Business process modelling notation is something that has plagued many process modelers all
around the world.
One of the key things that gets asked is, "What sort of notation should any process
model be using?"
This is a difficult question to answer.
More importantly, since there's so much of notation or business process modelling notation
around, it's difficult to actually pick one that's right for you.
It's a good thing I have the person on the call with me who is an expert at this, in
this space.
I have with me Stephen White from BPM Advantage, who is a world renowned expert in the world
of process modelling notation.
More impressively, he was the guy who led the initiative at the BPMN development.
BPMN, as most of us know, stands for business process model and notation.
Without further ado, let's welcome Steve to the show.
Hi Sandeep, glad to be here.
I'm looking forward to it.
We've got many questions for you Steve.
Many, many questions so let's get started right away.
First let's dive in by just setting the stage.
Tell us, in your own words, what process modelling notation is?
Basically it's a human readable language for defining the structure and contents of a process.
In this case, in this context, we're talking about business processes.
To emphasize, it is a language.
That means it has a defined vocabulary and [it's a 00:01:50] semantics.
As such, being a language, it allows an organization to use that language to tell the stories of
the work that they do.
For example, these stories could be about how the organization interacts with its customers
or how it does its finances or how it works with its employees and human resources etc.
This language allows them to create, define, in a reusable format, the work that they do.
It's quite ... I get from what you're saying, process modelling notation is an important
thing to have.
Can you elaborate a little bit more of why it'll be important for all of us, in the modelling
space, to consider and make sure that it is front and center?
Sure.
It's important because it does provide a consistent way to capture the work.
Beyond just having someone writing up an explanation or write a few paragraphs about what that
is.
The notation could be the front end of an underlying model.
This model defines how the processes work.
By creating a model, supported with the proper tool, an organization can understand, analyze,
begin changing and even automate those processes.
Like any other language, it does require some learning so people do need to learn the vocabulary
and how that language works.
It seems to me that themes such as consistency and having a modelling notation that allows
a larger group of people to understand what's being said, it's crucial.
I've talked about this on several of my own videos and what I don't cover is the types
of notations there are out there.
As I understand it, there is more than a handful.
Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
There's been many, many process notations out there over the years and there's many
types of them.
Some of them are, you could say, are textual so they are, like a programming language is
a textual notation.
Or they could be structured in rule format or tree structured and some of these might
have icons to represent different ... The way the process behaves.
More commonly though, they are graphical in that they are based on a flow chart.
Not all of them but most of them are based on similar variations of flow charts.
There's been many "standard" ones and I can just list off a few of them.
One could be the UML activity diagrams, event process chains which are EPCs, [peternets
00:05:02] going way back to 1962, WFMC created XPDL and Government created standards like
IDEF, IDEF3 and so forth.
There was even one called YAWL, which is Y-A-W-L, which stands for Yet Another Workflow Language
which was just to notate that there are plenty of them out there.
There are lots of them.
Those are the, what you would call, standard ones.
There's lots of other ones, proprietary ones, created by tool vendors or by academics in
universities who are studying business processes and wanted to create their own languages.
With so much choice out there Steve, I can probably guess what my next question's going
to be, it's all about how does a modeler select which notation he or she should use in their
process modelling effort?
First off, I would say pick a standard.
Don't necessarily pick one that someone has created and it's isolated in its own.
Pick a standard because standards have usually an ecosystem around them.
What I mean by that is there are tools that support that standard.
There are resources, such as books, papers, training, available for people to understand
that standard.
There are people who have learned it.
They've been trained on it and so there's consultants out there who understand it.
With this ecosystem, an organization who is trying to make this decision knows that if
they pick something that is supported out there then they save money on training.
They don't have to train everybody who comes in and works on it or retrain if they change
the tool.
Using a standard means that they are usually transportable between tools if you do change
a tool so pick a standard.
In my case, I'm biased of course, so I would pick the BPMN standard which was developed
just for the purpose of creating basically an ecosystem for the end users.
As background, BPMN was started mainly because there were so many standards or different
notations out there, so many tools that were out there.
There were too many and it was difficult for organizations to pick and choose what they
wanted to do, to pick something that would last them and create internal information
that they can reuse.
When BPMN started, there were quite a few process modelling tool vendors who joined
that effort.
These were people who had created their own notations, but they saw that there was a need
for a common language that a lot of tools can use, the community can support and people
can get trained on.
That was the purpose of creating BPMN, to create a language that the industry could
support.
It's actually been very successful in that regard since there are more than eighty tools
right now that support it.
There are books about it, there are people training, training classes and so forth.
It is probably the most widely used language.
Given that, I would think that it would be a good choice.
It wouldn't be a bad choice to pick BPMN.
There are many other notations out there that people can select.
If I understand correctly, there are really three aspects that I picked up from what you've
just said.
They are just pick a standard based on the, first off, what are you trying to do.
Ensure that it has wide tool support and finally it has a rich set of references such as training
etc.
Yeah, that's basically it.
Certainly you want the tools, you want the reference material and you want people who
understand the language and the overall ecosystem that supports that.
A lot of times, in my experience working with companies that have used non-standards or
even some standards that aren't supported by tools, what they ended up getting is a
large set of materials and they end up ... It becomes shelf wear.
They print out all these documents, they put them on a shelf and then maybe they'll look
at it at some point.
It just becomes a lot of work to create a lot of material without much use in the future.
That way using a model supported by a tool that has standard, then that way it becomes
an electronic asset that is transportable, executable etc.
That helps most modelers make the decision as to what modelling tool or modelling notation
rather to select.
What we often get is this whole step into getting or just taking something on, not really
thinking it through and then regretting it down the road.
The number of times people have told me this issue, it makes me think that there should
be a framework to help out.
With these three factors that we mentioned which is pick a standard with a purpose, wide
tool support and a rich set of references, I think our viewers can have a very ... Something
they can hang onto, hold onto to provide some guidance as to which modelling notation to
get.
If they do a comparison of several modelling notations, especially the ones that you mentioned
before, and did that, honestly and perhaps a few stakeholders, I believe that there is
a lot of value that they can bring into selecting the right notation.
Speaking of actually references, what are your thoughts on where our viewers can get
more information about modelling notation?
Specifically focusing on BPMN, there is, if you want to know about that language, there's
the BPMN specification which is a technical document of course.
It does go into the details, what is the language, what is the vocabulary, what do the images
look like, what do they mean so there is that.
You can get that at the OMG website, will provide the link for that.
There's other reference material there as well.
You can buy books, amazon.com has books on BPMN.
There are websites that have posters that define the elements of the language, what
they look like, what they mean and so forth so as reference material.
There are also online training courses, many courses out there to get trained and certified.
I'm actually developing my own course, should be out in the very near future.
There's lots of resources out there.
That's good to know that modelling notation is something that the larger community does
take seriously, and has accordingly the right amount of information out there to check.
In this case, particularity with BPMN, there seems to be a rich set of resources that our
viewers can tap into.
I think that is a great insight into process modelling notation, how to approach it and
what it is and, most importantly, how to select the best kind of notation that fits a viewer's
modelling purpose.
With that, I'd like to thank you very much for your time Steve.
It's been great having you on Process Sessions and we hope to see you again next time.
Great Sandeep, thanks.
I enjoyed it.