BPMN: An introduction to the standard

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

Gravity – Collaborative Business Process Modelling within Google Wave

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

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

Workflow Modeling in EU GENESIS Project

View more documents from Michele Chinosi.

Modeling Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records

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.

A Brief Ph.D. Thesis Summary

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

My PhD Thesis

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