I cringe and second guess our ARIS decision everytime I read, like in this BPM 2006 Wrap-up about the further BP industry adoption of Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) standard:
2006 was the year that the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), a notational standard for the graphical representation of process models, went mainstream. Version 2.0 of the standard was released, and every major BPM vendor is providing some way for their users to make use of the BPMN standard, whether it's through a third-party modeling tool or directly in their own process modelers.
IDS-Scheer has been slow to provide robust BPMN support in the ARIS tool, mostly due to the fact that most ARIS functionality is built around their proprietary Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) notation. I questioned their CTO at ProcessWorld 2006 about this and the answer was that most of their current clients weren't asking for BPMN support because they already were way down the road with the EPC notation. I have to admit I've grown to like the structure and workflow-supporting emphasis on events (key milestones in the life-cycle of key corporate information and situations...i.e.: Contract Opened, Contract Modified, Fiscal Calendar Begins) that EPC enforces, but I equally see the fact that the process flows that most business people know how to do themselves more closely resemble the BPMN standard.
I will put together a post showing some of the major places I see differences in the process flow s I get from SMEs and how they translate into EPC format.
Posted by outlawv at December 20, 2006 08:31 AM