne to check this.” Haffner noted


something down on a blank sheet of paper.

“Then,” Tom started again, “the salesperson might ask a project


engineer to do some preliminary estimations.”

s new, I see,” Haffner said as he


“In case the requirementare

91
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

completed the description.

“Yes, and, finally, sales creates a contract offer which is then


signed by the customer. The contract is based on the customer tre-
quirements and, if necessary, on the preliminary study.”

Preliminary estimations
Project
EA on costs and feasability jhe
Engineering

new preliminary
Gather requirements requirements study
8 Interview bstoe
aa customer || CUstomer Create offer
history -
a
and sign
Check Analyse ‘ contract
country similar
specifics projects
~

customer contracted
requirements requirements

“Um...,” Haffner mumbled. He reflected on the process, but


looked a little unhappy. “In general, I like the level of detail here,”
Haffner said, “but getting a customer to sign a contract offer is a long
process. Sometimes it never happens. All that is not reflected here. It
looks as if the customer will do it anyway, no matter what we offer
him.” Haffner paused briefly before he continued, “Have you talked
to sales about this?”

“This particular part?” Tom pointed at the ‘Create offer and sign
contract’ activity. “Well, not in detail.”

“Would it be possible to put such a plus into the shape and drill
down to explore this activity?” Haffner asked.

“Yes, of course,” Tom answered. He actually wanted to do that


but he did not have enough information to model the situation.
Therefore, he had dropped it.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“The result of this first subprocess is,” Tom started again while
pointing at the overview diagram, “a set of requirements promised to
the customer.” He jumped back to the high-level process. “As you see
here, this is passed to the next step in which the laser is developed.”

“So the component development is done by project engineer-


ing,” Tom said and pointed at the pool. “Starting from the contracted
requirements, the initial specification for the laser unit is created. This
is typically done in a workshop where all the engineers sit together.
Then they split up and develop the necessary components.”

Haffner was confused. “Didn’t you miss something?” he inter-


rupted and pointed at the projected image on the wall.

Tom stopped and turned around. He followed the process flow


from the beginning and said, “Oh, yes ... of course.” He rolled back
the story line to the specification part, “When the specification is
done, they look up in the archive whether they have already developed
components like this; if so, they can reuse them.”

“Wouldn’t they just use the specifications for that?” Haffner


wondered.

“T beg your pardon?”

“When they look up whether a particular component was already


built before, I think the specification would be helpful. In your model
the specification is connected to every activity but this one.”

“Ahem....” Tom did not expect Haffner to pinpoint such details


of the model.

“What are these diamonds with circles inside?” Haffner asked.

Tom was still confused about the last remark, but happy to

94
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

change the topic and explain the semantics of the inclusive OR gate-
way. He stressed the fact that each outgoing branch might be chosen
and that the set of branches depended on individual expressions. That
way, one or more — even all — branches might be chosen. Haffner was
satisfied. He recalled the discussions on this topic that they had in
Tom’s office the other day.

“So, here you say that it might be possible that we do not develop
mechanical components’ specifications because we can reuse parts.”

“That’s right,” Tom said.

“Okay, so what comes next? Where does the specification go?”

Tom jumped back to the top-level process and briefly resumed


the process so far. “After the component developments are done, we
have a detailed specification at hand. This is now used to produce the
individual parts and to assemble them to a laser unit.”

Build components Assemble


is components to
il laser unit

71
7
7
Technical
Services

specification

Haffner looked at the rather small process and frowned. “What is


the point here? There are only two activities.” Then he discovered the
three bars in the “Build components” activity. “What are these?”

“Well,” Tom started explaining, “they indicate that the activities


are done multiple times. So, depending on the number of components
to be built, there might be five or fifty activities of this type.”

95
The Process: Business Process Modehing UsingBPMN

“Okay, that makes sense.”

“The special fact here is,” Tom continued, “that these activities
ate independent from each other. So if fifty components are to be
built and we had the capacity, they can all be done in parallel. If we
only have five workers, we can expect that it will take ten times as
long.”

‘Well, the problem is not only the workforce,” Haffner stated.


“We need specialized machines to build the components. Last year we
evaluated whether it makes sense to buy more machines to speed up
exactly this part of the production that you are pointing at now. But
the conclusion was that more machines wouldn’t pay off. They are
expensive, and more machines wouldn’t significantly help to speed up
the time from order to delivery.” Haffner paused for a moment before
he continued, “Then we thought the problem was the assembly of the
laser units because more components need more time. But this was
not a big deal either.”

Haffner stared at the process model on the slide. He was lost in


thought. Tom patiently waited for a reaction.

“Can you go back to your overview process?” Haffner asked, and


Tom switched to the initial slides.

“There!” Haffner raised his arm and pointed at the process


model. “That’s where we lose most of the time. I still don’t under-
stand why. Can we dive into this?”

“I guess you mean the next process step, the one for testing and
installation.”

“Yes, of course. Just show me what happens there.”

Tom zoomed into the subprocess for testing and installation, and

96
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

the slide changed to the subprocess.

3
A
c Configure . Testiaser unit > Package & ship Install laser unit at
oO laser unit laser unit customer side
2)
e
A
¢
3
=
customer
test scenarios

Tom took a step toward the slide projected on the wall and
started describing, “There are a few reasons why the testing may take
a long period of time. Most importantly, the cumulative complexity
you mentioned before. But there is also the aspect of more integration
with the machines at the customer site.”

Tom illustrated the current project in which the laser unit had to
integrate with the assembly line at the customer site and therefore
needed specialized test scenarios. From his interviews he found out
that in the majority of cases the customer provided test scenarios, but
the detailed descriptions arrive just before the testing started. There-
fore, it was very hard to predict how complex the testing would be in
the end.

“Is that what this means? The arrow going back to this configure
task?” Haffner asked.

“Yes, there is a decision here, right after the tests, and if all tests
are fine we could package and ship the laser unit, but the default case
is that we go back to the configuration task because the laser unit does
not fit the specified test scenario.”

“Oh my goodness,” Haffner exclaimed. He threw up his hands in


horror. “I knew it. I knew about the increased complexity of our la-
sers. I knew about the customer-specific test scenarios. But I never

pa)
The Process: Business Process Modeling UsingBPMN

linked it to more test cycles. This, in combination with more complex


test scenarios, is a nightmare.”

The meeting room was silent. Only the fan of the projector could
be heard. Haffner stared at the slide on the wall and was buried in
thought again. Tom stood near the presentation computer and waited
for a reaction from Haffner.

“Do you have an idea on how to fix it?,” Haffner finally asked.

“The step itself is unavoidable,” Tom started cautiously. “Maybe


the way we do configuration and testing can be optimized so we will
need less iterations.”

Haffner nodded; he still had not taken his eyes off the slide.

“T’m not an engineer,” Tom continued, “but it might be possible


to define subunits which can be tested together before the complete
laser unit is tested with all components.”

Haffner turned away from the projection and looked at Tom.


“From an engineering point of view,” he explained, “it makes sense to
test subunits first. But the people doing it are not the engineers.”

Haffner stood up from his chair. He paced beside the conference


table, staring at the carpet. Tom could see his brain working.

“Okay, Mr. Bauer. I think I need to discuss this with A.J. as soon
as possible.”

Tom turned off the projector and shut down the computer.

“Please send me your slides, Mr. Bauer. I liked that, with the
high-level model and the different subprocesses. Quite a nice way to
present the information.”

98
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Haffner was satisfied with Tom’s presentation. He emphasized


that the process models were indeed helpful to trace the story and to
point at particular steps to discuss.

“What ate you doing next week, Mr. Bauer?” Haffner suddenly
asked, and, as Tom didn’t answer, he continued, “I just made a deal.
Quite a big project. We'll team up with PDO to deliver a very big
machine. I already set up the basics with the head of PDO, but there
are still some details to be discussed regarding the collaboration. You
and your process skills should provide a good basis for making sure
that we don’t overlook any important details. To be more specific, I
want you to identify all the documents we need to exchange with
PDO. Ready for that?”

“T will do my best.”

“T know.”

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Chapter 7

How to Interact with


Business Partners

Tom checked his watch. It was a quarter past seven in the eve-
ning. He took a cab from the train station to the hotel, dropped off
his bag, and took another cab to meet David in a bar. The first time
David and Tom had met was when they studied together in Lancaster.
They shared just a few classes, but they hung out a lot in their spare
time. Tom found David again when he browsed his social network for
process experts. It turned out that David became a B2B process con-
sultant. Tom was not quite sure what that meant but arranged a meet-
ing when he found out that David had a project in the same city
where Tom had to go for the PDO job.

When Tom entered the bar he immediately recognized David. He


wore a nice suit, and the silk tie properly completed the picture of a
successful consultant. He must have come directly from work. They
took a seat in the corner of the crowded bar and ordered two pints of
draft beer. Things went very well after they graduated from the uni-
versity, but it was hard to keep track of the individual careers. David
worked for one of those large software companies selling software
systems to even larger companies. He briefly described his job as a
negotiation between different companies that want to work together.
David had not changed much. He still talked a lot, and loved sharing
anecdotes.

“Tell me about your new job,” David finally asked. “What exactly
ate you doing?”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Tom told him about LaserTec and Haffner; that he had still not
fully understood how a laser actually works; and that everyday life in
the company is quite different from what he had expected it to be. He
told David about Anne and how he was slowly becoming the process
expert at work.

The word “process expert” triggered something in David: “So we


basically do the same thing!”

“What do you mean?”

‘Well, what I do all day long is look at processes and how they
can be supported using software. My specialty is business-to-business
integration, often related to supply chains and logistics. Especially in
scenatios with a high number of interactions involved, automation
really makes a difference. You would be amazed by how much money
can be saved by exchanging electronic messages instead of good old
faxes.”

Tom thought about the piles of faxes at LaserTec and Anne look-
ing at each of them, making colored annotations, and sticking post-its
on them.

“Sounds great. How do you do this?” Tom wanted to know.

“As a start, we do the same thing as you do at LaserTec,” David


started explaining. “We first use process modeling techniques to cap-
ture all dependencies between the different interactions. Parallel to
that, we define what content a message should have. As a next step we
dive into the technical details and add concrete message specifications
and some other technical configurations, regarding security, for exam-
ple. Once the different partners have agreed on this, my colleagues
take over and realize the processes using software systems. By the
way, what modeling language are you using at LaserTec? Are you fa-

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

miliar with event-driven process chains?”

That didn’t ring a bell for Tom. “No, we are using BPMN. Have
you heard of it?”

“You must be kidding. I am the biggest fan of BPMN on this


planet!” David burst out. “We use it extensively. My team tried differ-
ent other techniques over the last years, but BPMN turned out to be
the one that our customers accept best. They love the icons. And you
have to agree that those little message symbols do look good.”

Tom felt as if someone had switched off the lights. Was David
really talking about the same language?

“What symbols?” he asked and took a big gulp of beer.

“T mean the event symbols. You haven’t come across them yet?”
David rummaged in his bag and finally pulled out a laptop. It’s a hy-
per-fancy, ultra-light-weight, business-user-only laptop such as Tom
had never seen before. David put his laptop on the table.

“Ah, there we go.” The laptop came to life in zero time, showing
the usual corporate desktop design for big companies. David opened
his modeling tool. “You know about collapsed pools and message
flow, right?”

“Collapsed pools? Collapsed subprocesses you mean.”

“No. Pools! Empty pools. The process is hidden inside the pool.”

Tom was confused. David sipped his beer. “Look. What I am


drawing now is not exactly a process model. But let’s get there step by
step. Let me first get you up to speed with message flows. But you do
know about sequence flow, don’t your”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling UsingBPMN

“Of course, it is essential for the activity order within a process! ”

“Alright, what you see here are two empty pools with message
flow between them.” Tom looked at the screen. He only saw two rec-
tangles without text in them and a dashed line connecting them.

“Could we label this? That would help me to understand it bet-


ter,” Tom inquired.

“Sure. Let’s take an example from LaserTec. Tell me, where do


you interact with business partners?”

Tom immediately came up with the answer. “We are doing a joint
project with another company. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Great! What’s the company’s


y name?” David was ready y to ein
the names.

“It’s PDO. Don’t ask me what it stands for.”

“And what documents are you exchanging?”

“Hard question. The meeting is tomorrow. I had a short look at


the documents on my train ride today. We must agree on project spe-
cific contracts. That’s already for sure.”

“So you are going to send them the contract and then they send a
signed contract back?”

“T guess so. Also we will send them some kind of final report in
the end.”

“Too easy.” David quickly completed the diagram. He turned his


notebook toward Tom and ordered two more beers by waving his
hand at the young lady behind the counter.

104
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

LaserTec
= ra S

Gonract
A,
Signed
i
Final
. contract report

\/ \/

“Is that a BPMN diagram?” Tom mistrusted the model as it


didn’t show any familiar elements.

