Alternatives to business process modelling notation – BPMN

23rd January 2024

by Chris Green

Let’s explore some of the alternatives to business process modelling notation that are available including the increasingly popular Universal Process Notation (UPN)

Business process modelling notation, or BPMN, refers to a precise notation for documenting business processes. It’s designed to remove the ambiguity of textual process specifications by displaying the sequence of business processes visually as an information flow.

How is BPMN helpful?

Organisations need to understand how things are working, to document it, and then search for ways to improve it.

BPMN’s big selling point is that it provides one unifying notation for all processes and all business stakeholders can understand the flows.

BPMN helps organisations to document their business processes to identify key areas for improvement. The notations used by BPMN in their business process diagrams are comprehensive and rich, plus there are a wide range of shapes and symbols at your disposal to enrich your diagrams.

Once the entire process is captured on a diagram, businesses can begin to analyse where they can improve upon their existing methods. The diagram should illustrate where they can switch up their spending or time management to avoid unnecessary expenses or time-consuming tasks and instead boost their revenue.

What are the limitations of business process modelling notation?

That is all really helpful. But BPMN does have some limitations.

• To understand and follow a visual chart created with BPMN requires an amount of knowledge. To the untrained eye BPMN can become very visually complex. It has a standardised approach, but the large range of symbols available are difficult to read and understand if you’re not an expert.
• Similarly, due to the visual complexity of the charts, it can be very difficult to include all the information simply and your flow begins to look very messy. If you then add in a number of swim lanes and decision diamonds the process becomes more complicated and convoluted than it originally was. And, because there is a lack of space for the amount of information needed to be conveyed, the map can become even larger and information may get lost.
• The action boxes in BPMN are based on the owner, while in UPN they are based on the action. This means it is very easy and quick to understand what the next step is in your workflow rather than trying to comprehend the whole diagram.
• The notation itself also causes confusion. BPMN relies on symbolic precision to communicate actual processes. While machines may respond to symbols, however, humans understand data in different ways. There is often room for error and interpretation of certain symbols in a process depending on how they are diagrammed and used. In this way, BPMN then suffers from the same drawback as other organisation process mapping options, despite being touted as the answer to process ambiguity.
• BPMN is so structured that you lose out on context at times. And by relying on the symbols, you end up running into the same issue as before. A visually complex diagram can sometimes have multiple interpretations and a lack of additional context for each process.

What are some alternatives to BPMN?

Given the issues with BPMN, let’s explore the alternatives.

The first option would be to turn to BPMN’s origin, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram. Originally created for software development, UML is the base of BPMN. The main problem is that there are fourteen different versions of this diagram, and selecting the right one and then communicating it to anyone that is not an expert or familiar with UML becomes a problem.

While UML has been acknowledged as great for object-oriented processes, when it comes to larger business processes, BPMN is the natural successor. But we believe that UPN is the natural successor of BPMN.

Of course, you can also always return to a good old-fashioned flowchart. Flowcharts are widely used for many reasons and can be useful in the right context. But when it comes to mapping out business processes, they aren’t your best option. As they rely on sequential sequences of events, flowcharts fail to account for parallel activities or previous activities that are also part of larger processes. And in a large company, a lot of processes have parallel events that need to be documented to ensure everyone knows what is happening.

Data flow diagrams (DFDs), which were developed in the seventies, are used to capture how data flows in an organisation. They do not strictly work for business processes, as they are not exactly a flow or step-by-step diagram, but they do capture how data works within an organisation. You might find a use for them if your organisation is driven by data, or perhaps as an analytical tool for a specific process within your organisation to understand how your data is flowing.

Gantt charts have also been around for a while – since the late nineteenth century in fact. These charts focus on deadlines, by creating subtasks to a larger task with specific time frames. They are still used by some organisations for processes that are time sensitive. However, the information presented in them is not exactly a flow, and it is too simplistic to capture the entirety of a complex business process as they exist today.

Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) diagrams come to us from the 1950s US Navy. They make use of circles or rectangles, called nodes, to represent project milestones or events. These are then linked by vectors, which correspond to the various tasks required to arrive at that milestone or event. These diagrams break down the individual tasks of a project for analysis and help identify task dependencies. Their main focus is helping the business find the best ways to save time, but because of this focus, they can be quite difficult to interpret accurately.

“UPN is the culmination of all of the needs a business process map has. It provides a simple notation that anyone can follow along to, without the need for an additional long manual about arcane symbols and their meanings. You can present your process simultaneously to your client or stakeholders, and they can all follow along easily. “

Chris Green

Commercial Director, Liberty Spark, Netcall

UPN (Universal Process Notation) has room for parallel processes, and for both big and small picture processes that work together to arrive at the desired result for the company. And despite this, the charts and diagrams in UPN do not become overly crowded or complex. Instead, they still are presented in a way that simplifies and deconstructs processes down to the basics.

The boxes in UPN maps are also organised by actions, making it easy to follow along and avoid any possible confusion about where to go next.

It is possible to add smaller parts of processes as subcategories that can be accessed at specific points in the process, decluttering from the larger picture and leaving everything streamlined for the viewer.

We use UPN as our business process mapping base with Liberty Spark, our process improvement solution, because it provides so much clarity for us. Complex processes can be broken down into small, actionable steps that you and your team can follow easily.

“Spark allows for smaller processes to be incorporated into the diagram, and additional informative documents to all the steps. And as we focus on answering the questions of what, who, how and when in our diagrams, we ensure accountability and responsibility is built into the process.”

Chris Green

Commercial Director, Liberty Spark

With UPN and Spark, long manuals and symbols when it comes to process mapping are thing of the past. With computers making software the natural choice for business process mapping, simplifying everything further and adding attachments it is the clear next step to the future.

It is easy for the organisation to understand your process map and get sign-off from stakeholders easily. You can do a bird’s eye view analysis or drill down to the detail at the click of a button. You can also map at the speed of conversation in a workshop rather than having to spend your evenings mapping out after the event when you are tired or forgetful. With Spark, you can also get reporting and analytics.

Keeping it simple is always best

We’ve explored and learned about BPMN, its uses, drawbacks, and why UPN is the best alternative in the market today.

Keeping it simple when it comes to business processes is always best, and UPN captures that notion more than any other diagram available yet.

It is for this reason that Spark relies on UPN for its business process modelling, as we have found it is a game-changing communication tool for companies about their processes, both internally and externally to their own clients.

Want to learn more? Book your demo to take a look for yourself!