BPeX: Business Process eXtensions

BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition

2012-01-12T09:55:00.000+01:00

My article "Collaborative Activities Inside Pools" has been published again in this 2nd Edition!

Following the ground-breaking body of work in the BPMN 2.0 Handbook First Edition in 2010, this book is greatly expanded with substantial new content and chapters updated to the latest advances in this important standard.

** Detailed Table of Contents with full abstracts of each chapter here (9 pages PDF, no registration required)**

Every chapter from the First Edition was closely examined by its authors and updated to the very latest information. Six completely new chapters and another 50 pages were also added. Authored by members of WfMC, OMG and other key participants in the development of BPMN 2.0, the BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition assembles industry thought-leaders and international experts.
The authors examine a variety of aspects that start with an introduction of what’s new and updated in BPMN 2.0, and look closely at interchange, best practices, analytics, conformance, optimization, choreography and more from a technical perspective. The authors also address the business imperative for widespread adoption of the standard by examining best practice guidelines, BPMN business strategy and the human interface including real-life case studies. Other critical chapters tackle the practical aspects of making a BPMN model executable and the basic timeline analysis of a BPMN model. In addition to free bonus chapters from the latest edition and extra material supplied by authors, the BPMN 2.0 Companion website contains BPMN and XPDL Verification/Validation files, webinars, videos, product specs, tools, free/trial modelers etc. This gives readers exposure to a larger resource on BPMN 2.0 and XPDL than a book alone can offer.
-- mchinosi

BPMN: An introduction to the standard - Update

2012-01-12T09:52:00.000+01:00

This post just to update the previous one. The article has been published in the CSI Journal. Herewith the details:

BPMN: An introduction to the standard
Computer Standards & Interfaces
Volume 34, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 124–134
Received 23 May 2011. Accepted 6 June 2011. Available online 13 June 2011.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2011.06.002

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920548911000766

-- mchinosi

BPMN: An introduction to the standard

2011-06-15T14:54:00.003+02:00

The article "BPMN: An Introduction to the Standard" has been accepted to be soon published in the CSI (Computer Standards & Interfaces) journal, published by Elsevier B.V.

At the moment it is available in PDF as "Accepted manuscript" here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920548911000766

More information about the journal can be read here: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505607/description#description

Please feel free to write me for further information.

Michele Chinosi, Alberto Trombetta, BPMN: An introduction to the standard, Computer Standards & Interfaces, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 13 June 2011, ISSN 0920-5489, DOI: 10.1016/j.csi.2011.06.002. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920548911000766)

Abstract:
The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), formerly known as Business Process Modeling Notation, is the de-facto standard for representing in a very expressive graphical way the processes occurring in virtually every kind of organization one can think of, from cuisine recipes to the Nobel Prize assignment process, severe incident management, e-mail voting systems, travel booking procedures, to name few. In this work, we give an (rather condensed) overview of the BPMN standard, as devised by OMG and we present what are the links with other well-known machineries such as BPEL and XPDL. We also give an assessment of how the OMG's BPMN standard - which is rather large and complex - is perceived and used by practitioners in everyday business process modeling chores. Keywords: BPMN; business processes; modeling techniques

-- mchinosi

BPMN Usage Survey - Results

2011-05-25T08:52:00.005+02:00

We finished analysing the results collected from the survey we published two months ago. We would be very happy if you could add your comment(s) to this post or send them directly to the authors.
"These results will be part of a paper entitled “BPMN: an Introduction to the Standard” that will be published in 2011. In the article the collected results herewith presented are compared and sometimes merged with other data coming from other surveys and from freely available sources on the Internet, like LinkedIn groups dedicated to BPMN or Web-Communities.
During the period of this survey more than 30 answers were collected. The intended audience of the questionnaire was a (even small) community of experts and proficient BPMN users. Thus, even if this survey can not be taken into account as representative of a public sentiment about BPMN, this work clearly represents a sight of the experts on how BPMN is used by practitioners in everyday business process modeling chores."

BPMN Usage Survey: Results

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26th of May: Added on Slideshare two more pages with tables related to the two charts "How much are you familiar with ..."