“Of course, it is,” David assured him. “Here,” he pointed at the


rectangles, “you see two empty pools. Each one represents an organi-
zation, the companies. They have processes inside, but those proc-
esses aren’t shown here. And the dashed lines denote the information
exchanged between the organizations.”

“Interesting...” Tom was lost in thought. “I have never seen any


BPMN diagram with more than one pool.” Tom paused. “And read-
ing the diagram from left to right tells me that first the contract is
sent, then the signed contract and the final report, doesn’t it?”

“Not teally,” David replied. “This diagram does not tell you any-
thing about the order of messages. All it says is that there are two
organizations, LaserTec and PDO, and that they might exchange
documents. It also tells you who sends a document to whom, and the
direction of the information flow. But that’s about it.”

“Um, I am not quite convinced of this model. It might be useful


to simply enumerate the documents involved. But without dependen-
cies I don’t really see the point.”

“What additional information would you like to express?”

105
The Process: Business Process Modeling UsingBPMN

Tom thought for a while. “We work with PDO to produce spe-
cial laser machines for our customers. I would like to express that
LaserTec handles the contracting with PDO and the ultimate cus-
tomer in parallel. And the final report can only be forwarded to PDO
once it has arrived from the customer.”

“So you want a third party involved — the customer,” David said.

“Right. And we might also add that the signed contract can only
be returned after the contract is sent. I mean this should be obvious,
but we can include it anyway.”

“Okay, okay. No Problem,” David said and started modeling.


This time it took him a bit longer. While he was still adding shapes, he
explained, “You can combine message flow with sequence flow in the
same diagram. The message flow shows who sends a document to
whom. And the sequence flow shows the dependencies between the
message exchanges within each partner.” Tom observed David con-
necting different shapes.

Please also include that the customer sends a hand-over certifi-


cate,” Tom added. “For us, it is the sign that the machine is running
properly at the customer side.”

“That’s a good point. Because the final report to PDO is proba-


bly sent after everything is set up and running?”

“Of course.”

“In that case, the customer process is very simple: He first gets
the contract, then he returns the signed document, and, finally, he
sends the hand-over certificate. That’s what you meant, right?”

106
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN


o
=
2°o
7)
S|
oO

Signed Hand-over
Contract
1 contract _ certificate
I

LaserTec

Signed
Contract
contract |

Tom took a look at the diagram and wondered, “I didn’t know


about events for sending or receiving information. I would have ex-
pected a simple task for that.”

“Well, you can do that,” David explained. He took a pen from his
jacket and drew a sketch on the back of a napkin. “A task might also
have incoming and outgoing message flow. Using events for sending
and receiving is just an alternative way of depicting it. However, I
would use an event only if it is about sending or receiving informa-
tion. I would use a task if there is more work associated with it.”

“T see,” Tom inspected the drawing on the napkin. “It’s a nice


way of depicting it, with these black and white messages for sending
and for receiving information.”

107
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Yeah, that’s cool!” David answered. “I like this a lot. And it


makes it much easier to read diagrams. With the different message
symbols you can easily distinguish between inbound and outbound
interactions. When the message symbol is white with black strokes,
then the message is received. When the background and stroke color
are inverted, then the message is sent. This color coding schema for
catching and throwing events holds true also for other event types in
BPMN.”

“There are more types of events besides messages?”

“Oh, yes, there are. But the most important type is the message —
at least for me, because they symbolize information exchange between
business partners.”

“T see,” said Tom.

David continued, “By the way, you can add more BPMN ele-
ments to this model. But in this diagram type you usually want to fo-

108
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

cus on the interaction. Adding internal activities is then up to every


partner. They do not have to reveal to others what they do internally.”

“Sure, I get it. Companies even compete over processes,” Tom


concluded.

“You bet they do,” David replied. “T’ll take this,” Tom said, fold-
ing the napkin and placing it into his pocket next to his small black
book. “Can you also send me the link to the diagram?” he asked. “I
think that is really what I needed.”

“No problem at all. But will you have another beer with me?”
David raised his glass.

“No problem at all,” Tom replied. They chinked their glasses and
emptied them.

It was 8:55 am. Tom was sitting in a meeting room at PDO.


Tom was reviewing the process from last night when a man stepped
in. He was in his early forties, and his badly shaved beard made him
look a bit like an absentminded professor.

“Interesting challenge we got here,” he started right away. “Hello.


My name is Webber. Have you already checked out the requirements
that General Vehicles sent over?”

“T quickly browsed through them on my way here,” Tom replied.

Webber continued, “Let’s hope for a smooth project with them


this time.”

“You have already developed machines for them?” Tom asked.


He researched the basic facts about General Vehicles, a major supplier

109
The Process: Business Process Modeling UsingBPMN

for the big car manufacturers, on the Internet. With the rise of cata-
lytic converters they specialized in sophisticated exhaust pipe liners,
and now they dominate the market.

“Well, back in the days when we developed components for their


assembly line,” Webber said as he took a seat next to Tom, “we de-
veloped our pipe liners for almost a half a year. Then political issues
took over and they changed the supplier. In the end, I still don’t know
what went wrong. I’m an engineer. I don’t deal with politics, I deal
with projects.”

“How about joint projects like this one? Have you done a lot of
this kind?”

“Well,” Webber took a deep breath, “too many, honestly. Some-


times I wish we were working on our own. But to get the big bites you
have to team up. But coordination can be a nightmare. You know, the
partners need to coordinate their work.”

“And that’s what we are here for,” Tom said.

“I would be happy if we’d simply share the important docu-


ments,” Webber explained, “synchronizing support plans, for exam-
ple. And most important of all: Get prepared for emergencies. Things
go wrong. Machines do break down.” He paused. “You have to be
prepared! ”

“We just have to agree on what each partner has to do when,


right?” Tom asked.

“That’s easier said than done,” Webber replied, “I always try to


write it down and share the documents. But nobody looks at them.
People don’t like to work their way through lengthy texts. And if they
do, they misinterpret it for their own ends.”

110
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

_ “At LaserTec we started capturing our activities in process mod-


els,” Tom explained. “That way, we get a clear description of the re-
sponsibilities. The visual diagrams seem to help when discussing the
processes with the people involved. The goal is to generate a common
understanding, but most important, when discussing we can point at
steps within the big picture to ensure everybody is on the same page.”

“Um, that sounds valuable. I have never seen such diagrams. Can
you show me an example?” Webber was intrigued.

Tom didn’t have any printed diagrams with him. But he had the
models sent by David this morning. He invited Webber to look at his
notebook screen.

“Look,” Tom started explaining, “here is PDO and here is La-


serTec. And the customer is General Vehicle. You can see now how
the parties interact and what messages they exchange.”

“Alright, alright,” Webber said, and, with a glance at the screen,


he asked, “Can you please start by explaining the elements and what
they mean?”

Tom took a big step back and started explaining about pools as
organizations, about dotted lines for information exchange and differ-
ent message symbols for incoming and outgoing messages. Webber
asked questions about the meaning of the AND gateway and then
refocused away from the notation to the actual content. By pointing at
the elements in the model, Webber and Tom found a basis for their
work. They discussed the scenario and changed the diagram. Mean-
while, Webber recalled even more details that had to be considered.

it
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

©
2
6
>
g
FS
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contract certificate
1 i

(LaserTec)
Provider
Machine
report
including
1 : Emergency Hand-over
Contract Signed Support response certificate
preparation (copy)

(PDO)
Supplier

“Mr. Webber, can I talk to you for a minute?” An elder man had
entered the room with a serious look on his face. Webber apologized
and followed the man.

Tom used the opportunity to rearrange the shapes a bit, trying to


have as few lines crossing each other as possible. Tom found an auto-
matic layout function in his tool. But as the layout result looked worse
than what he came up with himself, he undid it quickly.

A couple of minutes later, Webber was back in the room. His


face was pale. Obviously, the old man had given him a hard time.

“Sorry about that,” Webber said and took a seat.

“No problem. Your boss?” Tom was curious.

1
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Yes. There is this project,” he started. “I need to leave you for a


while. I suggest we spend just a little more time now, and continue
after lunch. My apologies.”

“Don’t worry, I'll be fine,” Tom replied. He didn’t date to ask for
more details.

Webber left again, and a couple of minutes later he returned with


a slight smile on his face. “Here we go,” he said, taking the seat next
to Tom who started discussing the diagram on his computer screen.
But Tom knew that Webber’s thoughts were elsewhere. So, he quickly
wrapped up the discussion by going through the model.

“T think we should specify them in greater detail,”” Webber said.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked.

“The preparation for emergencies and the support plan.” Webber


circled them with his finger on the screen. “We should note down
what these documents are about. I can show you some old ones and
we can work out a template. It’s important that they follow a common
structure and contain certain information. I always thought that this
was common sense, but I can show you funny counter examples.”

They reviewed old documents and discussed a good structure for


a template. From time to time, Webber glanced at the diagram. Then
he pointed at parts to underline his arguments.

“Could you actually reflect in the model that these documents


typically don’t come in on time?” Webber finally asked. “It sometimes
requires several reminders.”

“Uh, interesting.” Tom thought for a moment. He pushed away


the templates and focused on the diagram. “How do you decide that a
reminder is necessary?”

13
The Process: Business Process Modeling. Using BPMN

“It’s a matter of time,” Webber explained. “After a week I should


definitely contact the partner and kindly ask them for the documents
again. And the second reminder won’t be as nice as the first one.”
Webber checked his watch and then turned to Tom again, “Speaking
of time, I fear I have to leave now. But before I forget it, there could
also be the case that the documents are simply incomplete. This
would require us to ask for a more complete version. This is impor-
tant, so I’d like to see that documented in the process as well. If that is
possible at all.”

Webber apologized once again and headed off. Tom took the
chance to catch some fresh air. Webber’s requirements about time and
distinguishing different message contents really bothered Tom. Proba-
bly, David would know how to do it. Tom called him.

David was happy to help Tom although he was heading for a


meeting. He offered to email Tom a slide set on loops in BPMN. Tom
was not sure whether loops would be helpful in this situation. But
David had no time to explain. Tom decided to go for lunch first. Af-
ter lunch, he took a long walk along the river before returning to
PDO and checked his emails.

As promised, David had sent him a slide set. But it only con-
tained one slide and not much additional information. He only stated
in his email that loops are a challenge especially when they affect dif-
ferent pools. The diagram contained small examples for different
kinds of loops. The only example that seemed familiar to Tom was
the one containing a subprocess with a loop marker. The diagram
said, “I choose to do another iteration.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

| choose to do another My partner demands


iteration another iteration

\[Contains information about


whether another iteration is
needed

Time-based iteration
(e.g. reminders)

\ ~ Intermediate timer event.


\ “ ~ A certain timespan must have passed
\ or a certain point in time must be
Event-based exclusive gateway. reached in order to continue.
The event that occurs first
determines which branch is taken.

“Um, that’s interesting,’ Tom mumbled to himself. He knew


from Anne that the loop marker could be seen as macro for using
XOR gateways and cycles of sequence flow. Here again, this was illus-
trated in the same column of the diagram. An XOR gateway split the

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sequence flow at the point where the decision was made about
whether another iteration was necessary. Interestingly, the same XOR
gateway merged the sequence flow again. Tom had never seen this.
He would have used sepatate XOR gateways for splitting and joining
the flow. “Yet another shortcut to do it with the same gateway,” he
concluded.

There was one shape Tom had not seen before. Some kind of
gateway, he could deduce from the diamond shape, but the symbol
contained in the gateway shape was new to him. It appeared twice in
the diagram, and in both cases it was followed by intermediate events.
David added a small text annotation to one of the gateways “event-
based exclusive gateway,” it said. Tom remembered that the full name
for XOR gateways was “data-based exclusive gateway.” As the name
only differed by one word, this new gateway must be somehow similar
to the XOR gateway he had already applied so often.

Tom read on, “The event that occurs first determines which
branch is taken.” In the case of an XOR gateway, Tom recalled, it was
also the case that exactly one branch was to be taken. However, for
the XOR gateway, it was not an event determining which branch, but,
rather, conditions that were either true or false for the “data” of the
ptocess, Tom concluded. Therefore, the term data-based gateway now
made sense to him.

The shape with a timer symbol was also new to Tom. He imme-
diately understood that it was an intermediate event by simply looking
at the two circles. The text annotation that David added was again
self-explanatory.

Webber wanted reminders to be included in the diagrams. That


was exactly what the intermediate timer event was good for. But it
should only be triggered if the documents do not attive on time. Ac-
cording to the samples provided by David, that was what could be

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expressed using the new gateway type. It was like a race. The event
that happened first determined which path was taken.

Tom couldn’t wait to start modeling again. But as he took a look


at the document he recognized that the new model was going to be
much larger, considering that he needed to introduce the reminder
loop twice into the model. As Anne had told him, a diagram for com-
munication should fit one page. But how?

