Your next steps after BPMN training

This post is specifically meant for a group of students which I had a chance to train last week, but I want to make it useful for all of you who just finished process modelling/BPMN training and wonder what’s next. Hope you will find it useful!

What is one of the most important things after a training? I would say it is putting this knowledge in practice, so that you will not forget what you had a chance to learn. Below you can find few ideas how to do it:

1) Immerse yourself in (good) BPMN diagrams
I find it very useful to watch BPMN diagrams created by others and identify places where I would model it differently (remember the pizza case…), as well as nice ideas I could use in my diagrams. Obviously it is easier to learn from good diagrams, so I would suggest that you start from sources like BPMN specification and BPMN 2.0 by example (both available on https://www.bpmn.org/), BPSim specification (prepared by WfMC which sadly is no longer active, luckily https://www.bpsim.org/ still works), Field Guide to Shareable Clinical Pathways (I know, it sounds scary, but it is a very useful document also for people outside the health sector).

If you do not have time to extract BPMN diagrams from specification documents check out templates available on Business Process Incubator (which is also very valuable site).

2) Learn from the best
Books are awesome way to borrow learning curve from the best experts in the world. There are many great books about BPMN, but I had to give you top 3 this would be my list (in no particular order):
BPMN Quick and Easy Using Method and Style: Process Mapping Guidelines and Examples Using the Business Process Modeling Standard (by Bruce Silver)
Real-Life BPMN (4th edition): Includes an introduction to DMN (by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker)
Fundamentals of Business Process Management (by Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, Hajo A. Reijers)

For the last book (which covers much more than BPMN modelling), there are also free online courses (learn more from this post).

Each of this resources will give you additional perspectives and will offer you many chances to practice BPMN modelling.

3) Get certified
There are several BPM certificates, but if you would like to go deeper with BPMN and BPM in general there is a Object Management Group certification called OMG Certified Expert in BPM, which I highly recommend (disclaimer – I have a pleasure to be among authors of OCEB questions).

4) Use it
There are many ways to use BPMN. Pick those relevant for you – those which can help you in your career and those which you find interesting.

You can use BPMN for Business Analysis.

You can use BPMN for process automation (check out great resources from Bonita and Camunda)