BPMN Usage Survey: Tables

View more presentations from Michele Chinosi

-- mchinosi

[HELP!] BPMN adoption and use: a quick survey

2011-04-01T11:48:00.001+02:00

I'm working hard on BPMN and particularly I'm interested now in collecting usage information, considering both BPMN 1.2 and BPMN 2.0. To do so I prepared a brief on-line survey I ask you to fill. It will take you less than 10 minutes, but your contribution would be really fundamental and precious. I'll send you the results of this work as soon as possible. I plan to close the poll by mid April, so, please, try to allocate few minutes of your time to help me sharing your expertise.

You can start the survey by clicking here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dERSVFFDMGYzdlZsWkN2S3VZTkpKTkE6MQ

Thank you very much

-- mchinosi

BPMN 2.0 Handbook

2010-12-06T09:42:00.003+01:00

The new BPMN 2.0 Handbook has been launched last week during the XPDL4BPMN meeting organized by the WfMC.

-- mchinosi

BPMN 2.0 Handbook: Collaborative Activities inside Pools

2010-11-03T12:07:00.004+01:00

A new article in the BPMN 2.0 Handbook that will be launched next December at the BPMN for XDPL User Group event in Santa Clara, CA.

Title of the paper: Collaborative Activities inside Pools

You can see an overview of the book here: http://bpmnhandbook.com/06_digital_edition.html

While TOC and abstracts can be downloaded from this link: http://bpmnhandbook.com/04_papers/BPMN2Handbook_ToC_abstracts.pdf

-- mchinosi

Why To Consider BPMN 2.0

2009-12-10T15:47:00.001+01:00

Brief presentation summarizing some new features introduced by BPMN 2.0, focusing on few points (made to answer to particular needs of a research project)

Why To Consider BPMN 2.0

View more documents from Michele Chinosi.

Gravity – Collaborative Business Process Modelling within Google Wave

2009-11-11T11:53:00.001+01:00

What do you think about this?
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/15618
Business process modeling (using also BPMN) through the new Google project Google Wave.
It seems to me an interesting perspective!

-- mchinosi

Workflow Modeling in EU GENESIS Project

2009-11-09T14:36:00.002+01:00

WfMC "Thought Leader Summit" Meeting, Maidenhead (UK), 3-4 November 2009

Workflow Modeling in EU GENESIS Project

View more documents from Michele Chinosi.

Modeling and Validating BPMN Diagrams

2009-07-20T11:29:00.001+02:00

BPMN 2009 Workshop @ CEC09 (IEEE Conference on Commerce and Enterprise Computing)

Modeling and Validating BPMN Diagrams

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Modeling Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records

2009-06-22T13:54:00.002+02:00

This is the talk I presented @ Process.gov conference last week.

Modeling Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records

View more Microsoft Word documents from Michele Chinosi.

BPM & Workflow Handbook 2009

2009-04-21T11:47:00.005+02:00

From the Table of Contents (http://www.futstrat.com/books/handbook09.php):

A DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR BPMN
Michele Chinosi and Alberto Trombetta, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy

We present our contributions to business process design. Our starting point has been a thorough analysis of the OMG standard BPMN. While uncovering several of BPMN’s weak points, our analysis has brought in a novel three-phase design methodology for BPMN. Having a business processes notation and a corresponding conceptual model is not enough when dealing with the modeling of large, complex business processes. As already done in several other contexts, we provide a modeling methodology to support users design and represent business processes. Often, in real scenarios business processes are described using (more or less formalized) graphical languages and/or models. During the last few years, several efforts have been made in order to provide tools to accomplish this requirement, the more notable being WS-BPEL, XPDL, UML, BPMN. As another active line of work, there have been several attempts to provide formalization.

-- mchinosi

Our contribution in BPMN 2.0 submission

2009-04-21T11:39:00.004+02:00

Recently the new submission version for BPMN has been published (BPMN 2.0 revised submission, April 6, 2009 version 0.9.9.1 - http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/apps/doc?bmi/09-04-01.pdf).
The contribution we gave with our research has been acknowledged as "Insubria University" in the section "The following companies provided valuable review, feedback and support", page 2.

Thank you.

-- mchinosi

Interesting Research @ Vishal Saxena's blog

2009-02-26T20:30:00.003+01:00

I wish to thank Vishal Saxena for having published today a post about my Ph.D. Thesis.

http://vishals.blogspot.com/2009/02/interesting-research-michele-chinosi.html

-- mchinosi

A Brief Ph.D. Thesis Summary

2009-02-19T18:21:00.003+01:00

I wish to publish a brief summary of the content of my Ph.D. Thesis "Representing Business Processes: Conceptual Model and Design Methodology" emphasizing some important aspects. Feel free to comment this text or to contact me directly. Thank you.

