Simple BPMN At a Glance

BPMN makes it easy to understand the flow without actually understanding the exact symbols because it’s a simple, intuitive method. BPMN is flow-chart based notation for defining Business Processes. It provides a mechanism to generate an executable Business Process (BPEL) from the business level notation. A Business Process developed by a business analyst can be directly applied to a BPM engine instead of going through human interpretations and translations into other languages.

Is BPMN Tool Complex?

Many critics of BPMN 2.0 complain that BPMN is too complicated to learn. Even if the language itself is designed to be unambiguous by including a singular semantic layer, there are simply too many objects in BPMN for the standard to be useful.

These critics often point to images from the BPMN 2.0 OMG specification such as this matrix of events to emphasize their point. These critics often favor other flavors of modeling tools and methodologies.

BPMN - Basic Modeling Elements

What the critics fail to mention is that most processes do not require the modeler to know the entire specification. In fact, most models don’t use more than a handful of the most common process elements.

In fact, BPMN actually consists of only 3 main elements:

1. Events

2. Activities

3. Gateways

4. Flows

Yes, that’s right. There are just three main elements in BPMN! Ok, well, let’s throw in a fourth element just so we can connect the other three - the Sequence Flow (the black lines with arrows that connect everything together).

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