BPMN Modeling – Who, Where, How and Why

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is an increasingly important standard for process modeling and has enjoyed high levels of attention and uptake in BPM practice. This paper reports on a global survey of BPMN process modelers conducted during May to August 2007. Five hundred and ninety BPMN modelers responded and provided insights into the who, where, how and why of BPMN process modeling as well as into some of the problems users experience when modeling with BPMN. BPMN and its Users – Friends or Foes? Finally, we have it. An industry standard for process modeling. Something for everyone. Something with widespread support. The one-for-all solution to all our problems. To be frank, we are happy. BPMN is indeed a rich language and allows us to define a multitude of business scenarios, ranging from internal process choreographies to inter-organizational process orchestrations, service interactions and workflow exceptions. Not bad at all. Not surprisingly, BPMN has enjoyed widespread adoption in practice, for example by tool vendors (e.g., Pega, Sparxsystems, Telelogic, Intalio, itp-commerce), education providers (e.g., Widener University