The main key points of my work are: a new conceptual model for BPs; an XML serialization of such model; a BP design methodology and business process diagrams views. I refer to the model as 'conceptual' because it was not sufficiently formalized to be considered a complete meta-model, even if I think that its base concepts are detailed enough to be considered a solid base for reasoning about BP(MN) modeling. I haven't too much formalized the model because of the forthcoming BPMN 2.0 standard. I know I cannot compete with OMG and with the two submission proposals.

The conceptual model was originally developed to support and test our assumptions. However, it has some characteristics which could be taken into consideration while dealing with BPMN meta-model. Besides, the XML serialization of the model started some years ago to overcome the lack of a complete and compliant BPMN XML serialization. Nowadays, I think it can be very interesting to look at this XML-Schema model because of its simple and linear structure as well as for its main features: among others, it is a self-validating XML serialization of BPMN. This means that it is possible to natively check the syntax of a diagram, all the BPMN structural semantics rules and most of the behavioral semantics rules.

That is, we can check quite all the rules provided by BPMN 1.1 specifications which could be checked without a simulation or an execution of the process (for instance, we can check if a process has loops, but we can not check whether those loops are infinite loops). So, it is a simple but powerful enough model to describe all the relevant features of BPs.

Using this model, I've been able to provide a design methodology for BPs, while there are not other concrete proposals for this field. I think my work is one of the first contribution in the area of conceptual modeling of BPs and I believe that my effort could be very interesting, especially if we consider the survey presented by Rosemann during the last BPM conference in Milan (where he talked about the next BP challenges). The concept of views applied to BPs is another outcome which can be seen as a first preliminary result, because also in this case there are not other works regarding the possibility to emphasize different parts of a process. Some products offer this feature, but it is an artifact not supported by a native definition of views. Views permit us also to investigate several applications. In particular to define end users policies (at present not provided by BPMN standard neither by other notations). This implies the possibility to differentiate users access to BPs simplifying the process management inside companies. To access or modify a BP become no-more time consuming tasks. Moreover, the interest on security and privacy related topics arises and views could become the way through which these policies could be implemented.

-- mchinosi

Representing Business Processes: Conceptual Model and Design Methodology

2009-01-22T15:21:00.001+01:00

This is my PhD dissertation

Representing Business Processes: Conceptual Model and Design Methodology

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: thesis bpex)

My PhD Thesis

2008-11-26T19:08:00.002+01:00

I'm finishing to write my PhD dissertation entitled:
Representing Business Processes: Conceptual Model and Design Methodology
I will discuss my thesis in January 2009

-- mchinosi

Integrating Privacy Policies into Business Processes

2008-11-26T19:07:00.001+01:00

Integrating Privacy Policies into Business Processes

From: mchinosi,
1 week ago

Integrating Privacy Policies into Business Processes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wosis privacy)

Often, the modeled business processes involve sensible information whose disclosure is usually regulated by privacy policies. As such, the interaction between business processes and privacy policies is a critical issue worth to be investigated. Towards this end, we introduce a data model for BPMN and a corresponding XML-based representation (called BPeX) which we use to check whether a BPeX-represented business process is compliant with a P3P privacy policy. Our checking procedures are very efficient and require standard XML technology, such as XPath.

SlideShare Link

BPeX: A New Approach to BPMN Model Portability

2008-11-26T19:06:00.001+01:00

BPeX: A New Approach to BPMN Model Portability - Updated Version

From: mchinosi,
1 week ago

BPeX: A New Approach to BPMN Model Portability - Updated Version

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: xml xpdl)

Updated Version of the proceedings published version

SlideShare Link

2008-02-15T10:54:00.006+01:00

On April 21-23, 2008 I will be in Washington DC at Architecture and Process conference to present a panel on XPDL weakenesses.
Here are the main ones I found starting from the analysis of the example presented on XPDL specification document [WFMC-TC-1025]:

an high complexity of the diagram
a great fragmentation of the information
a weak referential integrity (there are no unique IDs inside the XML-Schema definition)
very complex queries

On BPeX project page it is possible to download a more detailed description of these points.

