Overview
In the second week of this course, you learned the basic principles of business process modeling and most commonly used elements of the BPMN. This week, we extend your vocabulary for expressing business processes. This includes, among other concepts, the decomposition of business processes into sub-processes and the realization of racing events. Furthermore, we will focus on organizational aspects, i.e., how tasks are assigned to resources of an organization and how work can actually distributed among employees.
The content of this week is presented in the following video clips.
- Sub-processes
BPMN sub-processes are a means to decompose process models in a hierarchic fashion, which reduces the complexity of process models and facilitates process model reuse. - Sub-processes and Boundary Events
The encapsulation of parts of process models in sub-processes not only helps managing complexity, it also provides a means to define the scope for the occurrence of events, i.e., boundary events. - Activity Modifiers
Activities can be extended with modifiers, for instance, to represent repetition. This allows for condition-controlled loops, as well as instantiating multiple instances of an activity at runtime. - Racing Events
Processes interact with their environment by events. In some cases, a process can wait for the occurrence of a number of different events, and the first observed event decides on the continuation of the process. - Modeling Organization
Resources of a company are embedded in an organizational structure (administrators, clerks, managers, etc.). Responsibilities are captured by roles and positions in a company. In a process model, tasks are assigned to resources by their containment in swimlanes. - Resource Allocation Patterns
During runtime, the resource assignment of tasks is resolved and work items for these tasks are allocated to employees of an organization. There exist a number of resource allocation patterns that specify how work can be distributed.
Organization
We are confident that you are accustomed to the weekly schedule. Yet, for the sake of completeness we briefly repeat what to do this week. For each video clip, there is a self test , by which you can check your learning progress. There is no time limit or submission deadline for these tests and you receive direct feedback on your answers. You can even repeat them.
At the end of the week, you need to submit a homework . For the homework you should calculate 30-45 minutes and the homework has a time limit (60 minutes) . Please be advised that this test can only be started ONCE (closing the browser does not stop the timer). In addition, the homework starts when you click on the start button on the homework page . So, only click on the button if you are willing to take the assignment. The achieved score in the homework contributes to your total score for this course. You will be informed about your results and a sample solution is published a day after submission deadline.
In case of questions regarding the lectures, self tests, or assignments, please use the community forum.
Good speed with the fourth chapter!
Weekly Schedule
Please be aware of the following dates for this week.
- The homework needs to be submitted latest May 09th , 2016, at 22:00 (10:00 pm) CET. Submission is already open; after consulting the lecture material (videos, slides, and reading material), you can start on the homework right away.
- The solution for this week's homework will be published on Tuesday, May 10th , 2016, at 10:00 (am) CET.
- The material for the next week , covering Data in Business Processes, will be made available on Saturday, May 07th , 2016, at 10:00 (am) CET.
- All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2). Please check your local time zone. The remaining time until May 9th, 2016, at 22:00 (10:00 pm) can be checked at the provided link.
Reading Material
- Details on the material covered in video clips can be found in the BPMN version 2.0 specification: link events are discussed in section 10.4.5, sub-processes in 10.2.5 and 10.2.6, loop and multiple instance markers in 10.2.8, and organization modeling (pools, lanes) in 9.2.
- The book Business Process Management – Concepts, Languages, Architectures discusses these concepts in condensed form in Section 4.7; the modeling of organizational aspects in BPMN process models is sketched Section 3.8, where also resource allocation patterns are discussed.
- Details on resource allocation patterns can be found at http://workflowpatterns.com/patterns/resource/. In addition to the patterns covered in our course, that web site introduces further concepts, for instance, delegation, escalation, and shortest queue allocation. Overall, you will find an exhaustive list of 43 resource allocation patterns at that web site.
- You might also want to take a look at the general concept of race conditions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition. You will see that race conditions between events in process models are a specific instance of the more generic problem discussed at that Wikipedia entry.