Comments on: Wish List Revisit Revisited

By: My New BPMN Wish List - BPMS Watch

My New BPMN Wish List - BPMS Watch — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:09:04 +0000

[...] 2008 using event gateway. For another one, the non-aborting “attached” event, I proposed a workaround valid in BPMN 1.1, but wished for a simpler notation. The desired semantic was picked up as a [...]

By: Arsalan Minhas

Arsalan Minhas — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:44:00 +0000

Perfect examples. Of course inserting pools or using the workarounds can solve the problem but they also clutter-up a business process and models become diffcult to comprehend. We should strive to have user-friendly and simple solutions/patterns otherwise I fear business analysts running away from their role in BPM and everything falling in the lap of solutions architects and developers.

I also agree with the main subject that the beauty of BPMN is the standard Business Process Modeling “Notation” with visually distinguishable symbols implying clear semantics and behaviors and not the extensibility by modelers to meet their specific needs.

By: bruce

bruce — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:47:19 +0000

Sebastian,
I take your point. No need to defame ARIS, and that was not my real intent. I agree it is really at a level above BPMN, so I accept what you say. This is really a side issue to my post, which is the value of spec-defined diagram semantics versus modeler-defined diagram semantics. One has “universal” meaning, the other has only private meaning.
–Bruce

By: sebastian

sebastian — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:28:26 +0000

@Jim: This is just how it is visualised, but nothing really related to ARIS. Of course you can configure the ARIS tool to show the name of each connection type in each diagram. Some users do that, some don’t. The same can be done in ARIS BPMN modelling. You can show the name of the different event types next to the object if you like. You can define diagram templates so that the name is automatically shown next time you create a new connection. So it just depends how you configure the tool and what you need.

@Bruce: You can’t compare ARIS to BPMN, because ARIS is one level above. ARIS is able to represent BPMN as well as any other popular modelling notation like UML, ERM, program flow charts, IT city planning, EPC, etc.

@Bruce: Oracle BPA Suite is using ARIS in an OEMed version to do the BPMN modelling. Of course only those arrows are allowed in an ARIS BPMN model, which are defined by the spec. So you can’t draw a “encompasses” relationship between two BPMN activities. An arrow between two tasks in a BPMN diagram always expresses a sequence flow.

By: bruce

bruce — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:46:09 +0000

Thanks, Jim. I could not have said it better than you did. I don’t think OMG is thinking about moving in the ARIS direction, but how about you keeping the pressure on Oracle to enhance BPA Suite so that an arrow in BPMN can only mean sequence flow?
–Bruce

By: Jim Lange

Jim Lange — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:59:40 +0000

Sebastian, Bruce is correct when he says that in ARIS

“an arrow just signifies that a relationship exists, definable by the modeler, between the thing at the tail and the thing at the head.”

There are several model types in ARIS where the arrows look the same, but actually define different relationships. To determine what a given line means you have to be in the modeler (or publisher) and click on the line to view the attributes. In EPC, the relationship between a Function and an Organizational unit can be one of 10 choices (”carries out”, “decides on”, “must be informed about”, “must inform about result of”, etc.). The list can be pared down by applying a custom filter, but this bolsters Bruce’s point: The diagram elements do not convey the full meaning–you have to look at the hidden attributes and it can vary from one ARIS implementation to the next.

Bruce, thank you for keeping the pressure on the OMG to preserve BPMN as an unambiguous notation and not turn it into a meta-notation that can have different meanings in different tools (or in the hands of different modelers).

By: sebastian

sebastian — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:21:15 +0000

I agree with 99% of your article, but your view about ARIS is wrong. ARIS is not like MS Visio, because each object and connection has clear semantics. The semantics are grounded in the so called ARIS method. So each connection you draw in a diagram has a type (name) and you can’t draw any kind of connection in all diagrams. So for example, you can draw an “is responsible for” connection type in an organisational chart diagram to say that a position is responsible for an organisational unit. However, you can’t draw the same connection in a process model like EPC or BPMN (yes, ARIS has 100% BPMN 1.1 support), because it is a process model and not a diagram to model the org hierarchy.

By: Sandy Kemsley

Sandy Kemsley — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:20:01 +0000

Now that I’ve had time to review it in more detail, I do agree with your main point. The primary value of BPMN is that it’s standardized, not that it’s extensible.

By: Renato

Renato — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:07:34 +0000

Too complex to understand

By: bruce

bruce — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:52:31 +0000

Bad form aside, do you agree with my main point, that BPMN is not really about user-defined semantics, even if you can formally link your new behaviors back to MOF primitives? It’s about standardizing the notation - that’s the N in BPMN.