Design tips for combining BPMN, CMMN and DMN models

Hi, I’m Sandy Kemsley of column2.com. I’m here today for the Trisotech blog with some practical design tips for when you’re combining process and decision models.

let’s start with the big three modeling standards for processes and decisions. There’s BPMN for structured processes, CMMN for case management and DMN for decisions. The standards tell you how to combine the models and you can look at graphical versions like Trisotech Triple Crown infographic to see how this works. Basically, process models and case models can call each other, and then either of them can call a decision model. Now what the standards don’t show is why you would use a particular model type to model different parts of your operations? Now, this might seem like a really silly question. If you have a process, you model it using BPMN, if you have a case structure, you use CMMN and if you have a decision you use DMN. But the real world is not that simple. In any sort of business, operation, any sort of complex business operation, you’re going to have a combination of process, case, and decision logic. And you need to be able to use more than one model type together. Now when you start doing modeling, you’ll find that process people and rules people come at these business models from different directions: if you’re a process person, like me, then you’ll tend to start with a BPMN or a CMMN model and that’s going to show the overall flow, and then you’re going to add in decision tasks where you need to call out to more complex decision models and then build the DMN models that are called from there. Now, on the other hand, a rule specialist will start by modeling the key decisions in the business operation and then they’re going to add processes to tie those decisions together.

Watch this short video for more…

Follow Sandy on her personal blog Column 2.