Do we really need BPMN for Business Process Modeling?
Business Processes
Business processes compose the building blocks of any organization and their efficient design and implementation plays a vital role in an organization’s success.
To provide a brief definition, a business process is a collection of linked activities that once completed will achieve an organizational goal, such as the delivery of a service or product to a client. In other words, business processes describe the way in which the actual work is accomplished.
It is therefore self-evident that global leaders focus on Business Process Management (BPM) in order to optimize operational performance, offer high-quality services and thus obtain a key competitive advantage in the marketplace.
The best practice in order to achieve this desired optimization of business processes is their modeling with diagrams that will reflect the designed procedure and enable the easier identification of areas for potential improvement. In this way, process diagrams are always part of the requirements specification and serve as the foundation for the design of business applications.
BPMN
The most commonly-used framework for modeling business processes is BPMN. In more detail, BPMN is a Business Process Model and Notation framework that is established by the Object Management Group to help with the standardization of business process modeling and enable their effective communication among different groups of people.
The creation of the BPMN specification had a warm acceptance in the business world and nowadays the BPMN 2.0 version is the de-facto standard for the creation of business process diagrams.
BPMN: Pros and Cons
So what are the main advantages that BPMN brings to the table? First of all, as it was already mentioned BPMN 2.0 has become the de-facto standard notation, as it is widely used in every industry for the definition of business processes. This increases the probability that all stakeholders will obtain a mutual understanding of the created diagrams. On top of that, BPMN is a simple notation, with a short learning curve for the adequate understanding of its models.
Another important advantage of BMPN is its power of expression. The BPMN framework provides a lot of options and tools that enable the modeling of even more complicated processes. Plus, BPMN has high process automation capabilities that support the implementation of business processes. In fact, the majority of BPM software packages favor BPMN over the other notations with regards to the process automation perspective.
On the flipside, there can be cases in which the usage of the BPMN framework can take more analysis time, especially for an analyst that is not experienced in the usage of BPMN. Another potential risk is associated with the likelihood of modeling mistakes that would decrease the clarity of process flows.
Overall, we could say that BPMN is a really useful tool for the analysis and design of business processes. It offers significant advantages, while the main risks that are associated with its usage will be mitigated as the analyst becomes more familiar with the framework’s characteristics.