He searched the Web for a BPMN solution to slice models, and


found a Web page with “Link events — mostly used as off-page con-
nectors, allows for the partitioning of a large diagram into several
smaller ones.” Further down on the same page he discovered, “A link
event is either of catching or of throwing nature. Link events should
occur in pairs: A throwing link event in one diagram points to a catch-
ing link event in another diagram. If both have the same name then
the two link events combined are interpreted as a sequence flow.”

Confirm Send
reservation invoice
Reservation Reservation
confirmed confirmed

Confirm Send
reservation invoice

The description was illustrated with a sample. These link events


seemed to be useful. Tom remembered the hint from David last night,
that there are different BPMN event types but they followed a similar
color coding pattern. Tom started modeling by creating a new dia-
gram. He put in a pool for the machine provider and a collapsed pool
for the supplier. He started his process model with a catching inter-
mediate link event. The arrow was white. The stroke was black. That
fit the scheme and would be triggered if the complementary event
with the same name was reached. He named it, “Wait for support
plan.” He also put a throwing intermediate link event with the same

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name in the process just where the support plan was expected by the
customer. That would redirect the sequence flow to his little process.
To link back, he put a throwing intermediate link event at the end of
his new diagram and named it “Complete support plan arrived.”

Tom included an event-based gateway and an intermediate timer


event as was shown in David’s document. That would capture the
timeout. But something was still missing. Webber wanted to distin-
guish between incomplete documents and complete documents. In
case a document was incomplete, a revised version must be requested.
Tom still had no clue how to model this properly.

He searched the Web again, but couldn’t find any hint. He finally
decided to send a text message to David:

Hey David, thanks again for the diagram. But


how to model a branch that is chosen depending
on whether an incoming document is complete or
not? Thx, +lom.

David responded in less than a minute:

Either you use one message event + XOR gateway,


or more elegantly: use an event-based gateway +
two message events, one for complete, one for
incomplete.
Have fun, Dave

Tom could have come up with the first solution with the XOR
gateway, but the alternative was more appealing, indeed. There already
was an event-based gateway in the model, so another message event
didn’t add too much additional complexity.

While Tom was finishing up the diagram, Mr. Webber stepped


into the room again. ©

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“I hope you were able to use your time productively.” Webber


was a lot more at ease and relaxed than he had been in the morning.
“Ah, you have continued working on the interaction models?”

“Yes, it was quite challenging to factor in all the additional re-


quirements you put up,” Tom started. “But it’s done now. Do you
want to have a look at the models?”

“Sure.” Webber moved his chair over to Tom to have a better


view of the laptop screen.

Wait for T Complete


support pan support
Machine
Provider
(LaserTec) Request pan arrived
Incomplete
support for revised
plan support Complete
Reminder pian support
| plan

\/ \/

Supplier (PDO)

Tom showed him the diagram and started explaining, “First of


all, I cut out the process part that we want to focus on.”

“Where is the rest? Did you throw it away?”

“No, no. I just concentrate on a part of the model that we are


most interested in. The events with the arrows in the middle.” Tom
pointed at the link events, “They connect this diagram to the original
model.”

“Okay,” Webber said, but didn’t sound totally convinced. “And

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how does that work?”

“They are counterparts of these events with the same name in the
other model.” Tom showed Webber the link events that he intro-
duced in the original model.

“I see the encircled arrows with the same name are the gluing
points.”

“Exactly. But let’s focus on this part here.” Tom pointed at his
new reminder model.

Webber took a look at the diagram, “Is that a clock?”

“Yes,” Tom responded, “This is a timer event. It is set to one


week, so if no support plan arrives then we go this way and send a
reminder.”

“T see; it’s a timer. When does it start running?”

Tom was not totally sure. For a second, he thought of asking


David, but he didn’t have to, because all of a sudden, it all made sense.

“We start it whenever we arrive here.” Tom pointed at the event-


based gateway.

“That looks complicated. What does it mean?”

“It means that we wait for something to happen. We set the timer
and wait for one of the next events to occur. Then, either a complete
ot incomplete support plan arrives, or the week is over. But we wait.”

“Yeah,” Webber said with a smile on his face, “that’s exactly what
we do.” They both paused for a second before Webber broke the
silence. “Okay, just to get the complete picture. Three things can hap-

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pen: If I don’t receive anything within one week, I send a reminder.”


Webber followed the sequence flow with his finger while talking. “If I
receive an incomplete one, I ask them for a revised version...”

”Or you get the complete support plan, and then you’re done,”
said Tom.

“T got it, but...,” Webber frowned.

“What is bothering you?” Tom asked.

“T like the diagrams; I think they are a valuable tool to communi-


cate knowledge. Actually, I want everybody at PDO to read them and
to work accordingly. But how can I ensute that everybody under-
stands them?”

“T know what you mean.” Tom assured Webber: “First of all, you
should add a legend to each diagram. Also you might set up a work-
shop to present the models, and you will need additional textual
documentation to go with it.”

“Yes, a wotkshop or some kind of training would be good,”


Webber said. “Have you attended a training to learn all this?”

“No, but I had good teachers,” Tom replied.

“And you became a good teacher yourself. Could you teach my


people to do the same thing?”

“Well, I’m not at that stage yet. But I can document today’s find-
ings and share them with you. I will explain the findings textually, and
we will use the models to support the message.”

“That’s a good idea.”

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They went on to discuss the details of their further collaboration.


When Tom left for the train, Webber thanked Tom again for the pro-
ductive meeting. Still, it bothered Tom that he obviously did not have
the full language standard and all its elements in hand. If David had
not been there to help him, he could not have done it. He decided to
look for professional BPMN training to help him master the whole
language set. While still on the train, he wrote an email to Haffner.

Dear Mr. Haffner,

The meeting with PDO was a good start. We


agreed on the most important documents to be
exchanged.

It turned out that BPMN is also suited to cap-


ture how business partners interact.

To enhance my modeling skills I'd like to at-


tend a professional BPMN training.

Regards,

Tom

Afterward, Tom prepared some slides to sum up the meeting for


Haffner. When his laptop battery ran out, he leaned back and watched
the countryside fly by. Somewhere along the line he searched his
pockets for a tissue and ended up holding a napkin in his hands.
Scribbled on it were different ways to model interactions, alternatively
using events or tasks. He recalled that David drew on the napkin
when they sat together in the bar. Maybe it was time to sum up all the
BPMN lessons he had learned on this business trip. He took out his
notebook and started noting things down.

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| Empty Pool Empty Pool —


Represents a business partner. It’s used when
the internals of the pool are not known or not
of interest for a model.

o —p Message Flow
Denotes where information flows across organ-
izational boundaries. Sequence flow connects
activities within the same pool. Message flow
connects different pools and activities from
different pools.

© Intermediate Message Send Event


A message is sent to another organization. If
additional effort is required, e.g., to create the
content for the message, then a sending task
might be used instead.

Intermediate Message Receive Event


A message comes in. The sequence
flow pauses until the message is received.

& End Message Send Event


A message is sent to another organization as
the result of the process.

Message Send Activity


Send Similar to a message send event. However, here
we assume that something must be done before
V the message can actually be sent. E.g., a quote
needs to be created before it is sent.

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Message Receive Activity


Receive Similar to a message receive event. Again, the
receive activity does more: After receiving the
it message, something else happens in this step.
{\ . . .

Send/ Message Send/Receive Activity


Receive Tasks can be used to send and receive messages
x or vice versa. Here, a message is sent and a
\/ response is waited for.

©
Event-based Exclusive Gateway
One branch is taken based on which event
occurs first. Often there is a choice between
different messages or between messages and
timeouts.

©
Intermediate Timer Event
Represents waiting for a certain delay to be
overt or for a certain point in time to arrive.

®@ Intermediate Link Events


(Throwing / Catching)
Link events are off-page connectors. They are
useful for partitioning large process models into
manageable pieces. One throwing link event
corresponds to a catching link event in another
diagram. A pair of link events is equivalent to a
sequence flow.

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Chapter 8

The Pioneer

Tom hadn’t expected Haffner to send him to the training right


away. But Tom was able to book a well-recognized training class just
two weeks after his trip to PDO. On the first day of training, Tom got
up early, took a shower, and headed for the breakfast room of the
hotel where the training was being held. On his way he browsed the
agenda for today’s class, which was posted in the lobby. It started at
8:30 a.m. The breakfast buffet looked delicious. Tom took a seat near
the window and enjoyed his cold orange juice and the view overlook-
ing a park. The sun rose, flocks of birds were in the trees. It was a
very calm morning.

“Hi, I am Linda,” announced a middle-aged lady with modern


frameless glasses, a beige business outfit, and a shrill voice that termi-
nated any daydreams. “May I join you?”

“Ahh, sure, why not?” Tom tried to be polite, feeling somewhat


ovetwhelmed by the lady.

“The answer isn’t why not, but why yes!” {?? Linda remarked.

“So, why yes?” Tom tried to challenge her.

“Because I am in charge of process engineering at Mobtel, one of


the largest telecommunication providers in the country. I saw you
checking today’s agenda,” Linda explained. “But I’m so excited to
attend the training by Charles Timber himself. He is a pioneer in busi-
ness process modeling and a guru on BPMN.”

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“Ts that so? In fact, you were right. I am attending the class. Tom
of LaserTec, pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” said Linda. She took a sip of tea before
she continued, “We at Mobtel have just started a massive process in-
novation effort. The goal is to model all processes we have, to opti-
mize them, and finally to automate them to make them fast and less
costly. Huge budget involved.”

“Interesting,” Tom said while chewing his cereal.

“We have millions of customers, you know. And six months ago
we started to model the processes. But now we want to change to
BPMN as the modeling notation.”

Tom looked up from his breakfast and asked, “If not BPMN,
what did you use before?”

“EPCs! Do you know them?” Linda asked.

“No, what does it mean?”

“Event-driven process chains. It’s a notation to capture proc-


esses. But we ended up with huge process models, and they were hard
to read,” Linda explained. “The IT department, especially, wanted to
change to BPMN. They have to read the models we create, and they
think BPMN will be more compact, readable, and precise.”

“And what do you think?” Tom asked.

“T have heard that BPMN is much more expressive. And at the


same time so easy to learn. Everybody can do it.”

“T don’t know this EPC stuff, but, after all, BPMN is just another
modeling language. In any case, I think you need dedicated people to

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do it.”

Linda was quiet for a moment. Tom could see her brain working.
He enjoyed the moment of silence and went to get more food from
the buffet.

He wondered why Linda hadn’t asked him for his background


and his motivation for attending the class, but he was fine with the
situation. For a while, both ate quietly. Tom watched the birds in the
park and again started enjoying the calm morning.

“T have to leave now,” Linda suddenly broke the silence. “I’ll see
you in the training class.”

Half an hour later, Tom sat in an air-conditioned room of the ho-


tel, with two dozens of his fellow students. Charles entered the room.
He was in his early sixties with tanned skin and wore a dark suit,
matching tie, and a golden watch.

An assistant set up the presentation equipment while Charles wel-


comed his students. “Good morning. My name is Charles Timber. I
am happy to have you here!”

The assistant distributed the training materials, and Charles


started the class. “Business process management is the road to suc-
cess. Every day new companies set up process modeling efforts to
understand how they operate and to have the chance to improve their
business. And BPMN is on its way to becoming the standard process
modeling notation, so, congratulations, dear friends, this is the right
training to take!”

After a short pause, he continued, “But beware. BPMN cannot


do miracles. In BPMN you can easily create models that nobody un-

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derstands. So you need training. With the projects you do, you will
gather experience that will make you a good process modeler. You
will need to have a clear understanding of the people who will read
yout diagrams. But we will come to that later.”

Charles asked for a brief round of introductions. It was quite a


diverse group, with people from the financial sector, manufacturing,
telecommunications, and public administration. Since there were nov-
ices to BPMN, Charles started with the basic material.

So I can daydream a little, Tom thought, as Charles explained ac-


tivities, events, gateways, connecting objects, and data objects.

The day flew by. In the afternoon session, Charles talked about
message and timer events, interacting processes, subprocesses, and
more of the not-so-basic stuff. Charles added anecdotes here and
there, which made the training quite entertaining. But, still, Tom
didn’t learn new language concepts. Maybe this was not such a good
idea after all, Tom thought. At least there was the dinner that night, a
social event that might bring more to the table than enjoyable food.

They met at a Japanese restaurant close by the hotel. Tom had


never been to a Japanese restaurant before. Charles welcomed his
students to the workshop dinner, and asked if soup, sushi, and an
assortment of fried vegetables and seafood were fine for everybody.
The attendees nodded. Some of them seemed to be happy that
Charles would do the ordering. Charles waved over the waiter, “Kon-
banwa. We'll have Miso soup as a starter. As the main dish, please
bring us a selection of Sushi, you know, Maki Sushi, Nigiri Sushi, and
Sashimi. And also Tempura, for those of you who may prefer that.”

