The Process Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
The Process Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
(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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— ALSO FROM MEGHAN-KIFFER PRESS——
DOT.CLOUD:
The 21st Century Business Platform
EXTREME COMPETITION:
Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
BIOTEAMS:
High Performance Teams Based on Nature’s Best Designs
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
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]
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
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.
He wiped off his sweaty hand before pressing down the door handle.
“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.
“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.”
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.
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.”
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! ”
Tom was a little bit puzzled. This all still sounded a bit too un-
specific. “So what would I do exactly?”
Tom thought about this for a few moments. “But isn’t there any-
12
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“Too late?”
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Chapter 2
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.
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.
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 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?”
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.”
“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?”
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.
Then she stopped and quickly scanned through the faxes. She
y
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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.”
“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?”
“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
“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.”
“And guess what is special about the last phase?” Anne chal-
lenged him.
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.”
“Tm happy you like it. But hey, it’s more than a drawing. It’s a
model. A process model.”
“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?”
20
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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?”
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?”
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.”
“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.
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?
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
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.”
“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.
“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.”
“Exactly.”
“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
Tom read through the diagram again, “And the circles with the
thicker line?”
“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.
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
“TI see icons. There are many different icons,” Tom remarked.
Gorrect.
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.
“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.”
28
The Process: Business Process M sane Using BPMN
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.
“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.”
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.”
“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.
“So this is another decision then,” Tom said while trying to fol-
low Anne’s explanation.
30
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
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.”
“We need to, at least, extract the initial specification, the date of
installation, and the maintenance history.”
“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
“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.
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.
“You mean,” Anne picked up the ball, “if you do different things
for different customers but in the end reply to the customer anyway.”
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.”
“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.”
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.
34
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
—) 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.
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.
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Chapter 3
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.
“May I have some of your time, Sir,” Tom said to Winning, while
he was still five meters away.
“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
“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.”
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.
“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.”
“More or less?”
“The optical guys work together, and the mechanical guys and so
on. But apart from that, development can happen independently.”
39
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“And then?”
“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.”
“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.”
41
The Process: Business Process Modehing Using BPMN
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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.
“Ts that all?” Anne asked. “Is that the whole process? Five activi-
ties in a sequence?”
“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.”
43
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“T like to keep models digital,” Anne explained, “so you can easily
change and version them.”
“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.
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.
|
£
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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
“You can even sub-divide lanes,” Anne said. “So you can dive ar-
bitrarily deep into the structure of the organization.”
“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?”
“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.”
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.”
46
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
Create a 2
specification raed
for laser unit (eo
eee
mechanical
eee
“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
“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.
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.
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?
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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.
“Yes, the email. I attached the refined model of the process from
Friday. I worked on it today.”
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The Process. B usiness Process Model ing Using BPMN
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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.”
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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?”
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
contract
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.”
“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.
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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.
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.
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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.
contract
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.
“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.
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
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?”
60
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The Process. B USUNESS Process Model ing Using BPMN
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
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.
“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
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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
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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 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.
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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.
65
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Chapter 5
“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.”
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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.
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
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.
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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?”
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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.”
“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?”
“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
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.”
“Oh. yes, there is. You are not the first one having this problem.
In BPMN they introduced a construct called Ad Hoc subprocess.”
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.”
Tom stared at the computer screen, “Yeah, that perfectly fits his
job. The salesperson is free to do or skip whatever task.”
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?”
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.”
“So there is a process behind the activity and I can drill down
into it,” Tom repeated.
“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.
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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
“Where?”
“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
J shortcut notation
J collapsed sub-process
build, assemble,
configure & test
components
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“T see.”
“And usually you want to avoid overhead to have the most com-
pact representation possible.” ;
“It looks a bit like the Ad Hoc subprocess. But we are missing
the marker here,” Tom replied.
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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?”
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.”
“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,
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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.”
“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 me it’s just a special case for parallelism but it’s always
the same task,” Tom said.
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
Build Assemble
components Configure &
components
test laser unit
to laser unit
“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.”
“Okay, the name makes sense, but the marker is strange.” Tom
grabbed the mouse and put an annotation to the activity.
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.”
Tom nodded his head. He had taken out his black notebook and
started noting things down.
“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
“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.”
“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.
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.
“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
“Why did you join the branches in the beginning using an XOR
gateway?”
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.
“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
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
© 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.
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
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
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....”
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
“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?”
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.
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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.
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.
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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?”
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
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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.
“Tt denotes the fact, that each activity might be skipped or done
while they gather requirements.”
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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.
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“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.”
