One of the most powerful features of BPMN is the least appreciated… by modelers and tool vendors alike. I’m talking about subprocesses. Most of the process models I have seen would be much improved if they were used more liberally, and more effectively. 

In BPMN, a process is viewed as a flow of activities, and an activity – a rectangle in the diagram – can signify only one of two things: a task, meaning it has no subparts of interest to the model, or a subprocess, meaning the activity has subparts of significance to the model.

As I attend and present at industry BPM conferences, I often survey the participants, asking them to raise their hands if they are from IT departments. Generally, about 30 to 45 percent of the hands go up. I then ask people to raise their hands if they are from the...

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The convergence of the BPM and SOA markets continues to make news this year and the pace of consolidation has increased in recent months.

When I launched my course “Process Modeling with BPMN”, I discussed in this column why so many people beginning to “do” BPM were looking for training in modeling, and why that was especially needed for BPMN. Now, having delivered the training for five months, I have a better appreciation of BPMN’s strengths and limitations, a better understanding of what students really want, and what they really need to know about BPMN modeling.