Have training budget left for 2012?  Use it or lose it!  There are still seats left in our next BPMessentials BPMN Method and Style live-online (virtual classroom) training December 10-12 from 11am-4pm ET, 8am-1pm PT, or 5pm-10pm CET.   This class uses Process Modeler for Visio, a BPMN 2.0 add-in to Microsoft Visio that has Method and Style validation built in.  If you can’t make that one, we’re doing our first Signavio-based class from January 8-10 from 8am-1pm ET, or 2pm-7pm CET – a little more convenient for our European friends.  Signavio is a cloud-based BPMN 2.0 editor and team repository, also with BPMN Method and Style validation built in.  We’re thrilled to have Signavio as a new BPMessentials training partner. Same training and post-class certification, now with a choice of two great tools.

Either class is a great opportunity to get your whole team on the same page with the one skill critical to anything you do in BPM: creating clear, consistent, complete process models in BPMN. BPMessentials’ BPMN Method and Style is the gold standard in BPMN training and certification. It teaches you not only the BPMN shapes and symbols you need to learn, how to use them correctly, and which ones you can safely ignore, but it provides a prescriptive methodology that ensures that your BPMN diagrams are clear and complete, shareable across the business and between business and IT. The first problem most organizations face when they get serious about BPM is the fact that their previous process modeling and documentation efforts cannot be effectively shared across the organization. The diagrams are meaningful only to the person who drew them, or they depend on an accompanying 200-page requirements spec to make any sense at all. That approach doesn’t scale, and it misses the whole point of BPMN, which is that it allows the process model to be shared – across tools, across departments, between business and IT – and convey the process logic unambiguously from the diagram alone. The meaning does not depend on the tool or the modeler. It’s baked into the diagramming language.

That is a powerful idea, but it depends on learning how to use the language effectively. That’s what our training does. It has three basic elements: First, the vocabulary, the shapes and symbols, what they mean, and when to use them. Also, as I said, which ones you can safely ignore. But that’s not enough. The second element is a methodology, a cookbook recipe that starts with a blank page and ends with a complete process model. This isn’t from the BPMN spec; it’s part of the Method and Style approach. Actually, the BPMN 2.0 spec is more concerned with BPMN as an XML language than as a notation in which the semantics are conveyed by the diagram alone. But the latter is what actual BPMN users want. Method and Style is an additional set of conventions that provide it. The Method does two things. First, it gives beginners a recipe to follow when they’re not sure what to do first. But even for experienced modelers, it provides value in the form of consistent model structure. Given the same set of facts about how the process works, the Method ensures that all modelers will create, more or less, the same model structure. And if all BPMN users structure their models in the same way, they are far more likely to understand the meaning of each other’s models, down to the finest details.

The third part of the training is BPMN style, which focuses on using the notation effectively, using labels and icons, for example, to convey the process logic clearly and completely from the diagram alone. It’s like the grammar rules of BPMN, and the BPMN 2.0 spec left a lot of them out. I used to teach BPMN style as recommended best practices, but I have found it much more effective to teach it as a set of rules – style rules – that can be checked in a tool. The tools we use in the class (and for post-class certification) – Process Modeler for Visio and Signavio  – both have the style rules built in, so you just click ‘Validate’ and you get a list of all the errors, including style rule errors, so you can correct them on the spot.

You access the training in a browser and run the BPMN tool in another window.  In addition to the many in-class exercises, the training includes post-class certification. You need to pass an online exam and then successfully complete a mail-in exercise graded by me. And then we publish your name on the BPMessentials website and you get a paper certificate as well. The cost of the training includes 60-day use of the Process Modeler tool and the certification.

December 10-12 class (Process Modeler for Visio):  The cost for the class is $1095 (qty 1), $995 (5-9), or $895 (10+). Click here to register, or contact me to register via P.O.

January 8-10 class (Signavio): For the January class only, we have a special launch promotion.  Contact will.thomas@signavio.com to get a discount code that saves you $400 off the regular price ($695 per student)! Then click here to register, and apply the code to get the discount if you register before December 31.  After that, or without the code, it’s the regular price: $1095 (qty 1), $995 (5-9), or $895 (10+).

For either class, the price includes the post-class certification and 60-day use of the BPMN tool. The certification is a key element, as increasingly managers are demanding their students get it to ensure mastery of the material. Finally, let me just say that many consultants are getting into the BPMN training business, but why learn BPMN from a guy who read a book when you can learn it from the guy that wrote the book?