BPMN

BPMN
Mikelo Skarabo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Name	BPMN
Caption	Business Process Model and Notation example
Developer	Object Management Group
Initial release	2004
Latest release	2.0.2 (2013)
Type	Graphical notation, modeling standard
License	OMG specification

BPMN BPMN is a standardized graphical notation for modeling business processes with the intent of improving communication among stakeholders, analysts, developers, auditors and managers. It provides a visual language to represent workflows, decisions, actors, events and message flows so that models produced by analysts can be understood and implemented by technical teams. Widely adopted across industries, BPMN integrates with enterprise architectures, service-oriented architectures and governance frameworks.

Overview

BPMN was created to bridge the gap between business process design and implementation, enabling coordination among disparate parties such as Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, IBM, and Microsoft. It sits alongside standards and frameworks like Unified Modeling Language, Business Process Execution Language, Service-oriented architecture, TOGAF, and ITIL. Organizations such as Siemens, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Amazon (company), and Google use BPMN models to align operations with information technology initiatives. Academic and research institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and ETH Zurich have examined its formal semantics and applicability.

History and Development

Early BPMN work was influenced by industry groups and software vendors including PegaSystems, Fujitsu, SAP SE, Oracle Corporation, IBM, and Microsoft. The specification was developed under the aegis of the Object Management Group and built on concepts from prior standards such as Business Process Modeling Notation (legacy), BPEL, and modeling work from OMG. Key contributors and adopters include consulting firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, KPMG, and standards bodies such as W3C and ISO. Academic contributions originated from researchers affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and TU Delft. Major milestone events include vendor interoperability workshops hosted by OMG and demonstrations at conferences like Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ACM SIGMOD, and International Conference on Conceptual Modeling.

Notation and Elements

The notation defines graphical primitives used to model processes and collaborations. Core element categories and related contexts appear in work by vendors like Bonitasoft, Camunda, Red Hat, TIBCO Software, and Newgen Software. BPMN elements are often discussed alongside constructs from Petri nets, Statecharts, Activity diagrams, Erlang/OTP concurrency models, and formal models developed at institutions such as INRIA and Max Planck Society. Modeling artifacts appear in tools from Sparx Systems, Atlassian, Creately, and Lucid Software. Enterprises like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Boeing map operational steps using tasks, gateways, events, and pools in process diagrams.

Execution and Interoperability

BPMN models are often transformed into executable languages like Business Process Execution Language, BPEL4People, WS-BPEL, and platform-specific runtimes from Red Hat JBoss, Camunda Platform, IBM Business Process Manager, Oracle SOA Suite, and Microsoft BizTalk Server. Interoperability efforts involved vendors such as Sparx Systems, IBM, SAP, Oracle Corporation, and Fujitsu during conformance testing events. Standards alignment has been pursued with W3C, ISO, OASIS, and regional regulators including the European Commission for cross-border e-government workflows. Research on formal execution semantics was contributed by groups at Princeton University, University of Twente, University of Rome La Sapienza, and Technische Universität München.

Tools and Implementations

A broad ecosystem implements BPMN across commercial and open-source offerings from companies like Camunda, Bonitasoft, TIBCO Software, IBM, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat, Microsoft, SAP SE, Signavio, Appian, and PegaSystems. Open-source engines and modelers include initiatives from Eclipse Foundation, Activiti, jBPM, Flowable, Camunda BPMN, and community projects at GitHub. Tool interoperability, repositories and modeling exchanges are supported by vendors and platforms such as Atlassian, Confluence, JIRA (software), Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Visual Paradigm, Archi, and academic projects at MIT and Stanford University.

Applications and Use Cases

BPMN is applied in domains ranging from banking and finance at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, HSBC, Barclays PLC, and Deutsche Bank to manufacturing at Siemens, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen, and Honeywell International Inc.. Healthcare providers such as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, NHS England, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Kaiser Permanente use BPMN to model patient flows and compliance processes. Public sector adopters include United States Department of Defense, European Commission, UNICEF, World Bank, and OECD for policy implementation and cross-agency workflows. BPMN supports supply chain orchestration for companies like FedEx, UPS, DHL, Maersk, and retailers including Walmart and Target Corporation.

Criticisms and Limitations

Critiques have come from academic circles and industry practitioners at University of California, Berkeley, ETH Zurich, TU Delft, Imperial College London, and Carnegie Mellon University noting complexity for large-scale, cross-organizational models and ambiguity in execution semantics when mapping to BPEL or runtime engines. Vendors and consultants including Gartner, Forrester Research, McKinsey & Company, and Boston Consulting Group have observed tool fragmentation and inconsistent conformance across IBM, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, and smaller vendors. Legal and regulatory bodies such as European Commission, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and Financial Conduct Authority highlight challenges in auditability and traceability when BPMN is applied in regulated industries. Alternative or complementary approaches from Petri nets, Event-driven architecture, Decision Model and Notation, and workflow languages in Eclipse Foundation projects are frequently proposed.

Category:Business process modeling