Course Description
Traditional business/system modeling practices are rife with miscommunication, vague definitions and needless complexity. BPMN is the standard that overcomes these challenges, from executive stakeholders to deep technical engineers.
Most business and technical stakeholders (from sponsors, customers, and end users to business analysts, project managers, designers/architects, testers, support, and so on) are vividly aware that, in order to come up with good solutions, we need to be able to describe, understand, and communicate our organizations' business processes, end-to-end and top-to-bottom. Yet, despite decades of flowcharting-talk and uncounted number of Visio diagrams, we are still struggling with this challenge. Without doubt, this is a major contributor to projects that fail to deliver (e.g. cancelled, over schedule and/or budget, products of poor quality or that include either only a fraction of the required functionality or functionality that nobody ever uses).
In the last couple of years, more and more organizations have adopted a new standard: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). By now, a de-facto standard for business process modeling, BPMN enables bridging the communication gap between business and technical people by providing an effective, efficient, and flexible way to capture, model, analyze, and design business processes, in a way that is easily understood by all interested parties.
There are several reasons organizations make this transition to BPMN:
· Simple Notation: BPMN is easy to learn and easily understood by all stakeholders, on both the business and technical sides
· Flexible & Rich Expression: BPMN has 3 levels of modeling abstraction that allow describing simple/high-level processes (Descriptive level), analysis and optimization (Analytic level), and specifying complex processes for IT implementation and/or execution (Execution level)
· Unmatched Capabilities: BPMN is the only business process notation capable to clearly represent a comprehensive view of the integration of processes with complex events, data objects flow, and/or business rules
· Can Show Both the Whole-Picture and the Details: BPMN allows progressively elaborating the high-level models into further details, in a hierarchical structure, without losing the relationships between different process components
· Efficiency/Reuse: in BPMN, same models are used throughout the whole Solution/System Development Lifecycle (SDLC), with no need for copying models or (re)inventing the wheel each time one changes perspective on a process
· widely adopted standard: common notation (symbols) and rules (syntax) that enable clarity of communication and making sure processes are consistent and valid
· Standard Accompanied by Methodologies and Best Practices: an active BPMN community established and maintains a strong knowledgebase of methodologies and best practices
· Wide Adoption by Tool Providers: virtually all major vendors, commercial or open-source, have now adopted the BPMN standard
After completing this class you will be able to:
· Bridge the communication gap between business and IT, by modeling processes that can be easily understood and communicated by all stakeholders
· Enable process collaboration and accountability, by modeling processes at levels of abstraction/details most appropriate to each stakeholder's perspective
· Create high-level (whole-picture) models that describe an organization's end-to-end processes
· Design and optimize processes, by progressively elaborating high-level models (Descriptive level) into hierarchical and more detailed process models (Analytical level)
· Capture/design complex process-events interactions
· Capture/design processes that separate and integrate process activities and complex business rule definitions
· Streamline process and requirements documentation by using the same notation and syntax to capture processes at all stages of the SDLC
· Enhance knowledge management (creating, sharing, training, reuse, etc.) by eliminating the need to duplicate and/or translate process definitions
· Increase productivity by enabling process engineers to elaborate Analytical models into Executable models (rather than starting from scratch each time)
· Reduce analysis paralysis, by allowing teams and business/process analysts to focus on relevant aspects of the process (through hierarchical modeling and sub-process expansion, while maintaining overall process consistency/integrity)
· Enable scope management and prioritization, by allowing process models that are selectively elaborated (based on which aspects of the process are more important)
· Facilitate adoption/customization of BPM/BPMN/BPMS tools
· Enable process simulations to validate and optimize business processes (e.g. process & cycle times, costs, resource utilization, etc.)
Course Outline
1. Intro & Core Concepts
· Models and modeling goals
· Processes/process types
· Process modeling
· BPMN in Context: BPM & BPMS
· Historical background
· Comparison with alternative modeling methods
2. BPMN Notation & Element Types
· BPMN Standard: Notation/symbols, Syntax, and Semantics
· Modeling levels/palettes: Descriptive, Analytical, Execution
· Work-performing elements: Processes, Activities (Tasks/Sub-Tasks)
· Work-routing elements: Sequence & Message Flow, Gateways
· Work-partitioning elements: Pools & Lanes
· Events
· Data Objects
· Artifacts
3. Descriptive Models (Level 1 Palette)
· Purpose & target audience
· Core elements
· Method and style
· Examples
4. Analytical Models (Level 2 Palette)
· Purpose & target audience
· Additional elements
· Method and style
· Examples
5. BPMN Practices
· Common pitfalls & how to avoid them
· Best practices
6. Process Analysis & Design, using BPMN
· BPMN Syntax Validation
· BPMN Method & Style Validation
· Tokens & Workflow Patterns
· Optimizing Processes: Analysis & Design
7. Advanced Topics
· Process Simulations
· BPMN Processes and Business Rules/Decisions
· Event Sub-processes
· Choreography diagrams
· Executable models
8. BPM/BPMN Career, Resources
· IIBA and Process Modeling
· OMG Certified Expert in BPM (OCEB)
· Other certifications
· Resources
9. BPMN Tools
· Whiteboards, Sticky-Notes, etc.
· Diagramming tools vs. Modeling tools
· BPMN vs. BPMS
· Commercial & Open-source tools
10. Case Study & Hands-on Exercises
The online jsBeautifier is a free online program that is worth bookmarking.
Substitution & Cancellation Policy:
You may cancel or reschedule up to 21 days prior to the start date of the class at no penalty. For any cancellation or reschedule requests within 21 days, the full course tuition is still due and not eligible for refund. Any paid tuition will be credited towards a future class and must be used within 12 months.
*Partner delivered courses may be subject to different cancellation terms