It came together faster than I thought!  BPMN Method and Style is now available on Amazon.com.  I had hoped to send out an email blast last night to announce it to all BPMS Watch subscribers from the Mailpress plugin, but I’ve been learning (the hard way) about gmail’s smtp limit… Apologies to those first 100 or so subscribers who probably got 3 or 4 emails.  For the rest of you, here is what I was trying to say…

cover10nIf you’ve been following BPMS Watch lately, you know that I’ve been working on a book that explains how to use BPMN correctly and effectively to create process models that can “stand on their own”? i.e., be clear and understandable to anyone from the diagram alone.  The book is called BPMN Method and Style, and it’s available now on Amazon.com.  It’s based on the brand new BPMN 2.0 standard, set for approval by OMG later this month.

Creating business process models that can be shared effectively across the business – and between business and IT – demands more than a digest of BPMN shapes and symbols. It requires a step-by-step methodology for going from zero to a complete process model. It also requires consistent application of a modeling style, so that the modeler?s meaning is clear from the diagram itself. I not only explain the meaning and proper usage of the entire BPMN 2.0 palette, but call out the working subset that you really need to know. The book also reveals the hidden assumptions of core concepts left unexplained in the spec, the key to BPMN?s deeper meaning.

The book addresses BPMN at three levels, with primary focus on the first two. Level 1, or descriptive BPMN, uses a restricted palette in combination with some relaxation of BPMN?s rules to meet the needs of business users doing basic process mapping. Level 2, or analytical BPMN, takes advantage of the notation?s exceptional expressiveness for detailing event and exception handling, key to analyzing and improving process performance and quality. Level 3, or executable BPMN, is brand new in BPMN 2.0. Here the XML underneath the diagram shapes can be deployed to a process engine to actually execute the model.  The method and style recommended by the book aligns these three levels, facilitating business-IT collaboration throughout the process lifecycle.

Inside the book you?ll find detailed discussions, illustrated with over 100 examples, about:

  • The questions BPMN asks, and does not ask
  • The meaning of basic concepts like starting and completing, sending and receiving, waiting and listening
  • Subprocesses and hierarchical modeling style
  • The five basic steps in creating Level 1 models
  • Event and exception-handling patterns
  • Branching and merging patterns
  • Level 2 modeling method
  • Elements of BPMN style: element usage and diagram composition

If you have an interest in learning how to do process modeling the right way, or just want a heads up on what’s new in BPMN 2.0, I hope you’ll take a look at the book.  If you are interested in training based on the new “method and style,” I’m doing a 2-day class in San Francisco on July 1-2, hosted by the BPM Institute.  Click here for details.