Skip to main content

Relevance of BPMN in business context

BPMN has definite strength in technical process automation. It is achieved through dozens of proprietary and open source implementations of BPMN engines tailored for interoperability with an impressive array of business software from various target domains. This strength is additionally reinforced with high degree of standardization ensuring transparent exchange of BPMN processes among all these applications and technologies. Perhaps, BPMN is one of most commonly used business language in the area of technical automated business processing.

Process transparency creates a unique ecosystem in growing family of tools supporting open BPMN process collaboration and increases its attractiveness for wider business generalization. However, exactly these voluntary expansions create a potential trap of BPMN misuse. In regard of generic business structuring and vision, usage of BPMN might look much less beneficial and relevant. There definitely exist many other dedicated languages for these business contexts. Even in technical execution area one can find many more alternative languages specifically designed for their specialized areas. As any language, BPMN is best to use in areas where it best suites in terms of its vocabulary and expressive capabilities and should be avoided of artificial enforcement into alternative areas where its relevance is dubious.

BPMN is one of widely spread languages for business modeling, which, as any other language, should be used in areas where its palette of objects and rules gives a convenient and efficient description of business practice. Where it is relevant or not, only practitioners, analysts and process owners can decide. If all of them are comfortable using BPMN in their daily communication, then it is the right choice. If substantial amount of users is dissatisfied, it is a good invitation to look for another, more relevant language. It is always important to see real business behind the language and not formal abstracts of the language itself. Business language is suitable when it helps to run the business and irrelevant in all other situations.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CaseAgile Will Show BPMN Data Exchange between Visio and Leading BPMN Tools

CaseAgile announces a new release of Enterprise Composer™ add-on for Microsoft® Visio, which supports transparent exchange of BPMN diagrams designed in Visio with leading BPMN tools. CaseAgile will demonstrate capabilities of Enterprise Composer™ on upcoming "BPMN IN ACTION" event organized by The Object Management Group (OMG) in Seattle at December 10, 2018. Enterprise Composer™ offers a seamless and efficient way for every Visio® user into the world of professional business process management (BPM) systems and process automation. By using Enterprise Composer™, Microsoft® Visio can create executable processes fully compatible with BPMN™ 2.0 standard from OMG®, which is the global de-facto etalon for modeling business processes and can be used both by businesses and IT. Every BPM practitioner working with Microsoft® Visio now can import BPM models created in most popular BPM suites directly into Visio® and can export models cre...

Gap between process model and real process

There always exists a discrepancy between a model of business process, however well designed and accurate, and real execution of this process in a business environment. The reason for this gap is an unforeseen depth and hidden details inherent to any real process. Real business model of organization is ultimately unlimited in its depth. Going from highest management levels, it descends to individual departments, client relations, production units, technical code of equipment and controllers etc. In vast majority of cases, it is impossible and senseless to build a complete model covering all and every fine detail of the business. Omitted lower layers of the model create (pseudo) random fluctuations during execution of the model. Real execution paths of a process never follow its model exactly. However, in case of the correct model, we can expect to see that an ensemble of execution paths statistically converges to the model as to its average path over a significant set of observation...

Why processes are so important for the digital enterprise?

Role of business processes in a digital company is far more important than in a traditional organization because digital organization literally consists of the digital business processes it implements. Traditionally, most business processes are in possession of workers or groups of workers, in other words, process stakeholders. Every worker holds in memory, experience, notes or corporate regulations certain course of action to follow in every particular situation. This implicit or partially formalized set of rules comprises a business model of a company. The model is subject to change by mere verbal discussion and agreement between workers and management, happen business environment evolves or new challenges appear. Situation is entirely different in a digital organization. Digital systems do not have any implicit awareness on business aspects, just an explicit algorithm to do exact functions, for which they were designed. Therefore, a digital business system is a manifestation of a bu...