The head of human resource department is complaining to the IT project manager that the recent claims management system that they developed have incorrect business rules defined in it.
The HR head said that all claims exceeding $10k should be approved by the requester’s department manager before it is routed to the CFO for approval.
Instead, the developers coded it in such a way that once the department head approves the claim, the claim is immediately routed to the accounting department for reimbursement processing.
Looks like there is a confusion in the expected business process and now codes need to be rewritten to address the required business rule.
Most times, functional specification documents would be documented, agreed upon and signed before work begins.
But sometimes it can be difficult and troublesome to reedit word based documents especially when there is a major change in business processes. As we reword a specific business process, people may not see how a rule change may impact the entire processes from an end to end perspective.
Because of this, all business processes should leverage on the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for a clear and standardized way to represent all processes in a graphical manner.
From a BPMN, stakeholders can now share a common understanding toward processes, creating a bridge for any gaps between process designers and process implementors.
Whether you’re an IT analyst or an end user who’s been assigned the responsibility to describe existing processes, you can benefit from some extra BPMN knowledge.
Today I would like to take the opportunity to highlight this Free BPMN online training by Bizagi.
Bizagi has a BPM suite which allows you to easily turn your process diagrams into running applications.
Besides offering a free BPMN process modeler, Bizagi is also providing free BPMN online training for you to become a BPM expert.
All you need to do is to sign up and register for a Bizagi account. Once you login, you will be able to access screencast materials for the following topics:
- Introduction to BPMN and the online course
- Basic elements of a business process diagram (BPD)
- BPMN complete notation
- Loop activites
- Gateways
- Events
Each of these topics come with:
- Presentation
- Exercise and its solution
- Quizzes
Some sample screenshots:
BPMN Presentation (Screencast)
BPMN Exercise (Scenario based)
BPMN Quiz
Once you manage to go through all the topics from this free BPMN online training, the next thing to do would be to put what you have learned into practice by downloading the free Bizagi BPMN modeler.
This is where the real challenge begins. Try modeling a process that’s currently being implemented in within your organization. From what I read, we can convert the model as designed in the BPMN modeler into a running application.
I will be trying this out and posting the experience on a future post. Till then, hope you have a fun time learning BPMN.