06 Sep BPMN reading material
As an IT consultant, one spends quite some time getting to and from your project locations. Lately I’ve been spending quite some time on the train. Ideal moment to refresh my BPMN knowledge. I picked the book “Real-Life BPMN” on Amazon Kindle. The authors – Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker – both work for the German company Camunda, specializing in BPM(N) consulting and open source BPM engine.
The book is quite OK and shows lots of small examples to get acquainted with the BPMN notation. It is It start with a level 1 view on processes where a subset of the BPMN notation is used. Next it dives deeper with many more symbols (Level 2). One unique view expressed in the book is that the BPM models can be implemented with a BPM(N) workflow engine (level 3a), but also translated into an IT specification (level 3b) and implemented in code (level 4b).
A colleague of mine strongly recommended another book: “BPMN Method & Style” from Bruce Silver. And I must admit, the book is better structured and easier to read. Bruce Silver is really an authority in the world of BPMN.
Towards the end, both books well explain that BPMN 2 is not only a graphical representation but also an XML representation. Funny to see how Bruce Silver refers to BPMN XML examples from Camunda. The circle was round.
Author: Guy
