erwin Enterprise Architect Agile v2 - User Guide

erwin EA Agile v2 - User Guide

Capabilities

Capabilities

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

BPMN allows Agile EA to provide a notation that is usable and understandable by all business users, to communicate real-world process representations, to different interested stakeholders. The end results are business process models that allow a business to

Document and understand their internal business processes in a consistent, graphical manner

Be more agile and efficient, with increased visibility into its underlying processes

Understand how different business organizations interact and collaborate within internal procedures

Communicate the processes in a technical and non-technical manner to a wide audience

The processes can also be connected into the overall enterprise architecture, giving increased visibility of business context and understanding, as inputs into decision making and architectural change.

BPMN depicts these four element types for Business Process Diagrams:

1.Flow objects: events, tasks and gateways

2.Connecting objects: sequence flow, message flow, data association

3.Swim lanes: pool or lane

4.Artifacts: data object and data storage

Flow Objects Supported

Boundary Events

Intermediate events can be used to channel flow onto the exception path from the boundary of a task or sub-process. Boundary events can be interrupting, meaning the task or sub-process will be interrupted if the boundary event receives a signal. BPMN also offers the use of non-interrupting boundary events that allow the sub-process to complete normally but initiate a parallel exception path.

To add a boundary event, right click a task and select Add Event

Select an existing event or create a new event in the Event field. Select

The position you wish it to appear on the task

The Flow of the event

The Trigger on the event

If it is interrupting or not - checking the box makes it non-interrupting

 Press OK once you are done.

The boundary event can then be seen on the task

You can edit, view the details or remove the boundary event, by right clicking a task and selecting one of the option from the context menu.

Gateway Objects

You can add labels to the gateway lines, by right clicking the line and seleting to Name Gateway Option

Task Objects and Sub processes

 Set Task Type

Right click a task and select Type from the context menu. You can then select the type.

Set Task Marker

Right click a task and select Marker from the context menu. You can then select the marker(s) to be applied.

Sub-process

BPMN provides us with the sub-process. This can be shown using either the expanding/collapsing view of a task, or by creating a URL attribute in the task object and using the URL of the child diagram that explains the process in more detail.

 Sub-Process (Collapsed) - The details of the Sub-Process are not visible in the Diagram. A “plus” sign in the lower-center of the shape indicates that the Activity is a Sub-Process and has a lowerlevel of detail.

Sub-Process (Expanded) - The boundary of the Sub-Process is expanded and the details (a Process) are visible within its boundary. Note that Sequence Flows should cross the boundary of a Sub-Process.

Events, tasks and gateways can be dragged into tasks to create a sub-process. Once saved, the objects in the sub-process will have a new 'contained in' relationship added to them and the sub-process will have a 'contains' relationship to the objects that describe it in more detail.

Connecting Objects

Creating relationships between objects on the BPMN diagram

 To create a relationship between objects, select the source object, click the link adornment button and drag toward the target object for the relationship (a pink box will appear around the target).

Once the relationship has been accepted, a dialog box will pop up asking you to select the type of relationship you would like to use.

Create Relationships by dragging and dropping

Within the BPMN diagram, dragging and dropping an object onto another object, e.g. an event into a lane, will create a 'contained in' relationship in the model.

The object cannot then be removed, until you have right clicked and select 'Remove from group', which will remove the relationship from the model.

This also extends to a sub-tasks representation.

Swimlane objects

How to draw Pools/Lanes

To add a pool, click and drag a Pool object from the pallete onto the diagram.

If you add a new pool, a dialog will appear, where you can

Name the pool, creating a new pool, or re-use an existing pool by using the drop down list

Select an ArchiMate model object that this pool represents in this process flow (explained further later in this section)

Add Lanes to the pool, either new or existing

The Pool to Lane relationship can be viewed in the relationships tab from either object.

To Add or Remove Lanes from a pool on the diagram

Right click the pool and choose Configure Pool.

The dialog will open that will allow you to add or remove lanes from the pool.

Artifacts

Layouts

There are several layouts supported for use with BPMN - these can be found under the View > Layout menu;

Standard - This allows a user to layout the diagram as they wish and show connections from top, bottom, left and right of all objects

Parallel - This limits the connections from tasks, events and gateways to be from right or left of the objects

Auto Parallel - This is a mode that will lay out the diagram for users. Whilst the checkbox is checked, any object added to the diagram will be added in the most logical place - it will move accordingly as connections are made to it and from it. You will need to move into Standard or Parallel options to be able to move the shapes to where you want them.

The diagram and swim lanes can be modelled in horizontal or vertical fashion.

You may want to change the routing of a relationship that has been drawn in Auto Parallel mode, once you come out of that mode. To do this right click the relationship, and select Reset Link Shape option - this will make the link direct again.

Represent ArchiMate objects with the BPMN process flows

We still want to use the BPMN process flows created by our team in the context of our enterprise architecture. To do this, we can choose to allow the BPMN objects created to 'represent' existing objects from our model - this gives us context as to the wider effects that a process change might have and ensures we don't work in a silo, just because this process is the only thing in our remit.

When we add a Pool object to a BPMN diagram, we will be offered the 'Representing object' field, within the configuration dialog. For other objects, the 'Represent with' option can be found in the right click context menu.

Once an object is selected, it will be displayed in brackets in the name of the BPMN objects on the diagram. The example below, the BPMN process 'Check Credit' is now representing an ArchiMate business process 'Credit check'. A common use for this will be to represent BPMN Lane objects as business roles/actors that exist within the model.

A 'represented by/represents' relationship can be seen for this within the Relationships tab of both objects.

Diagram Kinds

Using a diagram kind, you can create a diagram type that uses the traits of another diagram type, but you can control the object types associated with it.

In this context, if we created a new diagram type, of 'kind' BPMN, we can tailor what model object types can be represented by BPMN Objects. As default any existing model object can be selected to be represented.

To do this, go to User menu > System > Diagram Types 

Add a new diagram type (using the + button)

Name the type

Select the kind to be BPMN

In the Represented By field, select the existing model object types you would like to allow to be selected. You may create different versions for different teams, to control the objects they can select within the model.

- As you have selected the BPMN kind, the Object Types option will be greyed out.

Once this is done, you can begin creating your new custom BPMN diagrams.

Example BPMN process flow

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