About Enterprise Architecture (AboutEA.com) - An Information Technology Weblog

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Gains In the U.S. Government

A Federal Computer Week (FCW) article from April, 2004, "This year's model: Business process" discusses the different approaches being taken for Business Process Modeling for U.S. Government agencies, with the new kid on the block, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) getting more than just a nod,

"Those getting back into business process modeling will find an old standby and newer methods. Integrated Computer-aided Manufacturing Definition (IDEF) was the approach of choice in the 1990s and remains the only one compliant with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).

But joining IDEF now are two other techniques: Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN).

UML comes from the object-oriented software design world and has been pressed into process modeling chores. Meanwhile, BPMN is an emerging approach that is gaining traction among software tool vendors. It promises to do what previous approaches have failed to accomplish: integrate systems development from the business process model to actual code generation."

It looks like BPMN is really making some inroads into the market, replacing IDEF. A year or two ago, it seemed like UML extensions for business process would be the holy grail, because UML was already being accepted as a standard for modeling (and then to db schema / code framework generation) on the software engineering side of the architecture (as opposed to the business engineering side...my current concern), but even from my standpoint, UML diagrams don't seem very user-oriented. And, for what it's worth, IMHO, the real mapping to code will now be from BPMN to the code that's going to run closest to the business side of the house, Business Process Execution Language, the scripting language for the next generation business software platform, Business Process Management.

One additional quote about the Department of Homeland Security's transformation office tools helps point out a need to supplement modeling tools with a robust requirements / rules documentation tools,

"The transformation office uses Telelogic AB's Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System to assess its requirements and Popkin Software's System Architect, which supports BPMN, for architectural development. "