General BPMN Modeling Concepts

General Modeling Concepts

• A process is chronological. Accurate models should be oriented on a time line (in general, from left to right in sequence).
  
• Processes generally begin with triggering events, and work their way through to significant business results.

They can also represent smaller segments of re-usable work.

• All tasks or activities are assigned to roles that are meaningful to people in the business.

Be sure you have captured all relevant roles, which may sometimes be outside of the company.

• A complete model should display how objects or data (or both) are transferred and where they are going.
  
• A process can be modeled in a hierarchical fashion (e.g., with Sub-Processes).
  
• The choices made for decisions, which occur within a process, determine which of all possible paths will be taken.
  
• Establish organization standards or guidelines for developing models and naming model elements, e.g.,

Establish naming conventions for each type of modeling object. For example, all activity names could have the following format:  

verb + (adjective/descriptor) +

Avoid redundancy in naming, e.g., do not include the word Process in the Process names or the words Task or Activity in Task names.

To help with report outputs, names should be 32 characters or less.
To help with readability, all words should be capitalized.

• Establish a set of standard nouns, verbs, and acronyms that are used for naming objects.
  
• Establish standards for versioning methods associated at the process model and artifact level to provide requirement traceability.