Last week we introduced the BPMN Distilled Video Series by defining a Business Process. This instalment answers the question 'What is BPMN 2.0?'
BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. In general, it represents a 500+ page large ISO standardized specification whose primary goal is to provide a notation that is readily understandable by all business users.
This means that BPMN creates a standardized bridge for communication between different process stakeholders (e.g. process owners, process performers, process analytics and IT stuff).
The latest, BPMN 2.0 notation consists of more than 100 visual elements and corresponding rules, which are used for representing business processes in different types of business process diagrams: process diagrams, collaboration diagrams, choreography diagrams and conversation diagrams.
These process diagrams serve different purposes in the business process management lifecycle, including process analysis and process improvement, process-based communication and requirement specifications for business IT solutions.
Besides its visual use, BPMN specifies a meta-model, which defines the semantics of BPMN visual and non-visual elements and their interrelationships. The resulting semantic BPMN elements are used to specify business process models, which are capable of being executed on business process engines.
A major advantage of BPMN when compared to competitive technologies is that business process diagrams, which consist of visual BPMN elements, can be easily transformed into executable business process models through XML based BPMN format.
BPMN, which is maintained by Object Management Group (OMG), is therefore de-facto standard for process modeling and automation.