Tom was impressed. Charles probably could have done the same

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in a Portuguese, French, or Ethiopian restaurant, Tom thought.

“Anything to drink? ,” the waiter asked.

“Japanese beer goes well with Sushi,” Charles proposed, and


heard no objections. “Do you have any idea what it takes to bring
fresh sushi on this table?” Charles asked the group. “Processes! Many
of them! Supply chains all over the place, processes that interact with
each other. Out of Tuna? Find an alternative supplier! Be fast. Be on
time. You won’t eat old fish, will your” Charles looked at his students,
who hung on every word. So he continued, while the drinks arrived.

“You know, today we have learned how to model processes, the


basic material. Tomorrow we look at the more exciting stuff. The out-
of-Tuna-scenario, for instance. How you model things that you do not
like to see happen. But, for now, let’s enjoy the evening.” Charles
raised his glass, as did the others, enjoying the cold beer.

The group had a good time. They talked about their companies,
what their goals in process management were. Linda even found a
fellow student willing to discuss Mobtel’s process strategies in detail.
Tom learned that most of the students were in a position similar to
his. They have tried to understand and to communicate how their
companies work, and what can be improved. One young lady, sitting
next to Tom, attracted his attention in particular. She was smart and
when she started talking, everyone turned their attention to her. “I
work for an insurance company. My job is overseeing the architecture
of our information systems. It’s quite a zoo. The IT landscape has
grown over thirty years, and we struggle to satisfy user requirements,”
she explained.

“What does this have to do with your processes?” somebody


asked.

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“Well, the idea is to use processes to represent how the different


information systems work together,” the young lady explained.

“Still, I don’t get it,’ Tom entered the conversation. “We at La-
serTec use processes to communicate how people work. You know,
the departments that are involved, ordering of activities, and things
like this. We want to understand and improve that.”

“Oh, what we do is actually quite similar,” the lady responded.


“We use processes to show how our systems cooperate and how we
can improve that. This is much better than discussing systems integra-
tion on the code level.”

“So, like us,” Tom added, “you use process modeling as a visual
means by which different domain experts can communicate a com-
plex topic.”

“Right, Tom” Charles entered the discussion. “The IT guys have


a hard time catching up with fast changing requirements. They need to
make a rusty old truck look like a shiny sports car!”

“Exactly.” The young lady was the only one who understood
Charles’ words. “Our rusty old truck is the dozens of software sys-
tems that have been around for decades, and the shiny sports car is
the Web application that our clients use to access our systems.”

“The Web has changed everything.” Charles caught the drift.


“Suddenly users see right into your information systems and they im-
mediately see if they are a mess.”

“Can you give an example?” Tom asked.

“Sure. Assume you use a Web application to change your address


information, or you marry and take the last name of your spouse. This
application sits on top of some old database application, and your

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changes somehow make their way into the database.”

“TI see, but so far things are fine,” Tom remarked.

“Yes, but this is only half of the story. If customer data are also
stored, in another system, like a dedicated customer management sys-
tem, then things
8 become tricky.”
“Why so?” Tom had little knowledge of IT architectures, but he
could follow Charles’ explanation.

“Tf the change is only done in the one database system and not in
the customer system, then you have inconsistent data. One entity of
the real world — you — and two different last names. Not good.”

The young lady took up the thread of the discussion. “This actu-
ally happened to us once. We sent out a mailing to our clients inform-
ing them about a new product. Some client addresses were incorrect.
So the letter came back. Not very nice.”

“Did you have last name changes?” somebody asked.

“Yes, quite a few. If you have a few million customers, you have
many changes. Every day. This is why we tried to automate the proc-
ess in the first place,” the lady continued.

“But if some customers do not get a promotional mailing, what’s


the problem?” Tom asked.

“Well, promotional campaigns and annoyed customers are one


thing, but sending out documents that are of legal importance is an-
other. If the documents are returned simply because your address data
is inconsistent, and you miss a certain deadline as a consequence —
that is where it stops being funny.”

13%
The Process: Business Process Modeling UsingBPMN

“So, due to your lack of IT integration, you had immediate effects


on the business,” Charles summarized. “Process modeling is not
magic, but it helps identifying those issues.”

“Yes, and if there is a change-addtess activity in the database sys-


tem, then there must be a change-address activity in the customer
system,” the lady concluded.

The food came; they all enjoyed the Miso soup and the Sushi.
Tom was a bit reluctant to try the Sushi, but he finally did. He liked it
with a bit of ginger. But his eyes filled with tears from the Wasabi.

After dinner, Charles proposed to go to a bar for a few drinks,


but most people excused themselves and went back to the hotel. Tom
was eager to join him. He wanted to hear more stories from other
people and how they use BPMN. When they left the restaurant he
heard Linda’s voice. “Wait for me, [ll be right with you!” They went
to a bar right next to the hotel. The men ordered beer, and the ladies,
cocktails. They took a table right next to the stage, where a guy with
worn out jeans played his guitar. Nice tune, Tom thought.

Linda opened the conversation, “Charles, may I ask you a ques-


tion? How long have you been doing these courses?”

“Oh, I have been giving courses all my life. Actually I have been a
university lecturer.”

“So you taught process management?” Tom asked.

“The story is a bit more complicated. I studied sociology and po-


litical science. I even taught these topics at the university. But then I
got divorced, you know, so I was ready for a change.”

Charles took a big gulp of beer. “I always liked to work with peo-
ple, to communicate. So I entered the organizational development

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department of a large insurance company,” and, looking at the young


lady, “your competition. This was back in the early nineties, when
process modeling became a hot topic. The Hammer and Champy
book.”

“You mean Re-Engineering the Corporation,” the lady responded.

“Right. The book has a number of stories about how companies


used a process-oriented perspective to reduce cost or to improve cus-
tomer satisfaction, lower processing times, and things like that,”
Charles continued.

“Hammer and Champy proposed a radical re-design of proc-


esses,” the lady threw in.

“They did, but that didn’t work out in many cases. As a sociolo-
gist, I can tell you, when people are involved. People don’t like radical
change. If you are on your own, change whatever you like, fine. But if
your processes have people involved, then evolutionary changes are
the way to go.”

“Yes, evolution works quite well, and, after all, it brought us


here,” Tom tried to look intelligent. “But even in evolution sometimes
there is a radical step. Some kind of quantum leap.”

“Good point, Tom,” Charles began to enjoy the conversation.


“Yes, I guess the point is to change the really important things radi-
cally and to strongly support such quantum-leap changes. Other
changes should go step by step, so that you do not lose your people.”

“Tt must have been around that time,” the lady came back to the
point, “when workflow was a hot topic. I was still in school then, but
my company burned a lot of money with workflow solutions that
never worked out as planned. It must have been around the middle or

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end of the nineties.”

“Yes, there was a lot of workflow hype,” Charles remembered.


“The problem was that the workflow guys did not read the Hammer
and Champy book in detail.”

“Well, the book started the process management hype, so they


must have tread it,” Tom interjected.

“One of the ideas of Hammer and Champy is that you can speed
up processes by reducing hand-overs,” Charles explained. “Activities
with the same context should be assigned to the same person. Let me
give you an example. Assume you have an insurance claim. You need
to check if the case is handled by the policy of the client, you have to
invite reviewers, you have to make a decision, and you finally have to
inform the client about the outcome. With workflow technology you
can easily create four activities — check, invite reviews, decide, and
send the letter. No more idle times, documents are forwarded auto-
matically between the workers, all very nice. And since workflow does
all this work allocation and role resolution, it is easy to select different
people for these activities.”

“But each person needs to make himself familiar with the case,”
Tom added.

“Exactly! This is why you have the nice workflow solution, but
still people are the bottleneck,” Charles responded. “IT support for
processes is essential, indeed. But you need to consider carefully
where IT really helps. In this insurance example the most important
thing is to separate the routine cases from the complex cases. The
routine cases can be handled by a generalist or even be automated
completely. The special cases are delegated to a specialist.”

“So it’s about using resources efficiently, right?” Tom asked.

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_ “You are absolutely right, Tom.” Charles was happy to see his
student learn. “Software systems are very good for doing highly re-
petitive tasks. But remember: Implementation or configuration of
these systems does not come for free! You have to calculate how
much the introduction of such a system costs in comparison to doing
tasks manually. And the same holds true for process coordination.”

“Process coordination?” Tom asked again.

Charles replied, “Somebody has to ensure the flow of work, and


there are again many different alternatives for accomplishing work
tasks. Imagine that the person carrying out one activity triggers the
person that is responsible for the next activity. Or you have somebody
doing this triggering without actually being involved in the activities.
And, in the extreme case, a software system takes care of the trigger-
ing and pushing work into the inboxes of people — which is exactly
what workflow systems do.”

Charles noticed that the discussion was getting too technical, and
it had been a long day for the students, so he wrapped up. “I guess
that workflow technology in those days was a bit too technology-
driven; the overall context of the process and the people were left
behind. But the modern process notations, including BPMN, are very
much inspired by the workflow languages. We’ll come back to that
tomortow.”

It was ten to midnight and the ladies excused themselves to re-


turn to the hotel. The others left with them. Only Charles and Tom
wete the last ones standing.

“Go for another beer, Tom?” Charles proposed.

“Okay, one last one.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Charles waved the waiter over, who a short time later returned
with two beers.

“May I come back to this workflow thing?” Tom asked.

esures'?

“Um,” Tom was not sure where to start. “So, workflow is not
only the technical stuff, but also process modeling? And then it is also
about the ‘work flow,’ the flow of work in the organization?”

‘Workflow is some kind of a chameleon beast,’ Charles re-


sponded. “You start with process modeling, because you need to
know how your organization works. Our nice business process dia-
grams represent work that is performed in the organization — what
people do in their work. Day in, day out. You focus on how the work
of John relates to the work of Anne. And that of Anne to that of Pete.
And so on. Process models show you how the work flows from John
to Anne and further down to Pete!”

“Okay, but it is not limited to one company, right?” Tom wanted


to keep him going.

“Well, workflow is some kind of a local thing. You can ask what’s
yout workflow? And the people in an organization will tell you. Inter-
action between companies, you were aiming at, is another thing. I
would say the workflows of the companies involved communicate by
messages. So it’s individual workflows interacting with each other. In
today’s more advanced ideas of Business Process Management, or
BPM, it’s the end-to-end process that spans companies that goes cen-
ter stage.”

“In fact, the biggest thing to hit the process scene since 1993 was
Smith and Fingar’s Business Process Management: The Third Wave. Their

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

seminal book appeared 10 years after Hammer and Champy, and in-
cluded a chapter called “Reengineering Reengineering’ that sorted out
the problems and solutions to the radical ‘rip and replace’ approach of
Hammer and Champy’s reengineering. They also explained why work-
flow wasn’t enough for complete process management. Their main
point was that processes should be built, not to last, but built for
change! Unlike the reengineering days where processes were ‘cast in
concrete’ in enterprise systems known as enterprise resource planning
ot ERP systems, ‘agility’ is all in the Third Wave. Interestingly, How-
atd Smith was in the same job at the same company Champy had
been in ten years earlier, and was co-founder of the BPMI.org, where
BPMN was first created.”

“That’s all very interesting. It helps me to organize the buzz


around BPM,” Tom added.

Charles continued, “Yet, if you talk to three people you get four
different definitions of BPM. The academic BPM people use formal
models to describe processes. They even show mathematical proper-
ties of processes.”

“Interesting, but does it help my company?” Tom wanted to


know.

“Tt does. But first you have to know that in order to show these
properties, there is a price to pay. And that price is abstraction.”
Charles entered telling mode.

“Similar to abstraction of real world processes to process mod-


els?” Tom gave it a try.

“Kind of similar. They abstract work activities to, guess what?”

“Um, to labels and text describing what needs to be done,” Tom

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

responded.

“Next guess?”

“Tell me! ”

“Letters! They use letters to represent work! Here happens an A,


then a B is done. Then either a C or D. But not both! How do you
decide on C or D? Guess what?”

“They use conditions that are evaluated, either go this way or go


that way?” Tom was happy to get this one.

“Nope. Random — they call it non-determinism. Either this or


that. No conditions, not even data.” said Charles.

“Okay, I see — then this mathematical stuff is complete garbage!”


Tom seemed to understand.

“Far from it!” Charles surprised Tom. “You can only get these
properties if you do these abstractions. And somehow they are right.
In each branch you go either this way or that way. No more options!
So these abstractions hold!”

“TI see.” Tom was lost. “But what can actually be shown?”

“Well, you can show that each process finally reaches the end,
and if it does so, there is no activity left in the process.”