Fig. 1: EOrder main process

Fig. 2: The XPDL version

Fig. 3: The BPeX version

-- mchinosi

Read the comment on Keith Swenson's blog

2007-07-24T11:52:00.000+02:00

Read the comment I wrote on Keith Swenson's blog Go Flow:
http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2007/03/25/the-diagram-is-the-meaning/#comments

-- mchinosi

BPeX Editor: New Screenshot

2007-06-28T12:22:00.001+02:00

Here it is a new screenshot of our editor for BPMN:

-- mchinosi

Read the comment on Bruce Silver's blog

2007-06-27T15:38:00.000+02:00

I posted a comment on Bruce Silver's blog, BPMS Watch.
The article is Diagrams, Models, and Metamodels... Oh My!
Please, read it here

-- mchinosi

Orange + Apples

2007-06-27T14:25:00.000+02:00

Keith Swenson has recently published an interesting question in his blog: Are Apples more useful than Oranges? where he argues that it is not possible to compare BPEL and XPDL because they are two different things (like Apples and Oranges). Besides, it is possible to guess how he leans a bit towards XPDL.

Bruce Silver replied on his blog (quoting and paraphrasing also original Keith's post) with an article (The Real Issues with XPDL, BPEL, and BPMN) in which he says:

In other words, XPDL captures the diagram, while BPEL captures the process semantics. Keith dismisses the latter as just the information an "execution engine" would need to know. Technically that's true of BPEL, I suppose. But which of these best represents the process model? The part that Keith glosses over is a process diagram is not the same as a process model. The argument over whether BPEL or XPDL is more "portable" is based on different interpretations of what portable means. If you mean the same process semantics can be executed on two different engines, then BPEL is more portable. If you mean that the same diagram can be created in two different tools, then XPDL — especially if you allow the target tool to ignore the graphical details that don't carry over.

and

BPMN is a modeling notation — more than just a diagram, since each element has defined process semantics, abstracted from implementation details — but BPMN has no official XML schema, i.e. no interchange format. XPDL 2.0 was explicitly created to capture all the elements of BPMN 1.0 for interchange, but — here's the part that Keith omits — from a diagram portability perspective, not a model portability perspective. That's because OMG (actually this dates back to BPMI) never defined which BPMN elements and attributes, and their associated process semantics, have to be supported by a "compliant" tool.

Finally, in the last two paragraph, he says that neither XPDL nor BPEL today meets the real need of the BPM community, which is a portable serialization of process models [...] that is independent of implementation architecture. At this end he underlines the lack of an XML-Schema for BPMN (If OMG does not publish a BPMN schema, I see more consternation in BPM-Land and a second chance for XPDL to get it right).

Keith replied again and then Bruce and, again, Keith and Bruce together through comments (The Diagram IS the Meaning, Diagrams, Models, and Metamodels... Oh My!).

I wish to thank either Keith and Bruce for their discussion because it is very interesting!

Moreover, I'm very happy because their words sound very well for my research! The main goal we would like to achieve is to build an XML-Schema for BPMN! An XML-Schema that should be complete as XPDL and 'executable' as BPEL. It should have a hierarchical structure to reflect a precise data model (which is compliant to the BPMN specifications). From our model it is possible to derive an XPDL (is this an 'Apple'?) file or a BPEL (is this the 'Orange'?) tree. In these cases we will have that either BPEL and XPDL will be subsets of our BPeX. We will have all data provided by the two notations. Apples + Oranges. A stub of our work is available on our project page.

Refresh your summer with a 'fruit salad'!

-- mchinosi

My new blog

2007-06-27T10:56:00.000+02:00

Since all my personal research gurus have a blog, I decided to open my new blog!
Here I aim to publish the results and the steps of my PhD research about BPMN, BPEL, XPDL, and so on.
I and my collegues are developing an Eclipse-based editor to design BPMN diagrams using a structured hierarchical data model as core. It's name is BPeXEd, stands for BPeX Editor.
BPeX is the name we give to our research, as for Business Process eXtensions. We aim to extend formats and specifications adding some solid (should be 'formal'?) backend. This will permit us to provide some useful feature like the validation of the Business Process Diagrams, the serialization in XML formats, the security and privacy support, some metrics, the conjugation of data objects towards a more real format (like DB or XML trees), and so on.

Please, feel free to post your comments about my/our work!
It would be appreciated!

To see more in details our projects and to read some papers about that, please visit our project page on SourceForge.

-- mchinosi