Sunday, 8 January 2012

Business Modeling with BPMN

Very often we find that the Requirements Management process leads to a dead end. Typically, this is a revelation that the origin of the project are not well understood - and it is time to do some Business Modeling - to clarify exactly why the project is needed and where it fits into the grand scheme of things.

Over the past decade or so, I have used elements of UML to document the Business Processes, but found that something is still lacking. Activity Diagrams and Business Use Case Models can only go so far. 

I have found a very valuable tool in BPMN 2.0 - the Business Process Model and Notation - in particular the Level 1 and Level 2 conformance subclasses that limit the icon set and greatly increase the adoption rate among our client organizations. Naturally, a set of icons alone won't do the job - Bruce Silver's BPMN Method and Style goes beyond notation and offers a Methodology of process, notation, and best practices.