7.3BPMN Elements

It should be emphasized that one of the drivers for the development of BPMN is to create a simple and understandable mechanism for creating Business Process models, while at the same time being able to handle the complexity inherent to Business Processes. The approach taken to handle these two conflicting requirements was to organize the graphical aspects of the notation into specific categories. This provides a small set of notation categories so that the reader of a BPMN diagram can easily recognize the basic types of elements and understand the diagram. Within the basic categories of elements, additional variation and information can be added to support the requirements for complexity without dramatically changing the basic look and feel of the diagram. The five basic categories of elements are:

1.Flow Objects

2.Data

3.Connecting Objects

4.Swimlanes

5.Artifacts

Flow Objects are the main graphical elements to define the behavior of a Business Process. There are three Flow Objects:

1.Events

2.Activities

3.Gateways

Data is represented with the four elements: