What is Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)
Understanding Business Process Model and Notation BPMN, the standardized method for mapping business processes. Learn how BPMN symbols, elements, and techniques make process maps universally understandable for employees, management, and consultants.
Summary
- BPMN creates universal process language - Without standardized symbols, process maps only make sense to their creators; BPMN provides graphical representations (circles for events, rectangles for activities, diamonds for gateways) that employees, management, consultants, and investors all understand immediately
- Four element types capture complete workflows - Flows (events/activities/gateways) show what happens, Connections (sequence/message/association) show relationships, Swimlanes separate departments or organizations, and Artifacts reference external data or documentation
- Visual nuances communicate critical details - Bold circles indicate endpoints, double borders show transactions where one failure undoes everything, plus icons reveal expandable sub-processes; this rich visual language eliminates ambiguity. See how Tallyfy simplifies process mapping
- Need help implementing BPMN in your organization? Schedule a demo.
Process maps can be very confusing - without a single, unified procedure for documenting processes, understanding them can be hard for anyone who’s not directly involved with the mapping. In discussions with operations teams, this confusion is one of the most common complaints about legacy documentation approaches. One team at a global gold mining operation described their pre-automation state: managing 2,300 annual shipments worth over $200 million using Outlook, Excel spreadsheets, and shared folders - with no live reconciliation between payments and shipping documentation. Their 30-step customs workflow spanning multiple departments and external freight forwarders was nearly impossible to communicate with standard notation.
Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) is one of most-used business process modeling techniques, and it helps make process maps easier to understand for any relevant party (employee, management, consultants) through standardized symbols.
What is Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)?
Business process modeling and notation is a flowchart method of graphing a business process.
It’s done exactly the same way as you’d create a flowchart process map, the only difference is that BPMN comes with its own symbols and elements. As we’ve already mentioned, this helps make process maps easier to understand for any relevant party. That’s the whole point.
As with process flowcharts, BPMN is essential for business process management (BPM), one of the most popular process improvement methodologies.
If you are looking for tools that handle process modeling without the steep learning curve of traditional BPMN, modern BPM software offers visual builders that anyone can use.
Business Process Management Made Easy
👉 Want to reap the benefits of BPMN, without having to train your entire company on how to use it? Certain workflow systems come with intuitive process mapping capabilities, making the maps easy to understand for just about anyone.
BPMN purpose and benefits
While process modeling isn’t anything particularly new, it tends to have its flaws.
The concept can be very vague, as there’s no standardized way to do it. Everyone can create a process map. Making it easy to understand for everyone, though, isn’t easy.
In 99% of cases it is a solution in search of a problem, peddled by an expensive consultant with a shiny slide deck.
In a large organization, this can be a major problem.
You’d want different people to look at the process map and actually understand it. This includes the management, field employees, process improvement experts, etc.
Even if your organization has its own methodology and symbolism for modeling, you’d probably still have a hard time getting outside experts, external stakeholders, or investors to understand. Feedback from operations teams consistently highlights this communication gap as a major pain point. When one technology team evaluated 21 different process management solutions, they specifically tested whether non-technical users could understand the notation. They rated simplicity for non-technical users separately from technical depth - and found most BPMN tools scored poorly on one dimension or the other.
So, as a means of creating a universal standard for process mapping, business process modeling and notation (BPMN) was developed.
It allows for a standardized way to map your processes, in a way that every stakeholder can understand what each symbol means.
The methodology was developed by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), and was known initially as “business process modeling notation.” In 2011, with the release of BPMN v2.0, the name was changed to “Business Process Model and Notation.”
BPMN 2.0 elements and symbols
Since BPMN aims at standardization, only specific graphical representations are used for different activities.
Once you’ve mastered this graphic “language,” you can grasp what’s going on in the workflow diagram at a glance without the need for further explanations.
