As a business person, you usually hear these two modelling notations tossed around in meetings and conversations around ‘process’, or from your process-oriented colleagues on the other side of the ‘fence’. Unless you are a business process management (BPM) professional, or have done modelling in the past, the difference or similarity of either one is not apparent. At the risk of being on the receiving end of a detailed discussions on the merits of each, you may just choose to smile and nod your head politely while appearing to vaguely understand the ‘lingo’ of conditional flows, logic operators, events, and FADs, etc. However, it would be good to have some knowledge of both to understand how either could capture the set of requirements you have – the artefacts may add value to your business far beyond their cost of development. If only we lived in a unified world – all driving on the right side of the road and using only 240V; no choices between ‘soccer’ or ‘football’, Coke or Pepsi, and so on. It can be pretty frustrating when we travel to discover we have brought the wrong adapter, or find out that our favourite beverage is not available in a restaurant. However, the market dictates that familiarity, applicability and experience demands personal choice. The same can be said for process modelling.
