I’m belatedly responding to Michael zur Muehlen’s post of the same name.

Though it is possible to dissect the research which Michael himself has put come caveats around I think such a dissection probably misses the main point which is that we all know, or should know by now, that business people want to excel at their jobs not at their modeling expertise. And the closer the IT position or IT role is to the business audience the simpler the modeling needs to be for that same audience. IT business analysts can routinely handle more than Michael’s “BPMN Common Core” but if the audience for their work cannot then doesn’t that limit your output from a practical point of view? At least during a JAD session? This is not to say that you could not refine your model after getting the appropriate approvals for your model concept. Of course you could always prescribe that the business subject matter experts take a course in BPMN. A few would take to it.

On the other side of the coin the closer one gets to process design and executable environments, as opposed to process analysis, the more precision you may need and therefore the more symbols you would need to represent process concepts and their related design patterns.

Perhaps our optimism is incurable that precision would permeate everyone who comes into contact with BPM modeling, BPMN modeling, or modeling in general. As a purist at heart I hear the call for more precision in IT modeling but I also know from experience that you cannot depend on everyone sharing that view or acting on the same desire much less force them to do so while you are trying to succeed in your modeling task. The upsurge in BPMN adoption enables a wide range of application and that is still a very good thing.