The four different elements or objects used for BPMN are:
Flows: events, activities, and gateways
Connections: sequence Flow, message flow, and association
Swimlanes: pool or lane
Artifacts: data object, group, annotation
Here’s how each works…
Flows
Events
The BPMN model begins and ends with events, and there will be several intermediate events in the diagram too.
An event is something that happens. It’s not a task or activity.
Events are represented by circles. An ordinary circle is the starting point. A circle with a double border indicates an intermediate event, and a bold circle represents an endpoint.
Within the circle, an icon shows what happened.
For example, the classic envelope icon indicates a message. But these events also have different nuances. Thus, you may receive a message, or you could be sending a message. These two nuances are captured in the terms “catching” and “throwing.”
The different types of circles we’ve just discussed indicate throwing and catching too.
When an event starts a process, it will always be a “catch.” The final step will always be “throw” and the intermediate events are either “throw” or “catch.”
Activities
A task or activity carried out by either an individual or software.
Activities are depicted as rectangles with rounded corners.
Some activities are single tasks that stand alone, but others are compound activities consisting of several sub-processes.
Again, the visual language adapts in attempt to represent this clearly.
Compound activities are tasks that consist of several sub-processes. Using BPMN software, you can show or hide these sub-processes.
When you view the diagram, you will know that there are sub-processes in an activity thanks to a plus icon at the bottom of the rectangle. When you expand the icon by clicking on it, a diagram showing all the sub-processes, flows, connections, and artifacts show up.
BPMN seems quite fun and simple at first. Seems like you are adding value, but in reality it is really a serious tech debt when you need to maintain or scale up later.
The term “transaction” indicates activities in which every single step is so closely related that failing in one step would undo all the work contained within the compound activity.
To indicate a transaction, the visual language uses a double border.
Finally, we have call activities.
These are activities in which a global task is used again. Here, the rectangle has a bold border.
Gateway
A gateway is a conditional element and is indicated by diamonds.
There are several different types of such events:
- There are exclusive gateways that move workflows from one route to another. They indicate there’s only one option.
- There are event-based gateways that depend on something (other than the task) happening.
- There are parallel ones where two paths sit side by side and don’t depend on an event.
- There are inclusive gateways, complex gateways, and parallel event based gateways. Each of these also has its own symbol and usage rules.
Connections
By now, you will not be surprised to know that there are several different kinds of flows and that each of these is represented differently.
- A solid line with an arrowhead shows how flows happen in sequence.
- Message flows show lines of communication, and they are represented by a dashed line with a throw and catch symbol at the beginning and end.
- Then, there are association flows. They show how an artifact or text relates to a flow. Flow direction can be indicated by an arrow, but not when the flow is associated with a message.
Swim lanes
Sometimes, different departments and even different organizations need to work together to get something done.
The pool consists of the functions or organizations who participate, and each of these has their own swim lane. Inside each lane, there are flows, objects, and artifacts.
Artifacts
Artifacts show there’s information that must be referenced outside of the BPMN diagram.
Each type of additional information has its own icon.
- A document icon shows that data is needed or that data is about to be produced.
- A rounded edge rectangle with a dotted border shows that activities form a group.
- Annotations revert to regular text to explain certain elements.
See how Tallyfy simplifies process workflows
Instead of mastering complex BPMN notation with its circles, diamonds, and swimlanes, Tallyfy lets you build and track real workflows that anyone can understand immediately. Here is an example of a process that would traditionally require extensive BPMN diagramming - notice how the steps naturally flow between departments (HR, IT, Office Manager, Manager) without needing specialized symbols:
The most important part is this - what does Tallyfy offer than BPMN does not?
About the Author
Amit is the CEO of Tallyfy. He is a workflow expert and specializes in process automation and the next generation of business process management in the post-flowchart age. He has decades of consulting experience in task and workflow automation, continuous improvement (all the flavors) and AI-driven workflows for small and large companies. Amit did a Computer Science degree at the University of Bath and moved from the UK to St. Louis, MO in 2014. He loves watching American robins and their nesting behaviors!
Follow Amit on his website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, X (Twitter) or YouTube.
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