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.

Using Visio 2010 Premium to create a BPMN Document

 

Creating a New Visio 2010 BPMN Document

The following step will show you how to create the document and setup your workspace

1. From the Visio File Menu Select “Flowchart”.

2. Select “BPMN Diagram”.

 

 

 

3. From the BPMN Basic Shapes, drag a “Start Event” shape onto the page.

4. “Right click” on the “Start Event” shape and click on “BPMN Attributes” as shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Position the “Shape Data” window as shown in the example below.

 

 

 

 

The Visio 2010 BPMN Shapes

Basic Shapes

 

 

 

 

 

 

BPMN Event Shapes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BPMN Activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BPMN Gateways

 

 

 

 

 

BPMN Connecting Objects

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visio 2010 BPMN Menu Items

The Visio 2010 “Process Menu”

 

 

 

 

Check Diagram

When you “click” on the “Check Diagram” in the menu, all the pages in your document are validated against the “built-in” BPMN Validation Rules.

If the “Issues Window” item is checked, you will see the”Issues Window” as show in the sample below.

Issues Window

 

 

 

 

If the diagram fails validation you are presented with the error information as shown in the sample below

Issues Window with errors

 

 

 

“Double Clicking” on the line will highlight the where the issue occurs within the diagram.

 

Subprocess Menu Items

Link to Existing

If you select a shape on your drawing and then “click” on the “Link to Existing” menu item, you are presented with a drop down menu as show below.

Pages in this Document

 

 

 

 

 

You can create a “hyperlink” from the selected shape to any page within the document.

If you select “Browse to Other Document”, you can also create a “hyperlink” to any file type this can be an Excel Mapping document, Message Schema, Message sample, Business Rule Document, etc.

Create New

If you select a “Sub-Process” shape in the diagram and select “Create New” in the menu, a new diagram page is created. The page is named from the shape.

A hyperlink is created from the selected shape to the new page.

Create from Selection

If you select a group of elements on a page and select “Create from Selection”, this will create a new “Sub-process” Page. A new shape is added to replace the shapes moved to the new page.The page name is not labeled for the sub-process.

An example of the shape is shown below.

Sub-process link shape

 

 

 

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