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Business process models and its support in Visual Paradigm. Zuzana Brťková. What is business process?.
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Business process models and its support in Visual Paradigm Zuzana Brťková
What is business process? A business process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product. This process can be broken down into a sequence of smaller and usually simpler processes or activities performed by a person or system
Purpose of modeling processes • Control of current processes • Improving current processes • Designing new processes (reflecting business requirements and inovating) • Handling interactions between processes • Automatizing processes
Business process model and notation • BPMN is a graphical representation and standartized notation for specifying and modeling business processes • Its idea and notation is similar to UML, but it's not a part of UML • BPMN is developed by Business Process Management Initiative, which is now part of Object Management Group (author of UML)
Elements of BPMN • Flow Objects: events, activities, gateways • Connecting Objects: sequence and message flow, association • Swim Lanes: pool, lane • Artifacts: data object, group, annotation Basic BPMN involves four element categories, divided into sub-categories:
Flow objects • Flow objects are main describing elements in BPMN. They are related to information flow in modeled process. • Three basic types: • Events • Activities • Gateways
Types of flow objects • Events: denotes “something that happens to the business“, represented by a circle with an icon within, which denotes the type of an event • Start event: acts as a process trigger, can only be of catch type • Intermediate event: represents something that happens • between the start and end events, can be throw or catch • End event: result of a process, only throw
Types of flow objects 2) Activities: Denotes “something that must be done“, a piece of work performed in business process. It´s represented with a rounded-corner rectangle 3) Gateways: Determines forking or merging paths (flow) through a business process. A gateway is represented with a diamond shape.
Connecting objects • Serve to connect flow objects together or with artifacts. • Three basic types: • Sequence flows: determine the sequence of activities • Message flows: messages between process participants • Associations: associates text or data with other elements
Swim lanes • A visual mechanism that organizes and categorizes activities • Usually express roles of participants • in a flowchart • Two types: pools and lanes • Pool can include multiple lanes – • lane is a subset of its pool
Types of swim lanes • Pools: represents major participants in a process (usually different organizations). Pools can be open, showing its internal details, or collapsed, hiding internal details (blackbox) • Lanes: organizes and categorizes activities within a pool according to their functions and roles.
Artifacts • Data objects: show the reader which data is required or produced in an activity. • Group: is represented with a rounded-corner rectangle and dashed lines. The group is used to group different activities but does not affect the flow in the diagram. • Annotation: is used to give the reader of the model/diagram an understandable impression. Allow developers to bring some more information into the model/diagram. There are three pre-defined artifacts and they are:
Support in VP • As BPMN isn't a part of UML, it doesn't make a standard part of Visual Paradigm modeling abilities • But exist a tool: Business Process Visual ARCHITECT which fully supports BPMN