Many global organizations are working on standardizing the best practices for workflows. One of the most notable practices is the business process modeling notation (BPMN). The BPMN provides a set of symbols and guidelines for charting the flow of a business process. In this second installment of our workflow discussion, we’ll talk about the different elements that comprise a BPMN compliant workflow.

Annotations – These are small text paragraphs that are often added by the workflow designer to explain what is being done at that stage of the workflow. Annotations can provide additional information, but they can also take up a lot of additional room on the canvas. Because annotations are not necessarily required in a workflow, there are a few modes of use:  always visible, visible if the mouse is over a particular element or icon (also known as “tool tips”), or toggled on and off as the user requires through a button or similar mode of use.

Events –Events, denoted by circles, signal “something happening,” such as an email notification, a scheduled meeting, or the end of a particular process. Icons may be present inside the circle, such as an email icon or a clock picture. Though a user will immediately know the type of an event by the icon or color of the circle, the user will not know exactly what transpired during that event. Annotations may be added for clarity, which will result in a workflow with more elements.

Activities –Activities, such as meeting requests and task assignments, are sometimes represented as rounded rectangles with small icons. However, these icons only tell the user that “something” is happening at that point; the user will not necessarily know exactly what happened at a meeting, who is involved, what was said in an email, etc. Having more information about the activities can be useful, but it creates additional design elements in the workflow.

Question:  If you are assigning the same task to multiple individuals, should workflow designers use one task element to represent this activity? Or should the designers use multiple elements?

Gateways – These are elements that take transitions from the output(s) of elements and then transition them to the input(s) of others. There are two main types of gateways: combiners (fork/join) and multipliers (inclusive decision/merge). A combiner takes multiple inputs and creates a single output, while a multiplier takes a single input and creates multiple output transitions. These elements are not required in a process. However if the goal is to show as much detail as possible about the events of a workflow, they can be very useful.

Question:  Should a gateway that has internal logic denote that to the observers of the workflow?

Swimlanes – Represented as horizontal or vertical lanes (often different colors), swimlanes help teams and designers to keep track of what work is done by which department or what category the work falls under. These can add complexity to the layout and design of the workflow.  

There are many more elements within the BPMN standard that can be added to a workflow. Again, however, we must ask the question: which elements are the most important? By utilizing a large variety of geometrical icons, will the workflow become too cluttered, hindering the understanding of the user?

The team here at Elsinore has spent quite a bit of time this past week reviewing how workflows should look and feel to users.  We thought it would be great to hear our customers’ and visitors’ opinions on workflow design usages.

For the purpose of this blog we will focus specifically on business processes, though the principles could apply to any type of organization. A typical workflow diagram will have geometrical elements (such as rectangles, diamonds, and triangles), each representing or describing some action, activity, or decision that has to be made during the process. Most of these elements will typically have a one or two word label to help observers keep track of the flow. These elements are however only a few of the possible graphical and text representations available.

The amount of detail provided by a workflow diagram is determined by the workflow designer. Workflows can be designed at a high level, only outlining the general scope of the process and keeping the layout simple. On the other hand, workflows can be very detailed, showing exactly what activities are being performed, to whom the emails are sent, what divisions are doing the work, who is responsible for scheduling a meeting, etc. The information is all available but the key is balance. When we consider these and other elements that could be represented, are they useful or do they add clutter to the workflow canvas? What elements do you think are important?  And should workflow designers err on the side of simplicity, or should they strive to display as much information as possible?

It’s a difficult philosophy to capture in a single blog, so in the next installment we’ll capture a few of the most common design elements of a workflow and discuss some of their pros and cons as graphical representations on a workflow.