“But what hinders a process from reaching its end?” Tom asked.

“W/rong synchronization. Assume you have an XOR split and an


AND join.” Charles made a brief sketch on a beer coaster.

“Okay,” Tom saw the point, “exactly one branch is taken by the

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

XOR split. This branch finally reaches the AND join, but the AND
join will wait for the next branch to finish.”

“For how long does it wait?’ Charles wanted to see that Tom got
the point.

“Forever! The process is really stuck!” Tom answered.

“See, so this is why analysis of process models is such a very nice


thing called soundness.” Charles concluded.

Tom really enjoyed the conversation with Charles and finally


asked, “I reckon it is quite an exhausting job teaching all this stuff.”

“Sure, but if you like to communicate and work with people there
are few jobs that give you higher job satisfaction,” Charles responded.

“But isn’t this getting boring?” Tom asked.

“Well, training is just half of what I am doing. I also coach pro-


jects. Sure, a lot of traveling, but every project is different. And people
are always involved. Sometimes really deeply involved,” Charles said.

“Yes, I have also had the experience that some people are very
much involved, while others just don’t seem to care,” Tom replied.

“Well, you will learn that whenever it makes a difference to their


work status and responsibilities, people do care. Once you come up
with the processes of an organization, deficiencies pop up immedi-
ately. And often individual people are responsible for them. Or at least
they base their status on the inefficiencies of the process. You know,
large head-count and things like that,” Charles explained.

“Actually, we at LaserTec are very excited about process man-


agement, even my boss,” Tom said.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Good to hear this, Tom,” Charles replied. “I hope I was able to


teach you something today.”

“Actually, I am already familiar with most of the concepts you in-


troduced today. But tomorrow there will surely be much more.”

“Yes, we address advanced concepts like transactions, compensa-


tion. You know?” Charles waited for a reaction but didn’t get any, so
he continued, “Transactions are atomic units of work that are either
completely executed or not at all.”

“Appears to be a quite natural concept in business applications,”


Tom replied. ;

“Yes, but nevertheless very complex.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because business activities take a long time, so that tech-


nical ways to ensure transactional behavior are more or less useless.

“What ate those technical ways?” Tom got interested in the topic.

“Transactions have been developed in the context of database


systems. The idea is that every database program should appear as if it
was executed on its own and doesn’t fail,” Charles explained.

“So what’s the point?” Tom took a gulp of beer.

“In large applications, you have hundreds of people and systems


issuing database commands. So there’s no single user environment
whatsoever. To shield the application from the negative effects of
multiple users and system failures, database systems feature a transac-
tion processing component. These components are based on locking
and logging. Locked data items prevent others from accessing them.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Logging data is what you do in case the system fails, in which case you
can re-install the database to a consistent state,” Charles explained.

“Okay, okay, I see.” Tom was completely lost.

“Unfortunately, this all does not work in business activities. No


way to roll back what you have done. You need compensation of ac-
tivities that shouldn’t have been executed. They do some kind of un-
doing of what was done before.”

“And you can model this in BPMN?” Tom asked.

“You will see tomorrow.”

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Chapter 9

An Exceptional Lesson

“Welcome to today’s agenda.” Charles pointed at three key words


he had written on the flipchart. He slowly read them out loud. “First,
we are going to look at exceptions. An essential part of BPMN. Next:
transactions. Then, after the break, I have planned a practice session.
You will come up with models yourself, and we discuss them with the
whole group. How does that sound?”

Nobody felt the need to comment on the agenda. Some of the


students simply nodded their heads.

“The practical session is an excellent idea!” Linda said. “I am al-


ready excited about sharing my process models with the others!”

“Great to hear! I’m very excited about what you are going to
share with us, Linda,” Charles responded. “But let’s get right into ex-
ception handling.”

Tom wondered if there was a Linda in every class. Probably so.

“What are we actually capturing in our BPMN diagrams? We are


interested in describing end-to-end processes, right? End-to-end
meaning that we include the whole chain of value creation. From the
initial input to the final output of the process. Input comes from the
customer, output goes to the customer. Get the order, send the prod-
uct.” The class was spellbound. “And in BPMN we focus on the ac-
tivities that are needed to create this value. On the flow of work, on
the organizational breakdown of work, the assignment of decisions,

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

and on the artifacts being produced on the way.” Charles used big
gestutes during his monologue. He would probably have made for a
good actor or a politician, Tom thought.

“Yesterday I talked briefly about sales processes. We considered


them from end to end: From the very first contact with a customer
until signing the deal, the creation of a sales order. We have seen that
many different activities are needed. Such as calling the customer,
retrieving information about potential sales volumes, carrying out
proof-of-concepts, creation of quotes, and finally closing the deal. We
have seen that many people are involved. The call center agent taking
care of the first contact. Sales representatives doing most of the work.
Pre-sales consultants for the proof-of-concept. Sales managers for
quote approvals. Finally, there are different artifacts, as we learned:
The customer information, the standard price list, the terms and con-
ditions, the quote template, the actual quote, and then, finally, the
sales order.”

Charles paused for a moment and verified that everyone was still
with him. He was happy to see that all his students were eager to hear
how the story would evolve.

“Let’s quickly draw the corresponding BPMN diagram. What


would be a good way to do it?”

“Let’s first draw the lanes,” Linda scored first.

“Good idea, Linda.” Charles sketched the lanes on the flipchart


and labeled them with the abbreviations “Rep” for sales representa-
tive, “Mngr” for sales manager and “CC” for call center agent. Obvi-
ously, he ignored the pre-sales part of the process.

“Tom, what do I add next?” All heads turned toward Tom. It was
a good thing that he had actually paid attention.

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_ “We add the activities from left to right,’ Tom responded. “We
should also integrate the order of activities, ah...um...the sequence
flows, I mean.”

“Very good, Tom.” Charles still had the pen in his hand. He now
added the tasks “Contact customer,” “Negotiate conditions,” “Create
quote,” “Approve quote,” and “Close deal.” He already had placed
them in the corresponding lanes, indicating that the call center agent
would contact the customer, the sales manager would approve the
quote, and the sales representative would do all the rest.

“Alright.” Charles quickly added the sequence flow arrows be-


tween the tasks. “I will only show the customer information, the
quote, and the sales order for the moment. Just for the sake of sim-
plicity.” He finished the diagram and stepped to the side so that eve-
tybody could see it.

“What’s the problem with this model?” Charles finally asked.


“Any ideas?”

The students in the back row leaned forward a little bit to read
the labels. Charles waited for a reaction. After a short pause, Tom
suggested, “The model is very high level. It hides a lot of the impor-
tant details.”

“Important details?” Charles asked.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“Well, you didn’t include the remaining data objects,” Tom con-
tinued his answer. “Pre-sales does not appear, either. And, of course,
there are many more activities in a sales process that are not reflected
here.”

“Okay, good points,” Charles said patiently. “What about the se-
quence flow? Anything strange with that?”

“Um, on that level I could imagine that a quote is not approved


by the manager and a new quote has to be created.” Tom was not sure
whether he was heading in the right direction.

“How would you model that?” Charles continued the question-


and-answer game.

“Tt’s definitely a loop,” Tom concluded, “so either a combination


of XOR gateways or a loop subprocess enclosing the create quote task
and the approve task.”

Charles nodded and looked at the group.

“For every customer contacted in the beginning, will the deal be


closed in the end? Of course not, we all know that! And the model is
still fine, as we have said that we abstract away certain details. But how
often does it happen that we cannot close a deal with a customer we
initially contacted? 5%? Maybe 10%?”

“Rather. 97%,” somebody from the back kicked in. “At least in
our company. When we try to sell a new insurance product we have a
huge pile of phone numbers we call and if we are lucky then 3% of
the people called will actually sign a deal.”

“So is it still the default case that we come to the end of the ptoc-
ess for each customer? Obviously not!” Charles looked around. “But
the model is still fine!”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“How can the model still be fine if it reflects less than 3% of the
cases?” Linda was back on board. She looked a bit puzzled.

Charles answered with a calm voice, “What we modeled here was


what I call the ‘happy flow.’ It reflects the desirable case. The case we
all wish for. We wish for closing the deal with a customer. Unfortu-
nately, the desirable case often does not occur. There are deviations
from this happy flow. Events that throw us off track. The customer
jumps off. He loses interest in the offer. Negotiations about the con-
ditions of a deal fail. Or the prospect simply chooses the product of a
competitor.”

Charles paused to take a deep breath. “Exceptions. These excep-


tions throw us off the happy flow.” Again he paused. “Do we need to
reflect them in the model? Any idea?”

The smart lady with the IT background entered the discussion, “I


think it is worth listing what exceptions can occur at what point of the
process. And probably even more important, for some exceptions it
must be possible to specify reactions.”

“Do you have an example?” Charles asked her.

“Maybe a lost customer could be contacted again after six


months. Or at least we want to learn what went wrong. Lessons
learned, so to say, as preparation for future activities. And it definitely
makes a difference whether we lose a customer in the early phases as
opposed to later in the process when we have already invested a lot in
the customer. It is a huge difference if the customer did not show any
interest right from the beginning as opposed to jumping off after the
conditions have already been negotiated.”

“Good points!” Charles was happy with the course of the discus-
sion. Now it was time for him to contribute. “As a refinement of a

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model that only contains the happy flow, we need to specify the reac-
tions to the unhappy events, the exceptions. And I wouldn’t have
brought up this topic if BPMN did not have a cure. BPMN offers nice
capabilities to model such exceptions and reactions to them.”

Charles walked to his desk where he had left all his teaching ma-
terials. He chose a green pen and returned to the flipchart.

“Yesterday I told you already how events can be factored into


BPMN diagrams. They can be used as start events, for defining what
triggers the creation of a new process instance, and as intermediate
events, for defining points in a process where a certain event needs to
occur in order to proceed. To be more precise, we use so called
‘catching events’ in BPMN to capture this case.”

Charles added an intermediate event to the border of the “negoti-


ate conditions” task. It contained a symbol that Tom had already dis-
covered in the shape of a repository of his modeling tool, but he did
not know its meaning.

“This is an attached intermediate error event.”

Charles paused and looked at his students. Everyone was staring


at the drawing.

“Attached intermediate error events allow you to specify the reac-


tions to an exceptional situation. What could go wrong in ‘Negotiate
conditions’ and what would be a possible reaction?” Charles pointed
at the task in his drawing.

“Let’s start a step earlier.” The smart lady started lecturing. “Let’s
assume we have a large collection of contact data for potential cus-
tomers in the first place. This is the typical situation in my company.
Then most prospects are lost in the first phase, when the call center

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agent contacts the customer. All the prospects lost here do not need
to be considered further. Therefore, a ‘customer lost’ exception would
simply end the process. In contrast to this, losing a prospect in the
‘negotiate conditions’ phase is worse. With insurance products, it is
often the case that the call center agent manages to talk the customer
into the product. But then, when the sales rep contacts the customer
again a few days later, the customer might have simply changed her
mind.”

“So what reaction would be appropriate for this exception?”


Charles had already added a sequence flow to the intermediate error
event, targeting an empty task. Now, he was ready to add a label to
this task.

“Well, we know that the customer is somehow generally inter-


ested. Therefore, we should contact him or her again after a while, or
come back with slightly improved conditions once the product has
evolved.”

Charles added “Contact again” on the flipchart.

“T don’t like the task label,” the lady objected. “Couldn’t you put
‘remember as prospect’? That’s our internal wording for customers
that are worth contacting again. We have a database for prospects
receiving special attention when being contacted again by a call center
agent.”

Charles changed the label willingly and also added an intermedi-


ate etror event to “Contact customer,” directly leading to an end
event.

“That’s a good lesson to learn, by the way.” Charles had turned


back to the group. “Always use the vocabulary of your company! It
can eliminate a lot of misunderstanding when using ‘prospect’ instead

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of ‘lost customer’ or ‘potential customer’.”

Students nodded their heads. Then the lady continued: “To finish
this diagram off — the worst situation is losing a customer in the
‘Close deal’ phase. Here, we have already put a lot of effort into the
acquisition. Even the sales manager was already involved.”

Suddenly, Linda was back, “I can’t imagine that a customer jumps


off at this point. I mean the conditions were already negotiated,
right?”

“We live in the age of the Internet,” the smart lady replied. “Cus-
tomers take advantage of the detailed consulting we do for our prod-
ucts. Then they take the conditions and search the Internet for
cheaper offers. There are many Web sites out there providing detailed
comparisons.”

Charles enjoyed the discussion and had already attached an in-


termediate error event to “Close deal.”

Contact “—
customer

Fill lost
Lost customer
customer

quote
Customer (Al)}
indormation 37> Bad quote

“As a reaction to this exception, the sales representative has to fill


in a lost customer form,” the lady explained. “If possible, we need to

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

find out what competitor made the deal and what made the customer
switch to that competitor. This is valuable input for our department
that designs our insurance products.”

