It would be interesting to know what percentage of BPM processes are documented/built by Business Analysts.

Surely not existing processes (you might as well interview the process owners)?

It’s probably for new processes that do not yet exist and therefore have no process owners (at least yet).

It follows BAs should be able to use whatever notation/languages they like.

But, once they have mapped their process, the acceptance criteria should be 1) that the map can be compiled with one click and rolled out to a run-time environment AND 2) automatically converted to some flowgraph environment that process owners can master for improvement and maintenance purposes, otherwise the BAs have their customers on a slippery slope.

End user’s don’t want to be in the position they are with lawyers where you have to go to the lawyer to write up an agreement and then each time you need to read it you have to go back to the lawyer.

We do use BPMN here, however, our business clients seem to like Event Process Chain Diagrams (EPCs) done in ARIS much better. They are easier to read, and the color boxes provide visual cues that BPMN doesn’t do as well. I find large, complex BPMN diagrams very hard to follow – they tend to look like spaghetti. However, I do agree that using a small subset of symbols is better, and it keeps the models simpler and more consumable.

Short of using Critical Path Method, you can build a BPM process where you have a particular sequence (what has to be completed in the 1st year) and you will see a countdown to the last step in that sequence.

Followed by a “must start by” that is 12 months from the start of your 1st year sequence (in case you finish early on the year 1 sequence).

As for making sure the year 2 sequence takes no longer than 3 months once it starts, same protocol (i.e. an end step alarm at 3 months).

This is a good question 🙂 If your model does not need to be discussed with less technical users you can use the features of showing and hiding certain aspects of the model content depending on the selected view (feature present e.g. in ADONIS:Community Edition). But very often models created with business users need to be extended in order to make them executable, so you have two models.

Can you explain on how you’re able to use same BPMN process model by BA to capture business needs and mapping to IT systems and their interfaces?