Archive of Business Process Modeling Articles

Gathering requirements is a fun job. But once they are gathered and documented, we have to get them approved before anyone can use them. Approval is important. We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way.

Business process modeling in the real world requires us to represent how processes deal with exceptions, delays and deadlines. Intermediate timer events can be used to model deadlines and the business processes for handling them. See an example of how to model a business process where two deadlines expire and the business responds.

Business process modeling requires us to model behaviors of people and organizations. Those behaviors often involve waiting. Prescribed delays, or waiting for a specific time or date is what we can represent with an intermediate timer event in the sequence flow of a BPMN diagram. This article shows an example of how to model this delay in a business process.

Intermediate message events can be placed on an activity boundary in BPMN. This use represents a form of exception handling for a task or sub-process, in response to an incoming message. This is a very different behavior than the ones we previously described, which show how to use intermediate message events in the course of the normal sequence flow of a business process.

Yesterday’s post contained a pretty significant mistake (aka “Big Fat Lie”).  I showed a diagram that was in violation of the BPMN specification for intermediate message events.
The post has been corrected, showing both the “bad” instructions, and the associated corrections.  The proper way to use intermediate message events within the normal sequence flow has also [...]

One of the 9 intermediate events in BPMN is the message intermediate event. There are two ways to use the message intermediate event, as an element in the sequence flow, or as an attachment to the boundary of an activity for exception processing. See how to use message intermediate events in a sequence flow. [Updated with correction of glaring error on Aug 22nd, 2006]

There are 9 different intermediate events in BPMN. One of them, called the none intermediate event, is “undefined” in that it doesn’t specify a distinct behavior. Unlike the other intermediate events, the none intermediate event has a single interpretation, and will only be used with a specific methodology.

Intermediate events are one of the more complex and expressive elements of BPMN diagrams. Here we introduce the different intermediate events.

This is part two of a two part article. The first part is “How To Use End Events (Part 1)”. End events describe how a process ends. Often, the end of one process can initiate other behaviors within a business process. Like death and taxes, every business process has an end. Sometimes more than one.

End events describe how a process ends. Often, the end of one process can initiate other behaviors within a business process. Like death and taxes, every business process has an end. Sometimes more than one.