Charles added an activity “Fill lost customer form.” He smiled


when the lady acknowledged that with a nod.

“Now we also covered those situations where the customer is


lost. Let me just add the exception Tom mentioned earlier. Let’s as-
sume that the quote has to be adjusted in case the sales manager is not
happy with it. Therefore, I attach another intermediate error event to
299
‘approve quote’.

Charles added a sequence flow connecting this new intermediate


event and “Create quote.”

“I don’t see why these exceptions are any different from the
XOR split gateways you showed us yesterday.” Linda was trying to get
back into the discussion. “I mean, all we do with these attached in-
termediate events is to route the sequence flow in a different direc-
tion. Why do we need a separate construct?”

“Excellent observation!” Charles grinned broadly. “Indeed, we


reroute the sequence flow with attached intermediate events, and we
can also define different directions for the sequence flow using XOR
gateways. There is a difference though! In addition to creating addi-
tional exit points for activities, attached events are of an aborting or
interrupting nature. As soon as the exception is detected, the running
activity is aborted and the sequence flow is rerouted.”

Charles paused to make sure everybody is following him.

Linda spoke up. “What exactly do you mean by ‘aborting’?”

“Tet’s have a look at the ‘close deal’ activity,” Charles com-

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menced. “In fact, it is more than a simple task. It consists of sending


the quote to the customer, waiting for a response, maybe answering
further questions from the customer, reminding the customer that she
hasn’t answered, and so on and so on.”

“Tt is rather a collapsed subprocess, right?”’ somebody threw in.

“Right!” Charles responded and added the corresponding marker


to his drawing, “and this model represents that as soon as it becomes
obvious that the customer is lost, the remaining tasks are simply
aborted.”

Tom felt uncomfortable. He has not joined the discussion so far


and now he was a little bit lost.

“Could we detail this subprocess?” Tom asked. “I can’t really fol-


low. I am not too much into sales processes, you know.”

“Okay, no problem,” Charles knew he was too fast. He flipped to


a blank page on the flipchart and started all over.

“T will only include a few activities to make the point clear. Let’s
imagine the first task is to send the quote to the customer. Then what
we expect is to receive the signed contract from the customer. In this
case, we would create the sales order, and the ‘close deal’ subprocess
would be completed. However, two other things can happen instead
of receiving the signed contract.” Charles took a deep breath. “Either
the customer replies that he is not interested in the product any
longer, or he doesn’t respond at all. As we do not want to wait forever
for an answer, the sales rep contacts the customer after one week.
Here, again, it could turn out that the customer is actually not inter-
ested any longer.”

““Rejection’ means that the customer tells us she is not interested

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any more?” Tom asked.

1 ese

“And in both cases we run into a ‘lost customer’ exception,


right?” Tom did not know about the end event with the error symbol
before, but he guessed its meaning now.

Lost
customer

Send quote to Create sales


customer order
Signed
contract

Contact
customer
Lost
customer

“You are absolutely right, Tom.” Charles pointed at the new end
events, “These constructs are called error end events. They basically
terminate the current subprocess and raise the exception indicated by
the label. In this case, a ‘lost customer’ exception is raised. The sub-
process is aborted, and the sequence flow continues at the intermedi-
ate event that is attached to the subprocess.”

Charles pointed to the error end event and then to the attached
intermediate error event. Back to the end event and then to the inter-
mediate event again. He repeated this a couple of times so that every-
body saw the connection between these two.

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\

“Do you remember that we made a distinction between catching


and throwing events? Who can recall it?”

A guy raised his hand and started answering, “Start events are al-
ways of catching nature. Whenever a corresponding event occurs, a
new process instance is created. Catching intermediate events block
the sequence flow until the event occurs. In contrast to this, throwing
events do not block the sequence flow in any way but, rather, a corre-
sponding event is produced, and the process can continue immedi-
ately. End events ate always throwing events. They produce an event
upon completion of a process.”

“Exactly! Very good!” Charles took over. “And how about at-
tached intermediate events? What is their relationship to this catching
versus throwing discussion?”

“Well,” the guy continued, “I guess that only catching intermedi-


ate events can be attached to tasks and subprocesses. However, this
time they do not really block the sequence flow. They are rather ‘pas-
sively waiting’. I mean as long as the activity that the event is attached
to is running, an event might be caught. And once the event occurs,
the activity is aborted and the sequence flow is rerouted.”

“This is absolutely correct!” Charles was happy about the group.


“You absolutely got the point! You precisely captured the semantics!”
He started laughing. “You could take over my course, I guess.”

All students turned their heads to the guy that had been incon-
spicuous so far. For a brief moment he blushed.

After a short pause Charles continued, “So far, I have only shown
you error events being attached to an activity. But other event types
you already know can be used as well.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Charles took a deep breath. “The second most common interme-


diate event to be attached is probably the timer event. Remember, the
event with the clock icon inside.”

Tom already felt like having a break. Yesterday, he did not really
need to pay attention, as he already knew most of the stuff. Today was
different. Aborting activities and rerouting sequence flow appeared to
be useful concepts. However, he needed to really concentrate to get all
the subtleties of the semantics.

Meanwhile, Charles went on, “Who can imagine a situation in our


sales process where a timeout can abort a task or a subprocess? Or
maybe an incoming message?”

Tom tried to imagine such a situation, but he simply lacked ex-


perience with sales processes. Maybe, the whole process is aborted if
there is still no result after a month? Probably not, he thought to him-
self, one would definitely go after every sales opportunity.

“An incoming change request message!” A woman from the last


row suddenly shouted out. “The customer could change his mind
halfway through the process and demand another product or some
slight modification. Maybe even an additional product.”

“Good point!” Charles jumped to the flipchart and started draw-


ing on a new page. “Let’s assume that after the conditions have al-
ready been negotiated, the customer can send a change request at any
time to request a modified deal. Let me just quickly copy the most
important activities from our previous model.”

Charles flipped the pages back and forth to copy the labels of the
different activities.

“This time, I omit the lanes and the data objects for simplicity.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
\

He added the activities “contact customer,” “negotiate condi-


29> ¢¢

tions,” “create quote,” “approve quote,” and “close deal.” Before


adding the sequence flow, he introduced a subprocess containing the
last three activities.

“These three activities in the subprocess,” Charles started ex-


plaining. “I can easily attach intermediate events to the whole region
by attaching an intermediate message event to this subprocess. I rep-
resent how a change request message from the customer can arrive
while I am in any of the three activities. And upon receipt of this mes-
sage, the activities are aborted and the sequence flow is rerouted. In
out case, we have to turn back to the ‘negotiate conditions’ activity.”

The students looked at the new model. This was very easy, Tom
thought.

He then remarked, “Charles, you also mentioned integrating


timeouts into this scenario. It just came to my mind that the approval
step could be a real bottleneck in this process. Imagine that a manager
is not available for a certain period of time. We would not be able to
wait forever for an approval. Therefore, we might introduce a timeout
for the approval step. If the manager does not give his approval
within three working days, this step might simply be skipped.”

Charles nodded. He took his pen and added an intermediate


timer event to “approve quote.” He then connected the event with the
“close deal” activity.

“Good idea. These are nice examples for attaching timer and
message events to activities,” he said. “A last thing I would like to add
to this diagram is the ‘lost customer’ exception. Let’s imagine it can
occur at some time during the execution of the three activities. We
can attach it to the subprocess as well.”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

Linda expressed her concerns, “But now we have two intermedi-


ate events attached to the same subprocess. Is this allowed?”

Approve
Contact Negotiate Create quote quote
customer conditions

Fill lost
Change Lost
customer
request customer form

“That is exactly the point I wanted to get across,” Charles said


with a calm voice: “You can have as many attached events for the
same activity as you like. They represent the different exit points for
the events that could interrupt the execution of that activity. Change
request comes in? Go this way. Lost customer exception occurs? Go
that way.”

Charles took a look at his gold watch. The agenda indicated that
it was time for a coffee break in 15 minutes.

“T think we have already come quite far with exceptions and at-
tached intermediate events. I suggest that we take a short break. Any
objections?”

As nobody objected, Charles concluded, “After the break we will


dive into transactions in BPMN. So let’s get some coffee!”

The students started leaving the classroom. Tom was exhausted.


What a start to the day. He was about to stand up when he recognized
that Linda was still sitting at her desk. She had three differently col-
ored highlighters in hand and went over the notes that she has taken
throughout the class. The white sheet of paper showed blue, green,
and pink stripes.

“J always do that,” she said to Tom who was staring at her. “Col-

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\

ots are easier to remember.”

What a geek, he thought. But how was he going to remember all


this new stuff? He reached for his small notebook. He sat down next
to Linda and opened a blank page.

Linda glanced over as he started writing and gave him a smile.

@!
Attached Intermediate Error Event
Represents the exit point for the case that an exception
occurs during the execution of the activity. The activity
is aborted and the sequence flow is rerouted. Interme-
diate error events allow you to specify reactions to
exceptions that happen inside the activity.

Error End Event


When reaching an error end event, an exception is
thrown and the enclosing subprocess is aborted. A
corresponding intermediate error event specifies the
reaction to this exception.

Attached Intermediate Timer Event


Represents timeouts for activities. As soon as the time-
out occurs, the activity is aborted and the sequence
flow is rerouted. The timer is armed as soon as the
activity starts.

Attached Intermediate Message Event


During activity execution, incoming messages lead to
abortion of the activity and rerouting of the sequence
flow.

158
Chapter 10

It’s All or Nothing

“T hope the coffee brought you all up to speed,” said Charles,


welcoming the students back to the class, “because now we address
one of the most sophisticated aspects of BPMN, transactions! You
need to be focused, otherwise [’ll lose you.”

Tom remembered his conversation with Charles from last night.


He also remembered that at some point he got lost, so he was now
keen to learn what transactions have to do with business processes.

“Tl start with an academic example: Assume on Monday morn-


ing you receive a request to provide 500 chairs for a garden party in
Leisure City,” Charles started. “Great, you think, I can do the job. So
you say ‘no problem’ and confirm the order. So far so good.” Charles
paused and looked at the group. “The bad part about it is that you
neither have the chairs nor the transportation. ‘No problem,’ you
think; I know several companies that have chairs for rent, and trans-
portation should also be fine. Okay, what’s your process ladies and
gentlemen?”

“Rasy!” Linda answered. “I get the chairs, get transportation,


then I deliver the chairs, and get my money, all in a sequence.”

“Okay, that’s a good start.” Charles grabbed the ball. “Assume


you reserved the chairs for Friday night. Now you have to organize
the transportation. You call transportation services. Sorry, no capacity
on Friday. Too bad, I call the next provider to carry out my business
process activity ‘get transportation’, you think. Bad luck. You learn
that there is a big fair in town, so there is no way you can transport

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\

the chairs and fulfill your contract. What happens now?”

“You have two problems,” somebody from the last row kicked
?

in. “You need to pay for the chairs, and your customer is unhappy
because he does not get what you promised. Only the chair rental
service gets a deal.”

Tom added, “Maybe the process was wrong? We should make


the contract for the chairs after
we have secured the transportation ...”

“.. and secure the transportation only after reserving the chairs,
eh?” said cheeky Linda. “It’s not a problem of order.”

“Good point Linda,” Charles said, and Linda was all smiles. “The
problem won’t go away by rearranging the activities. We cannot en-
sute that the two things always happen together. But what can we
do?” He paused for a moment, but since nobody stepped in, he con-
tinued himself, “I am sure everybody experienced such a situation
before. When you book a flight but your travel plans change, what
happens?”

“T cancel the flight!” Somebody threw in.

“Okay,” Charles continued. “When you cancel a flight, what you


actually do is to perform an activity that somehow undoes the book-
ing of the flight. This activity compensates the booking; it is a com-
pensating activity. And this concept exists in BPMN as well.”

Tom was back to business, “So we define compensating activities


for the rental of chairs. And if I later find that I do not get the trucks,
I simply compensate.”

“Sounds good,” Charles said. “It may only require that the 500
guests of your customer will need to stand on Friday night,” Charles
teased Tom.

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But Tom was quick, “Yes, the confirmation. The problem still
remains. How about sending it once we have reserved the chairs and
the truck? Then we can make sure that we only confirm customer
orders if we can actually deliver.”

“Interesting idea,” Charles responded. “That would definitely be


a valid option. But remember: competition is fierce. If you can’t con-
firm within a certain timeframe, then your competitors will do it and
you lose the deal.”

“Well,” Linda took the initiative, “then we have to confirm the


order right away and hope that we can deliver in the end. If something
goes wrong, we need to compensate the confirmation for the cus-
tomer by sending a cancellation notice. The customer won’t be too
happy. But, still, better than losing him in the first place.”

