ProcessSample
BPMN process diagram
Business Process Model and Notation: who does what, in which order, with decisions and parallel work, laid out in swimlanes.
Try this
- 01Run the token on the Happy path and watch the parallel split: shipping and invoicing happen at the same time, and the join waits for both.
- 02Switch to Out of stock: the exclusive gateway sends the token down a different path and the process ends early.
- 03Choose “Decide myself” and make the decision when the token reaches the gateway. Count the lane handoffs on each route.
Notation
- Pool and lanes
- Each lane is a role or team. Where a task sits says who is responsible for it.
- Start event (thin circle)
- What triggers the process.
- End event (thick circle)
- A way the process can finish. There can be several.
- Task (rounded box)
- One unit of work.
- Exclusive gateway (×)
- A decision: exactly one outgoing path is taken.
- Parallel gateway (+)
- Splits into paths that all run, or joins by waiting for all of them.
- Sequence flow (arrow)
- The order of work. The token travels along it.
Use it when
- Documenting or redesigning how work flows across teams
- Finding handoffs, waits and bottlenecks
- Specifying workflows to automate
Avoid it when
- Showing how data moves between systems (use a data flow diagram)
- Describing the life of a single object (use a state machine)
More in Process
Data flow diagram
Shows how data moves: from external entities, through processes that transform it, into and out of data stores. No timing, no decisions, just data.
UML sequence diagram
Who talks to whom, in what order, for one scenario. Time runs down the page; each arrow is one message between participants.
State machine diagram
The life of one object: the states it can be in, the events that move it between them, and the conditions that must hold. Anything not drawn is not allowed.