Hi

In Information Eng. (James Martin), the activities have the hirearchy:

Function

Process

Elementary Process

What is the corresponding hirearchy in BPMN?

Is it like this:

Process

Sub Process

Task

Step

Thanks

I agree with David... "Information Engineering" is set of techniques and approaches (think methodology) for designing and developing information systems.  BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) is just a notation for modeling business processes.  Pretty much any methodology which calls for documenting/modeling business processes could you BPMN as its notation.

Having said that, BPMN does not define a hierarchy per say.  When it comes to "things" that describe behavior/logic BPMN uses the generic term of "Activity" to refer to work that an organization/company does.  BPMN defines three types of activities:

• Process
• Sub-Process
• Task

In addition, activities can be grouped together using one of the following BPMN concepts:

• Pool - represents all the activities performed by a specific participant (organization, company, etc.) in the process.
• Lane - a sub-partition of a pool, can be used to categorize activities within a pool (ex: activities performed by a given role, activities performed by a given department, activities supported by a given IT system, etc.)
• Group - this graphical element, allows the business analyst to create any other types of grouping of activities for any suitable purpose.  A group of activities can cross lanes within a pool.

Of course, a process can contain sub-processes and tasks, and a sub-process can contain other sub-processes and tasks.

Is this what you were looking for?

- Adrian