Charles was happy with the answer and said, “Time to get it mod-
eled!”” He had already grabbed a pen and started drawing rectangles on
the flipchart.

“The first new BPMN construct you have to know is a transac-


tion.” Charles pointed at the big rectangle with double lines as its bor-
der. “Inside a transaction, it’s all or nothing. Transactions are not spe-
cific to BPMN. They originate from the database area and have been
adopted for various settings. The meaning is always the same: All
things done in a transaction are either completed successfully, or they
have never happened. For example, either we want to have both, the
chairs and the transportation, or neither of the two.”

Charles added tasks to the drawing. He halted for a second and


said, “It might not be the optimal process, but let’s assume that we
order the chairs first and then look for transportation. Alternatively,
we could do transportation first or do both in parallel.” Charles kept
on drawing. “If we don’t find chairs, we cancel the transaction. If we

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\

don’t find transportation, we cancel the transaction as well. What else


do we have to do now? If we cancel the transaction, what needs to be
compensated?”

“We have to inform the customer,” Linda threw in. She seemed
to be very excited about all this.

“Yes, Linda. We have to undo the order confirmation.” Charles


drew quickly and continued asking, “What has to be compensated
inside the transaction?”

Select & book


transportation

Check
transportation

Confirm
order Engst no
chairs transportation
rentals available

Send cancel
message S
Transaction to book chairs Compensate
“A and transportation confirm order

“T thought it’s all or nothing,’ Linda replied, and her face ex-
pressed worries.

“Yes, that is the goal,” Charles responded, “but if you do some-


thing that affects others, you have to take compensating actions to let
them know that you want it undone.”

”The availability checks do not have to be compensated,” Tom

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

stepped in. “I guess it’s okay if we simply do not respond after asking
for an offer. But the chair booking has to be undone.”

“Yes, that’s absolutely correct,” Charles replied. He completed


the drawing and turned back to the students, “What happens here?
Your call!” He pointed at Linda.

“Well,” Linda replied, “the end event with a cross and the corre-
sponding attached event at the border of the transaction — this looks
like the error handling we talked about already. I assume it is some-
how the same. Or is it different?”

“You’re on track, Linda. It behaves the same. It aborts the trans-


action and reroutes the sequence flow. The difference is that a trans-
action after cancellation automatically starts all compensation activities
inside.”

“Ah, and the compensation of the order confirmation is started


explicitly,” Tom threw into the discussion. “That’s what the ‘compen-
sate confirm order’ event says?”

“Right. It names the activity to be compensated. What has to be


done is described in the compensating activities,” Charles explained
and pointed to ‘send cancel message’ and ‘cancel chairs.’ “Compensat-
ing activities are marked with a rewind symbol. The BPMN symbol
for compensation.”

Another student raised his voice, “But why is it not connected


with a normal sequence flow? What does the dotted line indicate?”

“You mean the association between the attached compensation


events and the compensating activity” Charles clarified. “Indeed, it is
no normal sequence flow dependency. It only visualizes what should
be done if compensation for an activity is started. Have a look at the

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4‘

catching intermediate compensation events that are attached to the


activities. They don’t act like the other events either. They don’t even
have a name. They are a way to depict that compensation might be
done, and they have a directed association to indicate what should be
done for compensation.”

“And what happens,” Linda threw in, “if the activity was not exe-
cuted? Is it compensated anyway?”

“No,” Charles responded, “you can only compensate activities


that have been completed successfully.”

“T see, because it only makes sense to cancel the chairs if I have


done the booking beforehand!” Linda thought aloud.

“Correct,” Charles concluded. “That’s why the transportation


booking does not have a compensating activity. Either it has never
happened or the process is processed correctly and there is no need to
compensate. Anymore questions about transactions?”

Charles grinned to the group, knowing that there must be more


questions. The room was quiet. Finally, somebody raised his hand,
“Can you explain this again, all this compensation and what it is good
for? Does it only work in processes with transactions? How is this
different from normal modeling where I have some activities to clean
up before I finish the process?”

“Good point. Compensation is about cleaning up. You do not


have to do it using transactions. You can use it in any process. Once
you teach a point where you have ‘clean up’ in the sense of undoing
activities you can trigger their compensation. It’s a matter of style.
Instead of modeling it in the normal flow, you have explicit activities,
located at the tasks. You can trigger them by using the throwing in-
termediate compensation event, as we did here.” Charles pointed at

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the event with the name ‘Compensate confirm order’ in the drawing
“Or you can do it with the end event. In the sample,” he kept point-
ing at the drawing, “it says: Okay! I’m finished at this point. But I trig-
ger the compensation of something before I leave. I’d like cleaning up
before I go.”

“So, it’s another style,” the guy insisted. “I could also express this
using normal activities that clean up before my process is done.”

“Yes, modeling is a lot about style,” Charles answered diplomati-


cally and showed a bright smile that uncovered his shiny teeth.

“But what do I need the transactions for then?” The guy was not
giving up. “If I can compensate explicitly, what do I need transactions
for?”

“Transactions are used to express ‘it’s all or nothing’. It could be


that the tasks inside the transactions are changes within one database
transaction. Then, you do not have to have a compensating activity.
The database would be informed of the cancelled transaction and
undo all changes automatically. But in the business context you usually
inform other people. If you cancel the transaction you need explicit
activities to let them know.”

Charles paused and took a long look around the class. Everybody
was exhausted. Charles smiled, satisfied. He called for a fifteen-minute
break. After that they would start the last part of the class.

After the break, Charles summarized all the elements of BPMN.


He then encouraged everybody to model processes from his or her
own work environment. Tom chose to dive deeper into the interac-
tions with customers at LaserTec. He quickly ran into some questions

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\

he couldn’t answer without asking Anne. Charles encouraged him to


make assumptions and keep on modeling, but it didn’t feel right.
Eventually Charles asked students from the class to share their proc-
esses with the others for discussions. It wasn’t necessary for Tom to
present his process because Linda was eager to tell.

“Okay, Linda. Come here and explain to us what you modeled


and why.” Charles sat in the chair of one of the students and turned
over the class to Linda. Linda stepped in front of the class, put her
process model on the projector, and started explaining.

“T chose one of our latest process improvements at Mobtel. We


just implemented it, that’s why I could remember it the best. This
process is fully automated, allowing us to handle high volumes of new
customer registrations with the least effort. The process is imple-
mented using our new process engine. It uses the functionality from
other systems.”

Then she started explaining the process model, “I don’t want to


show what the customer is doing internally. So I depicted him as a
collapsed pool.” She looked at Charles for confirmation, and Charles
nodded.

“So, first the customer fills in the registration form. That triggers
the process. I denoted it with a message start symbol here because it
seemed most suitable. In our system, the process is indeed triggered
by a message that is generated by the registration form when the cus-
tomer submits it. The information from the form is automatically
passed into our systems.”

Everybody was with Linda. This Mobtel process promises to be


interesting, and Linda had considerable insight on the technical level.

“The first step we take is to verify the customer registration in-

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

formation. The registration form already checks for completeness, but


the capability is limited. That’s why we include additional checks here.
We want to detect spam inserted into our system and people who do
not fulfill the requirements for a contract with us; for example, if they
are too young. So, if that’s the case, we give feedback to the customer
about why we could not process the registration.”

customer

invalid SIM card Customer resigns


registration from contract

SIM card to Staft billing


information the customer
SIM card New happy
activated customer registered

Create Spread data to


customer information systems

S
master data 2
(KK
PF cancelled
for
I >{ "+ technical reasons
— —
¥2)
customer te)
master data Wait for 24h

“The way you modeled it,” a question from the class interrupted
Linda’s monologue, “as a customer, I cannot correct the information
and proceed with the registration using the same process instance.
You always end the process. Is that what you meant?”

“Yes, that’s true. That’s what we do. Customers usually start a


new process anyway. Sometimes with the same invalid information. If
we keep the process instance alive at this point we might end up with
a bunch of pending instances in our system. That would give a wrong
impression of what is going on and how many registrations are in
progress. Also, I heard that the process engine has problems with too
many pending instances,” she explained. Linda was the king of the
topic.

“But in most cases the customer information is correct. So we

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\

can go on and create the ‘master data’ for the customer or prospect.
This step mostly involves transforming the data from the registration
form into our master data format but also assigning a customer ID.
Having done this, we start to put this information into our various
information systems. That is stuff like the customer relationship man-
agement suite, the billing system, and other existing systems. This is
an important step. We have the policy that there should never be in-
consistent data in the systems. So, this is realized as a transaction. If
one of the information systems is down, for example because there is
an upgrade.”

“Or just another software bug,” somebody from the audience


spoke up. The group giggled.

“So, in case any system has any problem,” Linda continued with
her voice raised, “we roll back the other operations to keep a consis-
tent state. This is important, because we have other processes that rely
on consistent data in all information systems. This is because.... ”

“T think we all understand that,” Charles interrupted. “Just con-


tinue to describe what you have modeled.” Tom actually did not fully
understand why this is of such importance, but he remembered the
discussion about last name changes the other night.

“Yes, so if the transaction is cancelled, we pause the process for


twenty-four hours and retry it. If that is all done, we can send the SIM
card to the customer. Those tiny chips that you put in your mobile
phone. You know?”

Everybody knew, so nobody bothered to reply to the question.

“And then there might be three things that can happen. Here, we
depend on what the customer is doing. If I understood it correctly,
the event-based exclusive gateway has to be used here, right?”

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

She looked at Charles, and he responded, “That’s absolutely the


- correct way of using the event-based gateway. It’s a race. The first
event to occur determines how the process continues.”

Linda was all smiles, enjoying Charles’ words and feeling way
ahead of the crowd.

“So in some cases the customer might withdraw from the con-
tract. This might happen because he changed his mind. However,
when the customer withdraws, there is no deal and the process ends.”

“Shouldn’t you delete the customer data from your systems?”


Tom asked, and pointed at the transaction that Linda emphasized
before.

“Um,” Linda started stuttering, “I’m not sure. I mean, sure, we


should.... ’'m not sure if we do....” A very quiet moment passed. Linda
stared into the classroom. The students stared back. “Oh,...1 don’t
think we do.” She blushed, got nervous, walked to her table, and
noted down things in her calendar. She looked absentminded and
worried. There was no way she could go on and finish the description
of her model.

Charles got up from his seat. “Here we see how process model-
ing can help to find problems and how important it is to communicate
processes to others in order to get feedback.”

That was little help for Linda, Tom thought, and he felt sorry for
her. She had to go back to work the next day and rework the newly
implemented process.

“But the good thing about process models is that they communi-
cate knowledge. So everybody should be able to interpret the models
the same way. Would anybody mind explaining the rest of the Mobtel

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4X

registration process?”

Nobody volunteered. Tom felt obliged to do this one. He raised


his hand.

“Yes, Tom. Very good. So what happens if the customer does


not withdraw?”

“Okay, he might activate the SIM card,” Tom started. “In this
case Mobtel can start billing the customer. The process ends with a
happy new customer registered to Mobtel. When no message arrives
from the customer within two weeks, the timer event occurs. That
means the process proceeds this way and the customer SIM card is
auto activated. This process branch merges with the other one, so
here they also start billing the customer and treat that as just another
happy customer. By the way, why would you do that?”

Tom turned toward Linda.

“Well,” she started, “we cannot let the process get stuck there
forever. So we trigger it forward and bill the customer. If the cus-
tomer is unhappy with that we have other processes to handle that.”

Some in the class nodded knowingly. Everyone was happy with


the answer, and Charles took time to discuss Linda’s model.

The lesson went on with two other students explaining their


processes. Tom’s attention was fading away. The two days of training
added a lot to his BPMN understanding. Would he be able to gain
from it? He pulled out his notebook and reviewed the notes he had
taken since he started working for LaserTec. When he flipped to the
first empty page he recalled the new BPMN elements added in this
last session. He started noting them down. He knew that he was well
equipped now, but how would all this go into his daily work at La-

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

set Tec? He would need to talk about this with Anne and Haffner.

Transaction
A transaction is a set of activities that logically
Transaction
belong together. Transactions have all-or-nothing
semantics.

Intermediate Cancel Event


Can be attached to transactions only. They show
what should happen in case a transaction is
cancelled.

Cancel End Event


Can be used within a transaction. It explicitly
triggers the cancellation of the transaction.

Compensation Activity
Compensation
Specifies what needs to be done to compensate a
Activity
completed activity. Compensation is typically
triggered through the cancellation of an enclosing
transaction.

Intermediate Catching Compensation Event


Is always attached to an activity. It relates this
activity to its compensation activity using a
directed association from the event to the com-
pensation activity.

Intermediate Throwing Compensation Event


Allows to explicitly trigger the compensation of
individual activities within the normal sequence
flow of the process.

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\

© Compensation End Event


Has the same purpose as the intermediate throw-
ing compensation event and is used if nothing
needs to be done afterwards.

