Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) was created to
represent work processes in diagrams that are readily understandable by
business people, yet are rich enough in detail to allow IT departments
to translate process maps into technical specifications. The goal for
BPMN is to enhance communication about processes across an
organization. For automated processes, BPMN diagrams can serve as a
bridge between process participants and the IT staff that build systems
to support their work.
At one level, a BPMN
diagram is like a flowchart or swimlane diagram. However, the symbol
set is significantly larger than the one used for a conventional
flowchart or swimlane diagram. This one fact leads both to strong
advocacy for and strong resistance to BPMN.
Advocates assert that it is the combination of visual richness and
underlying data attributes that allows BPMN diagrams to convey complex
system and human interactions. Critics complain that the sheer number
of symbols and symbol variants is off-putting to many people; they feel
it makes diagrams more complex and less understandable to the business
people who are half of the intended audience for BPMN.
Visio 2010 introduced a template for BPMN version 1.2 and it
included stencils with dozens of shapes. Since the 1.2 version of the
standard, the creators of BPMN have worked hard to make BPMN usable by
a larger number of people. One result is that BPMN 2.0 defines a
smaller working set of shapes and symbols that should be familiar to
anyone who has created traditional flowcharts, and it is this version
of BPMN on which the Visio 2013 template is based.
Note
The first thing to know about creating BPMN diagrams from the Visio
Professional 2013 template is that there are four core shape types: Events, Activities, Gateways, and Connecting Objects, with multiple variations of each.
The BPMN 2.0 symbol set includes the following:
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Three types of Events, classified as Start, Intermediate, and End, and represented by different kinds of circles as shown on the left in the following graphic.
Each of the BPMN shapes in Visio can display a modified appearance
in order to represent a variation on the basic shape type. For example,
each Event shape can show a trigger or result through the addition of
an icon to one of the basic circles. The trio of images on the right in
the preceding graphic represent a timer start event, a message
intermediate event, and an error end event.
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Two Activity types, Tasks and Sub-Processes, each of which has multiple variations as you will discover in the exercise that follows.
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Six Gateway types, all of which are variations of the Diamond shape.
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Three Connector types, representing Sequence Flows, Message Flows, and Associations
between shapes (left to right in the following graphic), with optional
condition attributes for Sequence Flows and direction attributes for
Associations.
