Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Modeling business scenarios with BPMN
2.0
Translating our business scenarios into business processes that are modeled with BPMN
2.0 is a very sensitive task. Modeling our business processes using the correct elements
sounds simple, but we really need to understand the technical implications that our de-
cisions at the modeling stage will have when we want to execute our process definitions.
So let's get started with a real example.
We will use the development life cycle, a case we are familiar with, as an example for the
first scenario we will be covering. The business goal of this process is to manage the re-
lease management cycle in the most efficient way. We will start in the simplest way pos-
sible, and then increasingly add complexity to make it more complete:
This process, shown in the previous diagram, describes the standard activities defined for a
project development (or, at least, its happy path) from the moment the development starts
to the moment the requirement is done and deployed. As you may know, the activities in-
side this process will be executed each time a new requirement arrives at the development
group. As you can see, we will consider that the process ends when the requirement is de-
ployed in a test environment.
As you can see in the process diagram, the first flow object that will be executed is a start
event. This start event will contain information about the requirement specification that we
will use to understand the context and complete the following activities accordingly. Once
we receive the start event, we will use the information to execute a Business Rule task that
will be in charge of assigning story points depending on the length of the requirement spe-
cification and whether or not it contains specific keywords that will be used to define its
complexity. Once the story points are assigned, we will notify a developer in order to start
working on the requirement. The developer will be in charge of coding the specified re-
quirement. Once the coding is done, a continuous integration system has to compile the
