BL
Hi,
Many of you know that kind of viewpoint, which maps Process Steps to Services, Methods oder Classes to show, how the process is implemented (e.g. Layered Viewpoint of ArchiMate). Most often the Process Steps are shown as a Value Chain.
This viewpoint can be accompanied by a BPMN diagram, showing the processing logic of these Process Steps. To do that BPMN diagrams use Gateways and more.
My questions are:
(1) does the gateway only show the result of an executed Process Step? Or does the Gateway also contains logic or business logic?
(2) if the Gateway contains logic, the gateway should also be part of the viewpoint mentioned above. Otherwise the business logic and the corresponding implemented logic would not be shown and this diagram. And the Layered Viewpoint of ArchiMate would not be correct.
Many thanks in advance
Bee
Hi Bee,
I can only contribute a citation from the BPMN specification 2.0.2, chapter 10.6:
"Gateways, like Activities, are capable of consuming or generating additional tokens, effectively controlling
the execution semantics of a given Process. The main difference is that Gateways do not represent ‘work’
being done and they are considered to have zero effect on the operational measures of the Process being
executed (cost, time, etc.)."
So I gather, it does represent logic, however very primitive logic at most, since there should not be "work" associated with them. The information needed should be delivered with the incoming token and no further interaction anywhere should be required. The idea is that collecting the information is the "work" done in the tasks. A task is finished with "I have computed/collected all the information I was obliged to gather". Gateways have intelligence about the process flow control depending on given information.
I cannot comment on the systematics of Archimate, but maybe my interpretation helps you in making up your opinion.
EDIT: Particularly a gateway should only be concerned with gathering or distributing process tokens. Logic it contains should only serve that purpose.
Regards, M. Zschuckelt
Gateways in BPMN reflect Process logic (how the process engine would route the tokens, based on some process data created/updated inside the process, but not by the gateway itself), not Business logic. The Business logic "belongs" most likely to a Business Rule task (hopefully, linked to a DMN model defining Decision Requirements + Decision Logic). So, long story short, no, a gateway is not the equivalent to a task (regardless of task type). Hoping this helps :)
Hi Razvan (and all), hopefully you can help me also in this point. Do Event-based, Timer, etc. also contain no logic? Timer says, that the process has to wait. If you are right, than there should be a rule executed before timer event (which shows the result only). Only this way I can show, that this logic gets executed by a user (manually) or as a Service (= automatically by a computer)? Many thanks in advance, Bee
