BPMN VS UML

Yves-alain
3 min readNov 8, 2020

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The year 2020 is without a shadow of a doubt, the year that really started the digital transformation of our offices. Between the cloud storage, the cloud computing and digitalization of our communication channel beyond the simple email, our office can be our laptop, our tablet or just our phone. Some companies made that transition easily and for most the tools were already implemented and in use. The challenge for them was to scale that use to every part of the company. For other well that transition was more complicated, and some company are still in the process of adapting all the digital tools and communication channel. For those company, which were UML and the BPMN come in the equation. How those tools can help in the digital transformation of your company? Before answering that question, let define those terms first. Let’s focus first on the first acronym the UML.

Creative commons UML example

The Unified Modeling Language or UML for short is a modelling language aiming to standardize the visualization of system design. It’s a rich modelling language not a programming language. UML is destined to the architecture, the conception, and the development of complex software system. It could also be used in industrial complex processes. UML is not mandatory to developed software, but complex applications need a lot of planning and collaborations that UML facilitate. If you want more info on the UML processes and language you can go to their official site UML.org.

Creative commons BPMN Example

The Business Process Modelling Notation is more known as the BPMN is a processes modelling language. This language is supported by the OMG/BPMI (Object Management Group / Business Process Management Initiative). Its main objective is to give a framework allowing the writing and description of a process. As a Business Analyst, I use a lot this language. I use the BPMN to structure processes or to analyze an existing process that I think could be upgrade. This is a simple language that could be understand by the business and by the IT team. IT’s compose of 4 categories of element:

  • The Swin Lanes (Lane and pool) those are visual structure to categorize and organize activities.
  • The Flow Objects (events, activities, gateways) those are the main elements of the model. You find here all the activities and all the events (start, intermediary and end) and the gateway.
  • The connecting objects (sequence flow, message flow, association) those are the links that connect the flow objects.
  • The Artifacts (data object, group, annotation) those are element to add some information into the model.

To conclude this is the main differentce between the two language. UML is to describe rich architecture and complex comception. the BPMN is more object oriented and destined to processes.

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Yves-alain
Yves-alain

Written by Yves-alain

Business Analyst by day, wannabe writer by night !!

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