The Leonardo Blog

BPM is a journey that a lot of us aspire to take. It is one that we're convinced brings about value. But is that the case really? There are so many instances where we get asked at conferences and at our client's about the actual benefits of BPM.

In this interview with Stephen White, who was closely involved in the developed of the BPMN language, we discussed the myths that been swirling around the internet about BPMN. More specifically, we talk about some crowd-sourced myths and weaknesses that people had been discussing on the BPMN wikipedia page. Sandeep Johal: The first myth is that there is ambiguity and confusion in sharing BPMN models. Stephen White: To me this more of a tool vendor issue, perhaps. A lot of it just had to do with mobility or quality of the import export capabilities of the tool. I've soon tools that are very good at it, and other tools that are not as good at it. When you share a BPMN model, you might have issues importing it into a different tool. You might have to do some work after that, but I think that is a vendor issue. The specification itself gives the XML schema or metamodel behind it so that tools can do that. There were a couple of minor issues and I think that OMG has been addressing that. There's a committee that does interchange formats, and they've been working on that, and showing demonstrations at conferences. I think any of the technical issues are being solved, and I think it's mainly up to the tool vendors to support that .

BPMN is a well-known modeling notation. It stands for Business Process Model and Notation. Much has been discussion about this notation, however many people aren't aware of how to use this notation, and more importantly, when to use this notation. In this chat we talk to Stephen White who was involved in development of this modeling language.

Chances are, if you're watching this video, either you or somebody you know, is in the profession of business process management, or BPM. Business process management professionals have a very unique role to play in any organization. They get to see across processes, across the organization - not just siloed departments. This view can bring so much value across the organization. Not to mention that a lot of BPM professionals are fairly smart. Having said all that, why aren't people in the whole entire organization just absolutely raging at their door, wanting them to work at every single project, every single piece of work?