Tom was still confused about the last remark, but happy to
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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.”
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“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.”
“I guess you mean the next process step, the one for testing and
installation.”
Tom zoomed into the subprocess for testing and installation, and
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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.”
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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.
Haffner nodded; he still had not taken his eyes off the slide.
“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.”
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“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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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.
“Tell me about your new job,” David finally asked. “What exactly
ate you doing?”
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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.
‘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.
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That didn’t ring a bell for Tom. “No, we are using BPMN. Have
you heard of it?”
Tom felt as if someone had switched off the lights. Was David
really talking about the same language?
“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?”
“No. Pools! Empty pools. The process is hidden inside the pool.”
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“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.
Tom immediately came up with the answer. “We are doing a joint
project with another company. That’s what I’m here for.”
“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.”
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“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.”
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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.”
“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?”
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“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.”
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“Oh, yes, there are. But the most important type is the message —
at least for me, because they symbolize information exchange between
business partners.”
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-
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“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.
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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.
“How about joint projects like this one? Have you done a lot of
this kind?”
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“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.
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.
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“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.
1
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“Don’t worry, I'll be fine,” Tom replied. He didn’t date to ask for
more details.
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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.
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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Time-based iteration
(e.g. reminders)
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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.
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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.
Confirm Send
reservation invoice
Reservation Reservation
confirmed confirmed
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reservation invoice
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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.”
He searched the Web again, but couldn’t find any hint. He finally
decided to send a text message to David:
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.
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\/ \/
Supplier (PDO)
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“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.
“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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”Or you get the complete support plan, and then you’re done,”
said Tom.
“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.”
“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.”
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Regards,
Tom
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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.
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©
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.
124
Chapter 8
The Pioneer
“The answer isn’t why not, but why yes!” {?? Linda remarked.
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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.”
“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?”
“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.
“T have to leave now,” Linda suddenly broke the silence. “I’ll see
you in the training class.”
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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.”
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.
Tom was impressed. Charles probably could have done the same
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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.
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“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.”
“So, like us,” Tom added, “you use process modeling as a visual
means by which different domain experts can communicate a com-
plex topic.”
“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.”
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“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.”
“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.
13%
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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.
“Oh, I have been giving courses all my life. Actually I have been a
university lecturer.”
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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“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.”
“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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“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.”
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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.”
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.”
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Charles waved the waiter over, who a short time later returned
with two beers.
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?”
“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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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.”
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.”
“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.
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responded.
“Next guess?”
“Tell me! ”
“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.
“Okay,” Tom saw the point, “exactly one branch is taken by the
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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.
“Sure, but if you like to communicate and work with people there
are few jobs that give you higher job satisfaction,” Charles responded.
“Yes, I have also had the experience that some people are very
much involved, while others just don’t seem to care,” Tom replied.
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“Why?”
“What ate those technical ways?” Tom got interested in the topic.
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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.
141
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An Exceptional Lesson
“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.”
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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.
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.
“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.
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.”
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“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?”
“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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“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.
“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.
“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.”
“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.”
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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.”
“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.”
Contact “—
customer
Fill lost
Lost customer
customer
quote
Customer (Al)}
indormation 37> Bad quote
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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.”
“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?”
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“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.”
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1 ese
Lost
customer
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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\
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?”
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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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.
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 students looked at the new model. This was very easy, Tom
thought.
“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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Approve
Contact Negotiate Create quote quote
customer conditions
Fill lost
Change Lost
customer
request customer form
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?”
“J always do that,” she said to Tom who was staring at her. “Col-
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\
@!
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.
158
Chapter 10
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\
“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.”
“.. 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?”
“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.”
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.
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\
“We have to inform the customer,” Linda threw in. She seemed
to be very excited about all this.
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.
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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.”
“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?”
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4‘
“And what happens,” Linda threw in, “if the activity was not exe-
cuted? Is it compensated anyway?”
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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.”
“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?”
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.
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\
“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.”
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customer
S
master data 2
(KK
PF cancelled
for
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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?”
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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.”
“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.... ”
“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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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.”
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?”
“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?”
“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.”
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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.
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.
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\
172
Chapter 11
What’s Next?
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.
“Nice guy,” Tom answered. The social event and the long night
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
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.”
“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.
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The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
be organized.”
“And the result of the design phase is the process model,” Haff-
ner concluded.
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.”
WS
The Process: Business Process Modeling Using BPMN
\
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.
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“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.
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:
Bruce Silver’s BPMS Watch blog and series, “BPMN and the Business
Process Expert.”
179
\
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
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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