172
Chapter 11

What’s Next?

“Hello, Tom! ” Anne exclaimed when she saw him standing in


the door. “How was your training?”

Tom was more than happy to talk about his trip; about the hotel,
the setting, about Linda and all the other class mates with their differ-
ent backgrounds. Tom showed some of the samples that they drew in
class and kept talking. Anne listened carefully. She would have loved
to go to this training herself. But now she used Tom to bring her up
to date with BPMN concepts. Tom realized that he has become a
teacher to Anne instead of being her student. He enjoyed his new role.

“Okay, exceptions are another possibility to alter the sequence


flow, right?” Anne concluded after a longer discussion.

“It’s more. When throwing an exception, you abort every activity


inside the subprocess. And from there on, it’s escalated upwards until
the exception is caught and handled. It’s a matter of philosophy. You
can alter the sequence flow based on data, but if you need to reflect
that an undesired situation needs extra effort to be dealt with, then
you should use exceptions,” Tom explained.

“How was Charles, by the way?” Anne instantly changed the


topic. Her eyes glowed as if Charles were a rock star.

“Nice guy,” Tom answered. The social event and the long night

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4

in the bar crossed his mind. “He has a lot of anecdotes to tell.”

Tom continued telling stories from the workshop. Anne was fol-
lowing every word. They emptied two cups of coffee each before they
even thought about it. Tom remembered his very first day at LaserTec
when he was not used to Anne’s coffee and she was the one telling
about BPMN. A lot had changed in the last few months. Now he was
the process expert at LaserTec, and that felt good. He was capable of
modeling everything.

“Welcome back, Mr. Bauer.” Haffner’s voice filled the room, and
Tom and Anne turned to him. They were so much into their discus-
sion that they did not hear him enter the room. “I hope the training
was successful and brought new insights for LaserTec!”

“Oh yes, the training was great. We learned about all these ad-
vanced modeling constructs, including exceptions and business trans-
actions.” Tom couldn’t wait to explain it all to Haffner.

“That is all very nice, Mr. Bauer, but actually I was hoping for
more strategic findings.”

Tom felt uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what Haffner was


up to.

“See, the question for me is, what do I do with all these nice
processes? To be frank, I don’t care for transactions and exceptions, I
care for business value. What are the new options for LaserTec? This
is what I need to know,” Haffner said in a serious but not unfriendly
tone.

“Actually, we have briefly touched on these options before, re-


garding the business process management lifecycle,” Anne stepped in.
“Tt consists of the phases in which process management initiatives can

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

be organized.”

“Process lifecycle?” Haffner asked.

“The BPM lifecycle, of course,” Anne stepped in. “It represents


the idea to iteratively analyze and improve business processes. The
first phase is the design of processes.”

“And the result of the design phase is the process model,” Haff-
ner concluded.

“Not quite,” Anne responded. She took a sheet of paper and


started drawing. “The process model is the central artifact that helps
to communicate the real processes throughout all the phases. An ini-
tial analysis creates the first As-Is process models. They represent the
current situation. In the process design phase, you already create the
ideal new process. The To-Be situation.”
Process
Jo.
Design
™~.

Process Process
Analysis Implementation

asProcess
Operation

Haffner and Tom leaned over to see Anne’s drawing. Anne kept
explaining, “and if you want this newly designed process to become
reality you need to implement it.”

“T see, I see,” Haffner interrupted. “By ‘implementation,’ you


mean change management, right?”

“Exactly,” Anne responded. “It’s about implementing the new

WS
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
\

processes in the organization.”

Haffner nodded and said, “That’s essential. You have to get eve-
tybody on board. If you fail to convince your staff about the advan-
tages of the new procedures they will go back to the old ones.” Anne
smiled at Haffner knowingly.

“From the conversations at the workshop,” Tom said, “I had an-


other association. Many people talked about software projects for
process implementation.”

“Sure,” Anne responded. “Depending on your environment, soft-


wate projects for automated processes will be needed. It’s all about
bringing the desired processes to life. Some manual activities can be
sped up by having appropriate software systems at hand; other activi-
ties might be automated altogether. Especially if you do a lot of in-
formation processing, modern computer systems can take over a lot
of activities that were previously done manually.”

“And also reduce manual hand-overs,” Tom remarked.

“Exactly,” Anne said. “Remember the order dispatching I


showed you in the very beginning?”

“Sure,” Tom replied.

Anne continued, “If you introduced a Web-based interface for


your customers you could save a lot of the data entry stuff I do every
day. And even better, the data could already be checked for consis-
tency before the customer submits it. That might also save a lot of
time.”

Haffner didn’t listen to the discussion. He was still staring at


Anne’s drawing of the lifecycle.

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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN

“And this is operations,” Haffner finally said, pointing at the


- drawing. “That’s what we do all day. That’s what we always did, only
now we Call it process operation.”
“Well,” Anne responded, “it also means looking at the daily work
from the process perspective. It’s not only about the individual work-
load. People need to have a shared understanding of the dependen-
cies. That helps them to adjust the daily routines to enable a better
process flow.”

“And then we run in the cycle. We analyze the process in opera-


tion.” Tom tried to get the ball game.

“We need KPIs there. That will tell us where to optimize the
process,” Haffner burst out.

Tom knew from his university days that KPIs are “key perform-
ance indicators” and a management instrument to boil down business
goals to numbers. But he had not yet thought about them in the con-
text of business processes.
“Yes,” Anne took over again. “That is indeed how you can man-
age this. You need a goal value, like five weeks from order to installa-
tion, then you can streamline the process to achieve that goal. KPIs
ate well suited to be associated with processes.”
Haffner kicked in, “With the process models at hand, we can po-
sition the KPIs and directly pinpoint where we need to get better.”
“But how can we collect the data to measure these KPIs? This
sounds like a big overhead,” Tom asked.
Haffner turned to Anne, waiting for an answer. After a short
pause she replied, “Ideally, we could extract a lot of information from
the software systems we use. Tom, you mentioned process implemen-
tation in software systems. If you have a certain degree of process

Ly:
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
\

automation at hand, you typically get the numbers for free. If not, it
might involve some effort to collect them.”
“Just think of the possibilities!” Haffner smiled. “Running
through this process cycle over and over helps us sharpen our proc-
esses and improve the company. Remember, Mr. Bauer, when we first
talked during your job interview? I wanted you to get a deep under-
standing of what is going on at LaserTec.”

Tom nodded.

Haffner went on, “Now I really see the framework to achieve


that. With the process models at hand we finally have a language to
communicate about what we do on a day-to-day basis. It puts it into
petspective and explains its connection to the overall value creation at
LaserTec. With the lifecycle, we really have a way to leverage the new
understanding we gain. And the process models are the central arti-
facts to communicate that.”

Haffner suddenly stopped talking. Anne and Tom stared at him,


waiting for him to continue.
“When I started this, I wanted to understand what we do. But
now I see how I can use the process perspective to seer what we ate
doing. We can think about process improvement and process automa-
tion in a much mote structured way.”

Haffner stopped again. He looked at Tom and asked, “Are you


ready, Mr. Bauer?”

Tom raised an eyebrow. He was not quite sure what Haffner


meant. “The process documentation work you did, Mr. Bauer, was an
important first step. But now I want you to step up to lead LaserTec’s
efforts in process improvement and automation. You run the cycle.
Don’t think the story ends here, Mr. Bauer, it just started! ”

178
Recommended Reading
and Resources
Visit the Web site for this book:
www.bpmn-book.com

The Web site for this book provides more information about BPMN:
News and upcoming versions of the BPMN standard; links to BPMN
tutorials; links to BPMN related blogs and communities; additional
books on BPMN and BPM in general; and Errata (let us know about
issues in the current version of the book). Here’s a sma// sampling of
the Web resources you'll find at the site:

Object Management Group:


= Business Process Management Initiative
= BPMN Information Home

Bruce Silver’s BPMS Watch blog and series, “BPMN and the Business
Process Expert.”

BPTrends.com: a primary source of news and information relating to


all aspects of business process change, focused on trends, directions
and best practices.

Ismael Ghalimi’s BPM 2.0: a blog by a BPMI.org co-founder.

Sandy Kemsley’s Co/umn 2.0: an independent analyst’s blog on BPM.

David Frankel’s MDA Journal.

Vishal Saxena’s blog: Things BPMN - Vishal's BPM corner.

179
\

Other Books on BPMN


White, Stephen and Derek Miers, BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide,
Future Strategies Inc., 2008. Experts Stephen White (IBM) and Derek
Miers (BPMFocus) have been involved in the development of the
BPMN standard since the early days of BPMI.org. As Work Group
chair and Specification Editor since its inception, Dr. White was in-
strumental in creating the BPMN standard and is now guiding its con-
tinuing refinement at the OMG. Derek Miers has played a leading role
in the BPMN space, first as Co-Chair of BPMI.org and more recently
within the OMG.

Silver, Bruce, BPMN Method and Style, 2009. Through his company
BPMessentials, Silver has delivered BPMN training and certification
to over 1000 students, and is a key contributor to version 2.0 of the
BPMN standard in OMG. Based on BPMN 2.0, the book provides a
concrete methodology and consistent modeling style, critical to
BPMN's promise of a common language shared by business and IT.
The method and style are described at three levels: descriptive model-
ing for business users (Level 1), analytical modeling for analysts and
architects (Level 2), and executable modeling in BPMN (Level 3), a
new capability of BPMN 2.0.

Saxena, Vishal, Patterns with BPMN 2.0, 2009. Saxena is a senior prod-
uct development manager in the Oracle Application Server division.
He currently leads the development of Business Process Analysis
(BPA) and Business Process Management (BPM) Suite. He brings
extensive experience in the enterprise software development, integra-
tion and BPM industry over the past 14 years. He works closely on
the BPMN standards at OMG. Besides leading development teams in
multiple time zones, he is out evangelizing Oracle’s BPM solution
with customers, partners and analysts.

180
About the Authors

The authors are members of the Business Process Technology


research group of the Hasso Plattner Institute for IT Systems Engi-
neering at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
http://bpt.hpi.uni-potsdam.de

The group is led by Professor Mathias Weske, who has 15 years


of experience in research and teaching workflow technology and busi-
ness process management. He is also the author of the textbook, Bysz-
ness Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures.

Alexander Grosskopf and Gero Decker, hold Masters degrees in


IT Systems Engineering and are researchers in business process man-
agement, with both academic and industry experience. They work
with key contributors to the BPMN standardization body, OMG, in
the areas of execution semantics and choreographies.

The authors actively promote the value of business process man-


agement and professional process-based communication. The authors
teach business process technology and BPMN to university students,
industry professionals and administrative staff in the public sector.

Gero and Mathias are among the founders of signavio.com, a


company specializing in business process modeling on the Web.

181
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Jon Pyke and Peter Fingar
www.mkpress.com/ECC
The Process, unlike most explanations of BPMN, captures both the
practical value and the excitement that results from putting this powerful
technique to work. Skip the dull training. Give people the right tools and
pass around copies ofthis book. Process diagrams will start growing like
ivy.—Dan Woods, CTO and Editor of Evolved Media.
The authors teach the key points of BPMN modeling using an unfolding
business scenario, presented in an engaging dialogue between the modeler,
process participants, and the CEO. By putting BPMN in a business
context, the book will be of great value to those new to process modeling,
especially business people who will be asked to contribute input, even
though they are not actually doing the modeling.—Bruce Silver,
Principal, Bruce Silver Associates.
The unique selling point of the book is the way the concepts are
interweaved in examples that we all see on an everyday basis. Highly
recommended if you are a part of any BPM initiative. “Tom’s” notes at the
end of each chapter are a valuable takeaway for the-reader. You would be
ready to be an in-house BPMN expert by the time you are able to take your
eyes off the book!—Vishal Saxena, Senior Development Manager, Oracle
Corporation, and blogger: Things BPMN.
Most often when we hear the term “process modeling,” we think of the
person who does the modeling, the business analyst. Too often we don’t
think about the business people whose work is being modeled. To be
effective, business people should also have a working knowledge of the
modeling process. This easy-to-read book isn’t just for business analysts,
it’s also for every business person that will be involved in the process of
process modeling. —Derek Miers, Principal, BPM Focus, and coauthor of
BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide.
In 2002, CSC’s Howard Smith and I wrote Business Process
Management: The Third Wave, the book that launched widespread
understanding of BPM and its importance. But understanding alone is not
enough. You need tools. But even more, you need the right way of
thinking to use the tools, You need to learn the process of business process
modeling using the tool, BPMN, and that’s why you need this book.
—Peter Fingar, Executive Partner, Greystone Group, and author of
Extreme Competition.

= e ISBN 978-0-929b52-2b-4
Category: Business 53495
www. ikpress.com
www.bpmnbook.com
9°780929°652269

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