Also called BPMN 2.0, business process modelling notation, gateway
What is business process model and notation?
A formal standard set of symbols for drawing a business process, where a diamond means a decision, a circle means something that happens to the process, and a rounded box means a task.
What else it is called
- Other names
- BPMN 2.0, business process modelling notation, gateway
- In French
- modélisation des processus d’affaires
Related entries
Understanding business process model and notation
A standard maintained by the Object Management Group that fixes what each shape in a process diagram means. Tasks are rounded rectangles. Events, meaning things that happen to the process rather than work it performs, are circles: a message arriving, a timer expiring. Decisions are diamonds, called gateways, and the standard distinguishes an exclusive gateway, where one path is taken, from a parallel one, where several run at once. Lanes carry the same meaning as in a swimlane diagram.
The reason it exists is that a flowchart drawn freehand means whatever its author meant, and a process that has to be handed to a software team, an auditor or another plant needs to mean the same thing to all of them. The reason it is often the wrong choice in a workshop is the same: it is a notation to be learned, and a room spending its morning learning symbols is a room not describing its work.
The practical position most improvement work settles on is to use lanes and a small handful of these shapes, and to reach for the full standard only when the process is being formally documented or built into software.
In practice
The distinction worth borrowing even if you never draw a single one of these diagrams is between a task and an event. Ringing the installer for dates is a task you perform. The installer ringing back is an event you wait for. Most people writing out their own job list the first and not the second, and the second is where the week goes.
Frequently asked
Do I need BPMN to map my own work?
No. A numbered list with a label on each line does the job, and that is what Class 07 teaches. BPMN is worth knowing about because it proves the problem is old and solved, and because its words - task, event, gateway, lane - are the ones everybody else uses.
What is a gateway in BPMN?
The decision point, drawn as a diamond. An exclusive gateway sends the work down one path of several. A parallel gateway sends it down more than one at the same time, which is how a diagram shows four things happening at once after one approval.